Preparation

Travel with us with the story line of the project. We started from scratch….

Before we could start adding new parts into our car’s system, we needed to take things out. We had a plan with an idea in mind, we had the original version of the Lotus Elise with an internal combustion engine and gas tank.

Here we see the beginning of our project, the original 1996 Lotus Elise, untouched and unchanged. The photo was taken on 3/7/21, and marked the beginning of our project.

Image of the original Lotus, untouched, with an ICU and the rear clamshell still on.

Image of original ICU, with cooling system and pistons visible.

Image of original Lotus with rear clamshell with ICU still in the car with all pistons visible, demonstrating how much space it took up.

When we started our preparation phase, we began to mount the Lotus on stands so that we could completely remove every part from the system without it falling over. As you can see from the picture below, the car was mounted with four of these stands, allowing us to completely remove the wheels. All done in our garage.

Preparing to finalize this phase, we disconnected the internal combustion engine from the transmission. This process took a bit of time, but we were able to successfully complete it, allowing us the ability to use our new motor with the transmission in the future (meaning the car would still be stickshift)

The images above show the transmission disconnected, and completely ready to be used again for the new motor.