📓 Journals My DV Emira and modifications

[Time2Fly]

The rear is way easier than the front bumper. Just pull out and away from the car just at the top rear of the wheel arch.

 

[JonFuller]

Fitted all the carbon I've received so far (still waiting on price & delivery for the std shaped sills / skirts in CF), I find Aerie very slow and frustrating to deal with. Their comms are atrocious.

I wasn't crazy keen on the attachment method for the hex mesh in the rear diffuser surround if I'm honest, though the finished result looks fine, it's just knowing some of the behind-the-scenes bits are not as nice as they could be, but the CF layup & finish is very nice.

Thanks to Time2Fly for his advance help on pulling it all apart, that helped a lot.

Quite pleased with how these bits go together with my own custom carbon wheel & bonnet badges, Emira FE badge etc. now feels like the carbon theme runs through the car. Hopefully get to change the sills soon, as that remaining piano black now looks well out of place on my car.

 

[JonFuller]

I also decided to look into this water ingress issue into the main wiring loom / plug, that has caused so much aggro for some folk.

It seems, at least some of the looms were supplied to Lotus with the neoprene seal missing from the large, lock-together plug, located under the hood .

This plug is effectively a join in the loom, with this portion of the loom mounted vertically, just ahead of the bulkhead / below the fuse box/HVAC.
Being vertical, gravity plays it's part in this sad tale, with the offending water trickling down that bit of loom, directed straight onto the plug.

It's a 'perfect storm' situation, as it's located directly below the gutter system at the foot of the windshield, where the design of the plastic stuff tasked with getting rid of water draining from the windshield, into the skuttle area is frankly a bit crap, and fails miserably at containing/directing the unwanted water where it's supposed to, if the quantity is too great.

So if you have a very heavy downpour of rain, or are keen on using big hoses, or pressure washers when cleaning your car, there's a very good chance you'll overwhelm that rather inadequate windshield drainage system, and water will end up bypassing the desired channel & spilling over the fuse box assy, and running down the vertically mounted wiring loom and over/onto this large plastic plug (probably has about 40 wires in it).
So if your car happens to have a faulty plug (seal missing), or your fuse box doesn't have the lid correctly clipped on (it's in a very tight location, and very hard to remove/refit the lid properly.....It's doable, but difficult), there's a chance you'll end up with water ingress into one or both of these items.

Each wire going in / out of the big plug has neoprene, or silicone seals around them, so if water does find it's way in due to the main, mating seal being defective, or missing, the plug fills up with water, but the water can't get out because the seals around each wire at the lower end 'are' doing their job, so the plug 'fills up'. not good.

I was sent a picture of a plug that had suffered this failure, and a video of a fuse box being 'emptied' after being found full of water. This scared the shit out'a me, sufficiently to prompt me to check my own car to see if I was in line for some unwanted aggro.
I'm a tart, so my car doesn't really go out in the rain (unless I get caught out), and, is garaged, plus I'm very careful when cleaning it (no pressure wash, and minimal hose use), so thought I was most likely OK.

Here's how it CAN turn out.... (these were sent to me by a friend at a Lotus dealership)

The nightmare being, that to replace these looms/plugs (main one through the car, and the front one it plugs into) requires the entire interior to be stripped out, and as we know, these things never go back together quite like new, so I was very keen to avoid this....Not to mention the considerable time your car might be off the road while all this takes place, allbeit under warranty (for now at least).

 

[JonFuller]

Fortunately, mine was all dry, shiney & clean, but prevention is WAY better than cure, so....

I made my own version of the Lotus recal 'fix' for this issue, which is a large rubber sheet that's fitted below the offending plastic guttering, and above all this delicate wiring & fuse box etc, which forces water run-off to a safe location, as was originally intended by the std, inadequate plastic crap.

I also sprayed WD in and around the big plug, and slipped a long chunk of motorcycle innertube over that vertical loom, before re plugging it together, then pulled the rubber tube down over the plug, so it's protected from splashing too. (top end of the innertube ends well up under the protective rubber sheet, so zero likely hood of water finding it's way in from the top)

To be fair, the plugs location actually means it's quite well protected from everything except that water that escapes the windshield drainage system, so my innertube thing was just a belt & braces insurance policy.
Access to all this, is by removing the front undertray btw, once this is removed, it's all pretty easy to get at.

With the rubber matt in place, plus innertube covering the plug, plus a good helping of WD in the plug, I'm now quite comfortable that my loom/plug/fuse box are safe..... Fingers crossed.

My advice to anyone who's happy doing a bit of their own spanner work, is to get that car up off the deck, whip the undertray off, and check your plug. And if you haven't yet got the rubber weathershield mod, GET IT.

EDIT: Oh, and as a precaution, I disconnected the battery prior to pulling that plug apart, just in case. Would recommend the same to anyone doing it.

 

[Whitey]

Thanks for this Jon. This is exactly what happened to my first Emira which went back to the factory to be taken apart and fixed. They had the car for 2.5 months before I lost patience and was going to reject it. At the 11th hour they replaced it with same spec later build car last Sept. Now 7k miles in and all ok, hvac done, cover etc. I will take a look at this loom plug over winter.

