this is the
History of my 
maybe not to interesting for you, but
this page was the best reason for
me to write everything down
| Jan. 13th, 2001 |
Today we
had to take out the Steering rack assembly in order to replace the Gaiter.
I thought this wouldn´t be too much of a problem, but it took
us more than 4 hours all in all only to replace the Gaiters!!! My Elise
is now 2 years old and the Gaiters looked absolutely terrible. Take
a look at my After we
replaced the steering column, rack, wheel, etc, we decided to replace
the Engine lid release cable, which was a pain to open for almost a
year now. It was another 3 hours of pain to replace the cable. Find
some drawings here: |
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| Jan. 12th, 2001 | I will do the service myself, so I tried to get some spark plugs for my Elise, which was an difficult and expensive task in Austria. Rover engines and cars are not very popular in this country. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jan. 5th, 2001 | 3 (!!!) days after I drove my Elise for the last time, the battery is flat again (3 cold nights in the garage without the alarm). Jumpstart again didn´t work. I have no clue what I´m doing wrong. So I had to take out the battery again and purchased a new one. We will see if the new battery is fine now. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dec. 30th, 2000 | I
found a hint on the internet about the tension of the wiper arm. I carried
out the modification on my wiper arm with full satisfaction. Read more
about it on the 
page. |
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| Dec., 2000 | I left the car in the garage for about 2 weeks, which left the battery absolutely flat. Tried to jumpstart, but didn´t succeed. So I had to take it out - which is not an easy task, when there is no handle (mine doesn´t have one) - charged the battery and replaced it in the car. From this day on, I didn´t turn on the Alarm when left in the Garage for more then 2 days. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| August, 2000 | I
decided to go for the Bridgestone Potenza S02. Take a look at the 
page to find out more.I installed the  .
I´m not really sure if this gave some extrapower, but the sound
is absolutely great. |
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| July, 2000 |
More Power ??? Of course. You can never have enough power, but this is a very expensive task. So I ordered a K&N 57i Airfilter - at least for the sound ;-))) The rear tyres are getting weak. I´m consulting the Internet and newsgroup to gather information about the best tyres for the Elise on the market. |
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| April 29th, 2000 | I
joined another Elise (111S), a Porsche 911GT2 and some uninteresting family
cars at a drivers training on the track. That day was absolutely great
fun. Some scenes in the 
show me spinning all over the place. This day showed some of the potential
of a midengine sportscar. |
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| March, 2000 | Boot doesn´t open. It seems that the cable is rusty. I have to be very careful when opening and closing the boot lid. I had to live with it until I installed a new cable in Jan. 2001 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| March, 2000 | Stonechips
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe you shouldn´t drive an Elise in the wintertime. Do they have a special problem with paint on Fibreparts at Lotus? |
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| Feb. 2nd, 2000 | Strange sound from somewhere at the bottom. Sounds like I´m loosing something. It was one of the big plates at the bottom of the car, which got loose. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jan. 19th - 21st, 2000 | Audio
installation. Let the pictures tell more  It´s now possible to listen to music at higher speed, which can be nice on longer trips. But most of the time I rather listen to the sound of Rover, Janspeed, and K&N....... |
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| January, 2000 | The roof is keeping me dry in the rain (this is not self-evident with the Elise). But it fails when I Jetwash the car. Simply don´t point the "shower" to that little spot where the top of the side window and the frame of the windscreen meet. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jan. 15th, 2000 |
1st Problem: the engine doesn´t quit after a Jetwash. At least this is better than the engine wouldn´t start, but you can´t park your car with the engine running....... The engine quits as soon as I turn off the lights. I can live with that. Still not fixed (Jan. 2001). I believe it´s a feature - not a bug. |
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| Jan. 10th, 2000 | What a procedure to register a german car in Austria. But I saved big money by importing the car from Germany. Finally got rid of the german license plates. I was happy to fit the Austrian plates. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dec. 29th, 1999 | The snow situation was a lot better that day. About 10km before I crossed the border to Austria, I got pulled over by a Police car. The officer checked the license plate and there was no registration!!! He thought the car was stolen. The reason for all this, was a very slow registration process of the germans. The car was again registered the day before and the police didn´t know about it. My contract was proof enough to let me pass the border WITH my Elise. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dec. 28th, 1999 |
I saw MY Elise for the first time and I will never forget my first drive ever in an Elise. I had no chance to drive one in Austria. The first thing I thought when I saw the car was: This has to be mine. The green interieur looks absolutely great on the yellow car (Lotus colors) and I still love it. We sattled the price (it wasn´t THAT easy) and I jumped in the car to get back home before midnight. A couple of hours and miles later the radio said something about a snow chaos in Austria, some really bad accidents on the most common highways and something like: don´t use your car if you don´t have to. What a great idea, to purchase an Elise in December. I found a Hotel somewhere in Germany and waitet for the next day. |
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| Dec. 27th, 1999 | I got on a nighttrain to Berlin after several nights of very little sleep | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dec. 16th, 1999 |
I talked
to Michael about the Elise on the phone (Berlin is about 1000km from
the place where I live). He sent the first picture: |
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| Jan. 22nd, 1999 |
A guy from Berlin (Michael) liked the green seats (in fact he was searching for an Elise with this color combination) and bought the car. He swapped the exhaust to one from Janspeed and did about 11.000km until Oct. 21st, 1999 |
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| Aug. 1998 |
SCCGA1116WHD34389
|
