mph

Tyres — here's Avon's own documentation. It says 22-27 HOT, which I've found tends to be 18psi cold.

Avon Tyres Motorsport - Lotus Seven Club - 2021 Edition.pdf

13 hours ago, JAL73 said:

I am considering upgrading the Bilsteins on my 2020 420R SV in search of refining the way my car handles bumps and poor road surfaces.
My car can be quite crashy over bad surfaces and prone to the rear skipping over bumps at high speed

Please note im more interested in improving compliancy and road manners rather than shaving seconds off lap times! 

Are you on 15" or 13" wheels?

If the former, then the answer is swapping to the latter will vastly improve things. Everyone said that when I bought my car three years ago, and I took it with a pinch of salt. Until I made the swap and couldn't believe the difference 😂 

22 hours ago, raw said:

The best solution for road use is the standard Ford (Modine) heat exchanger although it does need a smaller oil filter to retain ground clearance. It helps the oil warm up quicker, particularly for a dry sumped car and once everything is warmed up, it actually helps stabilise the coolant temperature. One of the best mods I've done on my car and one mod we did on all the Premier Power F225 cars if they weren't fitted already.  Oh, and for road use blank off the oil cooler, uncover for the track.

Cheers

Andrew

 

Mine is a PPE 225 and I just run duct tape over the oil cooler on the road. Else it barely gets above 40º 🥶

Good to note @aerobod - near CYYC, thank you. 

Nice one @Miker7, thank you. The ammeter in series is the sort of idea I was thinking of. I’d like to be able to “debug” the issue 😊 

Spent six hours in the car today (to NHM and back) — the fuse blew twice on the M1 on the way down 😬 Slightly hairy coast across a couple of lanes to get to the hard shoulder. I put a 15 in the third time, and that lasted the rest of the day, including the dyno session.

Both blows on the motorway were simply when cruising along. 

I have a 'Superlight' dashboard, with the silver toggle switches. Is the 'DCM' anything to do with those does any one know?

If I stick a meter across that fuse, can I monitor load there? Electrical numpty* asking, apologies if question sounds daft 😂

Thanks folks!

* be gentle

8 hours ago, Mrb00ns said:

Is this the drain plug in the tank, or is it the larger one where the finger filter is fitted?

In the sump. 
 

I’m not sure why you’d want to take the temp from the tank. Surely the most important oil temp is where it’s being useful, ie the engine? Speaking as a layperson and not an engine specialist 😃 

Interesting @BigCol — my car is dry sumped. Oil still gets down there though, and it definitely works 😂 

PPE, when they were around (sad face) did mine, and it looks like the oil temp sender is in the drain plug.

Update. It wasn't the fuel pump fuse, and that has the correct rating in. All fuses are correct ratings. Just took me a while to marry up the diagrams in the manual to the actual fuse box 😂 

The blowing fuse is O - "flasher unit/D.C.M"

I did find a severed earth wire on my left cycle wing repeater, which I fixed. Dunno if that would affect things 🤔 On both occasions it's blown, I had the indicator on, and full beans. Hmm. This is gonna be a right pain to find the cause of, I bet.

2 hours ago, Jonathan Kay said:

Do either of these match your Seven?

Jonathan

 

 

 

Anyone know what 'D.C.M' is? (fuse O in the diagram)

12 minutes ago, pgm said:

If you are sure it's the fuel pump fuse you should fit the correct amperage. I have seen similar Ford pumps in other applications, usually Fiestas blow the correct fuse when the pumps become tired and draw excessive current.

The next thing to do is work out if it really is that fuse — and yes, if it is, fitting the correct fuse would be a good start 😃 

How does a fuel pump become 'tired'? Less effective at delivering what's being asked of it?

Hmm. If I took the right hand side of figure 28 and rotated it 180º, then it would fit my fuse box and would be 'D', which would be the fuel pump. And a 15A fuse. Where I currently have a 10A, that's blown twice. Under full throttle…

This is looking like a duck, walking like a duck, and quacking like a duck.

This may be the ticket @Jonathan Kay — thanks for digging that out. I'll have to pull some fuses and see if that hypothesis stacks up.

Thanks for the diagrams!

