Finally can stop looking for an S1! Result!!!! :o)

[GregR]

You could be right Campbell ... it did become a bit of a SE 'pool' exhaust for a while! In order to get it off my car it was pretty savagely ground down so chances are that that, together with 'heavy' SE use, gave it a more boomy sound !

[Ferg]

He's not budging hugely on price, but the market appears to be climbing at the moment so pulling him down a few hundred quid might be enough. It is one of the cleaner ones I've seen for sale. It's has the clutch hose, throttle body and steering rack amongst other things. The milleage/condition combination (doths his cap at Shug) is quite appealing.

How do I tell if they are Konis? Are they standard Koni yellow?

[GregR]

red

[campbell]

Nope, for some reason Konis on Elises are red.

If it has the Lotus-approved replacement items from Bilstein, they are yellow.

Nitrons have adjustable platforms which you should be able to spot, and are gold I think.

Spax are also yellow, but again would have adjustable platforms.

The Bilstein kit is £600+ so if you do see it has Konis, push hard.

Earlier pointers on brake discs etc are good ones, although presumably you will do all the "standard" 2nd hand car tests around tyre condition / wear pattern, braking in straight line, pickup in 5th from low speed to check for clutch wear, and so on and on and on and on!

Note, the inside edges of the front tyres do naturally wear faster than the outers so don't be spooked if you see that. Rears should wear pretty evenly though.

[Ferg]

yep, got my usual testing habits. Some good, some not so important but it's like you get comfortable doing certain things when you're looking.

Nice to know about the tyres, and the shocks are a good bargaining point.

[campbell]

And has it had the ally floor recall done (look for pitting in the footwells...if the dimpled rubber sheets are still bonded to the floor under any other mat, can you feel bigger bumps here and there).

[Ferg]

Yes it's had that recall too. The new panels all bonded in etc.


EDIT: actually I think he said it had new mats.

What was the usual practice from Lotus whena car came in for recall?

[GregR]

They'd lift the floor mats, and underneath that there's a rubber floor mat that was glued to the Aluminium floor. the adhesive used caused the Alu to corrode so that would be stripped off. Depending on how bad the floor was, they'd either clean it up, or get a new floor bonded in.

Get the seller to sit in the car and depress the clutch and look in the engine bay to see if the slave cylinder rubbing/moving any connections/cables or wires. Seems to be a good technique to wear down a seller (eh Jon.. )

[campbell]

If you mean for this floor fix, they had 2 stages.

Pull off the existing rubber layer (very thin mat...actually the thing that caused the problem in fact) and inspect the floors. If pitting was present, they clean it up and bond in the fresh panels. Then install new fabric-ish mats, which won't trap moisture as badly.

If no pitting present, I believe they just clean off all the old adhesive and install the fabric mats - no new ally panels are applied.

My car was in a bit of a mess so I got the full bhuna job. Just in time before the chassis warranty ran out too!

[Ferg]

Gogs had showed me the corrosion on teh floors and the worn wires bit where it's screw to the clam. so I'm looking for all that stuff too.

Just by chance he phoned to talk about insurance for a test drive. He says it had new dampers about 5 years ago but that they are red konis.

[campbell]

Gogs had showed me the corrosion on teh floors and the worn wires bit where it's screw to the clam. so I'm looking for all that stuff too.

Just by chance he phoned to talk about insurance for a test drive. He says it had new dampers about 5 years ago but that they are red konis.

You now have £600 negotiating margin. Well done. The Konis are not worth toffee, although if you do get the car and change to Bilsteins, if the Konis look clean you might actually get a few pounds for them individually on eBay where someone is trying to source one or two to avoid a full changeover etc.

[Ferg]

So I'll tell you a story....

After speaking at great length with the owner of the 'Clean Standard' titanium S1 and he assured me that the car was perfect in pretty much every way hence the price tag. In answer to every probing question I had on the car he dismissed any idea that it was anything other than A1 condition. So I arranged to go and see it yesterday morning. After setting out at 7am we drove 270 miles and arrived in Staffordshire for the car at around 11.30.

Even at first glance the car wasn't even close to as advertised, I suspect the pictures were taken when he bought it. Now I'm not sure if it's entirely fair to publicly list the vast multitude of problems I found with the car (I would supply a list to anyone considering going to look at it), but suffice to say that the car was not nice to drive, even the Dash was faulty. 10 grand! I nearly laughed. So I made a very low offer that reflected condition which he of course wasn't prepared to take so I made my excuses and left. I have to say I was pretty angry that I had been lead to believe this car was mint when it blatantly wasn't. Especially as I was travelling so far.

So after grabbing a pub lunch we started back off up the road. At this point we actually felt good that we'd had the knowledge and conviction to walk away from what was a poor car. Then looking at the map, I thought... Wales doens't look too far away.
I phoned another car I had been really interested in but despite beeing good on most fronts, the history sounded patchy and we hadn't even agreed the same ball park on the phone. I gave the owner a quick bell to see if he'd be available to show me the car, thinking that while we we're down here we would have a look at another car to increase experience in viewing.

note to self: getting a postcode wrong by one letter can make 50 miles difference. And in deepest wales thats a slow 50 miles.

So with our sense of humour waining we finally made it see the car. Instantly it looked special. Despite being 10k more miles and the same age as the last one it looked like it had been loved 50 times more. Going over the car, everything was in good nick, well maintained and in a lot of situations had new or uprated parts. The car drove perfectly on the test run and the history turned out to be the most extensive I've seen. It's got the hardtop and the soft-top looks brand new. Yes, it had been modded but the changes were to my taste and done well. The only downsides were a couple of bad scratches on the front clam and the passenger window doesn't wind fully down.

So we came to an agreement and amazingly I'm now the owner of an S1!

It took untill 2am to get home. So after 19 hours, almost 1000 miles, driving for a total of 15 hours in the day, feeling ill from a dodgy pub lunch, avoiding a car in mid accident on the motorway, possibly getting a speeding ticket on the M6, going to Wales on a whim, and buying a car, I'm blooming knacked.

Happy as larry with the purchase. The car had a constant 73-77 degrees temp all the way home, and drove great.

I want to say a huge thanks to everyone from the SE who has provided information, guidance, their time and experience. It gave me the knowledge and confidence to buy what looks to be a great car. I hope to see you on a run or track day soon.

Fergus (Chuffed to bits faction )

Heres the first pic at first fill up.

[mwmackenzie]

Congratulations and well done, is it a 111s? looks great in titanium!

Now you can change the thread title to "Finally can stop looking for an S1! Yippee"

[BiggestNizzy]

looks

[renmure]

It's been an enjoyable read.
Seems like a happy ending