Bringing it home

TL;DR: Shakedown continued

With the technical inspection passed on Thursday and paperwork sorted in extremis the following morning, we could finally bring the Lotus home . Just in time to take part in the Distinguished Gentleman's Drive on Sunday. Eagle-eyed among you will see the new license plates were still in transit, so the Caterham's plates would have to do. That was a whole story in itself as I had to go to the paint shop just before close to get hold of them...

We wanted to shoot a video of my first lift-off, but I stalled twice with the engine still cold. What you'll see is actually the 3rd and final take.

Anyway, I drove at least 400 meters before losing power completely. I managed to get just enough juice to turn around that very busy national road, and had to push a little to get to the incline then let gravity do the rest. I got back to the safer side-road where House of Speed is located (with my mechanic following me already by that point).

The issue was quickly identified as being electrical in nature, as we couldn't hear the fuel pump starting anymore. As I spotted that the fuel gauge didn't work either, a bad contact between a fuse and its holder was all that was wrong A temporary fix was to zip-tie the 2 fuses against their holders.

On the way, I stopped by the local locksmith and got a pair of spare keys made. The blanks are the same ones they use when people from the airport come to get extra keys for their forklifts.

Back home, I knew there were some electrical quirks worth looking at :

• a flaky grounding of the front-right side lamp / blinker unit, where all I could find is a lack of ground on the bulb holder but a perfect grounding of the bracket. I'm not proud of having solved it by pushing tinfoil in there, but the wiring would need to be separated from the wingstay if I was to remove the internals from the lamp casing.
• a different wiring is needed for the Smiths RVI tachometer to work with the 123 ignition system; but it wouldn't work with the test-wiring; and just worked briefly when we first tried the car 3 weeks ago  That RVI will need some tender love and care, including new capacitors or a conversion with a new modern PCB.
• I killed the main fuse when working on the tacho. The other one was flaky too, so I replaced them both. They were Lucas 35A, 17A continuous.  All I had for the Mini Cooper were 25A. They seem to work fine.
• I had the left-hand tail/brake lamp lens reversed on the day before, now the bulb is not hidden behind the reflector anymore...

As I also found the car to get close to over-heating in standstill traffic in the morning. I removed the fine mesh that was behind the grille. At least now I can keep the temperature in check with the fan (it was 25°C outside). I cannot rule out a 'bad' ignition map as I find my "best" map lacking advance compared to the one I had prepared before fitting the 123 ignition.  I did revert to the original one later but didn't drive much with it. The car sure felt a lot happier.

Having discovered that one of the wipers had perished, and needing more glass fuses, we drove to Auto 5, but they had nothing for us. They really tried to find wiper blades but they found nothing in the computer. Regarding the glass fuses, all they got were 2 pack of 10A.

Anyway, after that there has been a lot of polishing. Belgom Alu and cotton wool, in circular motion, until it turns very black and doesn't make any grinding noise. After that, linear buffing, following the air stream (horizontally then...). Buffing used a lot of cotton wool. We used rubber gloves.

While working on all that, the mailman had brought the USB adapter and cables I ordered for the Lotus. After the phone holder was located clear from the indicators switch, the permanent USB-C cable was routed nicely out of sight. 

As the car has a positive ground, I made sure the cigar plug polarity was correct before plugging anything in - it is. It's also permanently powered, with only the master battery cut-out switch to shut it off. The only dangerous bit is that the ground of the exposed USB connector is referenced to the negative terminal of the battery, while the car body, in polished aluminium, is grounded to 12V... I need some galvanic protection on that supply. Referencing the usb power to the car ground could actually be a good idea. Would a DC/DC converter do the trick ?

With the night coming, I quickly drove to a nearby parking lot that has a good lighting and got some pictures.

On the way back, I heard the fuel pump ticking in the corners, and took that as a sign that I was probably low on fuel. I got 28 liters in there so it was probably low.