 

[JonFuller]

Thanks for this Jon. This is exactly what happened to my first Emira which went back to the factory to be taken apart and fixed. They had the car for 2.5 months before I lost patience and was going to reject it. At the 11th hour they replaced it with same spec later build car last Sept. Now 7k miles in and all ok, hvac done, cover etc. I will take a look at this loom plug over winter.

I'm surprised this revision / recal isn't a more urgent thing for Lotus, you'd think it could save them SOOO much money, aggro, reputation-damage etc, to get this sorted on every car ASAP, before they turn into an expensive PR nightmare....After all, a lump of sheet rubber is hardly a costly solution ....ho hum.

Mine is a September (1st) 2023 car too (August build, I viewed it on the production line @ Hethel, Aug 18th 2023), but it didn't have the rubber weather shield revision, hence me making my own. Not sure from what date they got that revision as std build.

 

[JonFuller]

Black Sill now looks out of place, vs all the CF....

 

[Beachbum]

Black Sill now looks out of place, vs all the CF....

Carbon Fibre sill it is then. You need to raid your piggy bank

 

[scc.131.fe]

Fortunately, mine was all dry, shiney & clean, but prevention is WAY better than cure, so....

I made my own version of the Lotus recal 'fix' for this issue, which is a large rubber sheet that's fitted below the offending plastic guttering, and above all this delicate wiring & fuse box etc, which forces water run-off to a safe location, as was originally intended by the std, inadequate plastic crap.

I also sprayed WD in and around the big plug, and slipped a long chunk of motorcycle innertube over that vertical loom, before re plugging it together, then pulled the rubber tube down over the plug, so it's protected from splashing too. (top end of the innertube ends well up under the protective rubber sheet, so zero likely hood of water finding it's way in from the top)

To be fair, the plugs location actually means it's quite well protected from everything except that water that escapes the windshield drainage system, so my innertube thing was just a belt & braces insurance policy.
Access to all this, is by removing the front undertray btw, once this is removed, it's all pretty easy to get at.

With the rubber matt in place, plus innertube, plus a good helping of WD in the plug, I'm now quite comfortable that my loom/plug/fuse box are safe..... Fingers crossed.

My advice to anyone who's happy doing a bit of their own spanner work, is to get that car up off the deck, whip the undertray off, and check your plug. And if you haven't yet got the rubber weathershield mod, GET IT.

Great pics, and thank you for all of the details!

 

[JonFuller]

...... You need to raid your piggy bank

Piggy bank isn't the issue (on this occasion), it's Aerie Performance.
Trying to communicate with them is mind numbing!

 

[Time2Fly]

Are they making CF sills?

 

[JonFuller]

Are they making CF sills?

They tell me, they (the 'factory', whoever that is) now have the tooling, and sent me some images of std shaped sills, in matt, forged style carbon fibre (I want gloss twill weave, the same as the rest of my stuff). That was a couple of weeks ago, but still no answer as to how much they'll cost, and availability... and I have asked several times, Banging my head against a wall.

These are the std Lotus factory shape, not the extended ones they list at Aerie, but in CF rather than gloss black plastic.

I'm also waiting on an answer about changing at least one of my carbon rear vents, as the carbon weave on these does not match (it's not symmetrical across the two items in terms of weave direction).
All the other stuff is really nice, with herring bone type join in the centre, and left and right components laid up in a nice symmetrical style, with the exception of those rear vents.

 

[JonFuller]

You can see here that the weave is not symmetrical on the two vents (I know, I'm being anal, but everything else has been done with great attention to detail from this point of view) and of course these two vents can be seen simultaneously from behind the car, unlike the side vents, where a miss-match would be much harder to spot.

For the record, the vent on the left, is how I'd like them to be (but correctly handed).

 

[Whitey]

It’s a pretty obvious mis match there, so needs changing. I can’t think how the manufacturer thought that the mis alignment of the weave was ever going to be acceptable.

 

[JonFuller]

It’s a pretty obvious mis match there, so needs changing. I can’t think how the manufacturer thought that the mis alignment of the weave was ever going to be acceptable.

It's not just me being an Arse then?

The CF stuff from them so far has cost £3k (that was with a bit of discount that they offered for ordering it all at once), so expensive enough to want it to be right.
At the point I was ordering, they weren't offering the Sills (hadn't tooled up yet), or I would have ordered it all together.
I'm guessing these two Sills will cost circa another £1k?

J

 

[Time2Fly]

They tell me, they (the 'factory', whoever that is) now have the tooling, and sent me some images of std shaped sills, in matt, forged style carbon fibre (I want gloss twill weave, the same as the rest of my stuff). That was a couple of weeks ago, but still no answer as to how much they'll cost, and availability... and I have asked several times, Banging my head against a wall.

These are the std Lotus factory shape, not the extended ones they list at Aerie, but in CF rather than gloss black plastic.

I'm also waiting on an answer about changing at least one of my carbon rear vents, as the carbon weave on these does not match (it's not symmetrical across the two items in terms of weave direction).
All the other stuff is really nice, with herring bone type join in the centre, and left and right components laid up in a nice symmetrical style, with the exception of those rear vents.

Just a heads up, if they don't come with rivet nuts installed (the OEM don't) you'll need to do that yourself. I got a rivet nut setter ($50) and I'd suggest not stainless rivet nuts as the compression force to set them will likely crack the sills. You need 3 M6 nuts per sill.

 

[JonFuller]

OK thanks, I have a rivnut kit, so can sort that.
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