10 000

Yesterday, my Lotus reached its 10 000 km mark as I was driving here:


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I went to an open parking lot with some gravel on the ground to drift the car a bit, but I was unable to get it to loose traction... dam A048s... Understeer kicked in before I could upset the rear. I think the solution is a nice slalom course. This is what I will be experimenting with next:



Just in case you're wandering if I'm going to risk cones... no I'm not. I am going to use putty :-D

TADTS #1

On a thread asking people for help about a knocking noise on the front wheels, someone replied:

"There's many noises and things that come from Elises; when I first got mine I was hearing every noise and thinking "what's that? is that a, no, it can't be, oh hang on there it is...uh oh" every time I drove it. Slowly you get used to the noises.

Enjoy!"

Drive last night

It had been raining during the day, so I just took an easy drive last night. I went to a possible location to experiment with loosing traction an found it to be quite satisfactory. There were too many people around so I just did a few rounds trying to loose traction (not succesfully) and then went for a longer drive. I quite enjoyed having a more relaxed time with the car. It is a very competent mini-GT :-)

Turn signals

Found out on Lotustalk that flying turn signals are a common problem. Some useful solutions here.

This pic shows that it happens to the pro's as well :-D

Blat last night

Went to the LA road trying to get back in shape... I only did one sprint because there were a few large piles of dirt on the road. Still I was able to train heel-and-toe and it went quite well. Haven't lost the touch. I was a bit bummed to have to com back so soon :-(

Lotus 2-11 base

I am sooo lusting over this....

Superb drive this morning

I was sick with food poisoning this whole week. Couldn't take the Lotus out. This morning I meant to wake up at 5.00 and go to Sintra. I did wake up at 5.15 but couldn't bring myself out of bed until 6.15. By the time I got to the car, it was almost 7.00. As soon as we were on the open road to monsanto, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of childish happyness as I allowed myself to connect with the car. I even screamed of joy. This is such a superb driving machine. I was just going for a quick blat through Monsanto but ended up going all the way to Sintra. Lots of traffic, so I just went for a one way sprint. I hadn't done a mountain road blat in a while, I was really rusty... even my heal-and-toe sucked. Oh well :-P

Not again!

Yesterday I was cruising on the highway on the way to Porto and my left front blinker came out flying again!!! It's the third time this happens in 6 months! Not happy. The darn thing hit the front clam a number of times, making no damage (thk god!)

Other than that quite a pleasant trip up and down. Had a great time at the Jag launch party and then had dinner with a bunch of Lotus enthusiasts. Check the pics here.