--M

Hello folks,

Twice now I've had my R400 Duratec cut out — completely dead — under hard acceleration. Pretty much the same scenario both times. Warmed up, headlights on, full throttle, and it dies instantly. 10A fuse, fourth up from the bottom, blows. I'm not sure what this fuse covers, apart from almost everything 😂 Interestingly, the immobiliser light flashes happily away to itself once I've stopped and the rest of the car is dead.

I've no doubt every single fuse box is different, but on the off chance they're not (ho ho ho), here's a pic of mine — as mentioned, it's the fourth fuse up from the bottom.

Given the intermittency of this, where do I even start to work out what could be causing the problem? 😬

All ideas and thoughts most graciously welcomed!

Many thanks!

--Mark

Yes, I had to go buy one at Brands Hatch last year when they had a low noise day and my R400 was anything but 😂 I was hitting 98db.

They're a rip off for sure — but you can do better than S&C. They get them from Demon Tweeks, and we have a club discount with DT. So just ping them directly and save yourself a few quid.

Indeed!

One of mine was stuck at the weekend, and I found that spraying some GT85 on it and leaving for 10 minutes helped. I then just wiggled it a la this (should start at 4mins in)

On 16/02/2024 at 13:07, OldAndrewE said:

Drilling out the rivets should be straightforward.  Use a sharp 4 mm drill until the head comes off and then, if necessary, use a parallel punch to knock the rest of the rivet into the tube. The only problem that might occur is if the pop rivet 'nail' is still showing in the rivet head.  This will stop the drill centring so use a smaller parallel punch to knock it back

You were spot on @OldAndrewE, thank you!

18 minutes ago, BigCol said:

Google “Gold magnetic sump plug” or similar… 
(Gold is the manufacturer’s name of mine)

Fab, thanks Col!

For others, to save us wearing Google out… https://www.b-gdirect.com/magnetic-sump-plugs

I did find an old topic discussing just that @Jonathan Kay, which is why I've gone down that route 😊

I'd just like to sort out my horrible holes. Oo er.

Premier Power used to have a really good article on their website about how to do this, but since they've shut up shop, most content has gone from the site. However, archive.org to the rescue…

https://web.archive.org/web/20230607112918/https://premierpowerengines.com/csr-oil-change-process/

Hello folks,

I may have clipped a cone on the last track day of the year, before winter lay up 😬 So now I'm fixing my self-induced mess.

The rivnuts were ripped out, and the resultant holes are a bit of a mess. I'd like to 'flatten' the side skin again — which I'm guessing means removing the cockpit side panel. Which is riveted in. I'm a bit of a garage noob, and although I've done plenty of things to my Cat over the last three years of ownership, removing rivets isn't one of them.

My questions then are:

1) is it best to remove the inner skin to tidy up those holes, before putting replacement fittings in (I'm going with some rubber 'well nuts' + nylon bolts; to prevent any future repeat mishaps with track day line choices!)

2) does one have to drill out the existing rivets to remove that skin, or are there 'better' ways of removing rivets? I fear making a total hash of drilling out rivets…

Any and all tips and tricks most welcome, thanks!

--Mark

On 04/02/2024 at 20:01, Graham Hutton said:

Magnetic plugs in diff and sump

Where did the snazzy magnetic plugs come from @Graham Hutton? Ta!

44 minutes ago, RogNeedham said:

Now this might be my age, but what I increasingly see out on the road with these very bright front LEDs is the lack of contrast between that light and the indicator, particularly if the two lights are close in the same cluster.

I know the old motoring adage of ‘never trust a left signal’, but sometimes I really struggle to tell if an indicator is on because its light is dominated by the nearby / surrounding LED 

Rog

You're not alone Rog. I'm not young, but at 50, hardly 'on the scrap heap' too (I hope 😂) — I struggle with many modern lights too.

A bit of a tangent — when I was a wee lad, I wanted to be a car designer. Didn't go down that route in the end (poor advice, with hindsight, from a crap teacher) — but I do still have a fascination with the smaller details on cars. In particular, light clusters. I tend to look at them a lot whilst driving along, and of late I have noticed these terrible indicator designs. Even Mrs P has commented, and she has x-ray vision (powered by Magoo-esque glasses, mind).

Ah, nice @DerekH, thank you.

This being said reservoir?