Upgrading the Lotus T125 Exosphere F1 Suspension at Genius Garage

Before I do that, I gotta show you guys how we're gonna, no, I'm gonna do, wait, I need a coffee. Listen, people, we're smart. This is Mr. Owl. He's not been on the channel in a while. So you can loosen this jam nut, loosen this jam nut, turn this right here, and you can change. That's why most boards have been started. It's because of land, which invisible guy in the sky you like, or your funny hats that aren't like somebody else's funny hats. World history, you're welcome. Oh, yes, people, we are here and it's a genius garage. It's relatively early in the morning. It's not, it's nearly lunchtime. I don't like getting up. But anyway, there is the Lotus Exosphere. Currently has its boring transport wheels on and you can see the engine is exposed. Now, I've been promising you guys I'd do a tech review on it at some time, which I haven't done, but will, but today what we have to do is actually remove the suspension's pushrods, which are these guys right here. Boom. Basically, all of the weight of the car from its downforce, as well as actual weight pulled down by gravity, will be getting pushed into these in compression. Now, the problem is on the rear, if you notice the way this was originally designed, you've got your rod end here, which goes into the bell crank and pushes the shock. And obviously works to this sway bar over here. And the way it's adjustable, there are threads, let's see, sorry guys, it's on cinematic mode. There are threads here and here. So you can loosen this jam nut, loosen this jam nut, turn this right here, and you can change the ride height or how much compression, not compression. I only had one coffee today, not much to eat, Sean. Sean appreciates and understands. He's a real human being. He's been around the world. I'm working on it, guys. So anyway, you can adjust your corner weights and such with it, ride height, rate, et cetera. So the problem is, if you notice this, this is fairly spindly, and the metallurgy of this one isn't most brilliant. That's not the original one from Lotus, trolls. So metallurgy isn't great. If you get any deflection on this, or even the slightest amount of bend to this, where it's off center from a straight line, the mass amount of force going into this thing from all the downforce and such at speed, and all of the impacts from racing and driving can cause this to fail and bend. Now we've got another one of these that totally failed, it yielded, and it went like that, which is not good for males over the age of 40, as well as race cars. Because if it goes, you potentially will instantaneously crash a very expensive car, which you like. And in the circumstance of Genius Garage, I want to sit around for many, many years for us to be able to teach and inspire with. So here's our plan. This car obviously was done by Lotus Formula One, but there's a lot about it that they took from the IndyCar world to make work and build into a really awesome hot rod, i.e. Formula One car that will last longer, but it still requires a lot of doing. So if we're displaying it somewhere, the answer is no, we can't just start it up. We could, but we're not. So anyway, we're gonna remake these push rods at Legacy Autosport with Mike and Butch Meyer out of stronger IndyCar push rods. Yes, so it won't fail. I don't care if it weighs a little more. Here we go, yes! Wait, before I do that, I gotta show you guys how we're gonna, no, I'm gonna do, wait, I need a coffee. Listen, people, we're smart. This is Mr. Owl. He's not been on the channel in a while. You should miss him. That's Shaun the Sheep. That's Brandon. An entire nation is cheering him on. That's the closest I'm gonna get to making a political joke. Do you think I got away with it? I think so. I know things, I'm smart. Except this hat is really weird, and they tell me it should be more flat-brimmed. Right, Brandon? It should be more flat-brimmed? That's what you said, Shaun the Sheep. It's supposed to be flat-brimmed. Except I put this on, and it makes me look like I'm going to go to jail soon. So, I'm gonna be like the 80s, in the early 90s, and roll this sucker. Do I have the proper roll, like I'm a pilot from the late 1930s? Yeah, like Ricky Bobby. Do I know, Ricky Bobby? Yeah. Do I at least, now, I look like I'm not going to jail sometime soon? Yeah. Okay, good. Yes, yes, yes, okay. So, guys, come on over here. One of the things with this car that we have to do real quick, since we're gonna take the pushrods off, and it's gonna take a little bit of time, it's time that we can't put the car back on the ground. So, currently, it's sitting on the really dorky transport wheels. These are that way, so it's easy to push the car around. It's got a lot of ride heights. You can push it right in the trailer, strap it down and stuff. It's real easy. But, the thing with motors like this, really high-end motors are, you don't want it to sit on the same valve spring all the time, because the valve springs that are pushed down when a motor is stationary will fatigue it. So, you gotta turn the motor over. So, every, generally every week, and one thing I did to make it easier, you'll notice here, I have the spark plugs out of it. And, actually, they're really nifty spark plugs. They're very narrow, they're long, and you notice there's no electrode poking off. Kind of more like an airplane. So, you gotta be nice to the car. In any case, the spark plugs are out. It has coil packs. All the coil packs are in here, if you guys see this, right here. These are all the coil packs that go way down in there, and really thin wiring harness. But, I leave that out. Now, this car does not have a auxiliary starter like an IndyCar, where you plug it in. Believe it or not, and this is really cool for this car, they did pack an onboard starter onto it. But, we're not gonna use that to turn the car over for a couple of reasons. One, if you just bump it, you don't know if you're gonna come all the way over and push down the same valve spring. And two, when the car sits for almost any amount of time, the oil from the sump tank starts draining down into the pan so you have to carefully turn it over rather than do that for the possibility of hydro-locking it. They do say to just drain the oil, if it's gonna sit for a long period of time, but I found out it's easier just to leave your nice oil in it, and then when it's time to turn it over, you put it in gear and gently push it a little bit, and that will pump the oil back up into the tank. And then when you get it to a certain level that you have no concerns of any issue with the engine, then you can turn it over with the electric starter and get your oil levels to where you need to be. But right now, what I'm gonna do is we're gonna put it in gear, and yes, I've actually got a doggone adjustable wrench to do so. You'll notice here is the shift pack, which controls the clutch as well as the pneumatic shifter, the pneumatic sequential shifter here, and it has a little air pump and a tank. But I'm not gonna energize the whole thing and click it. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do it just by hand, but to do so, I need to be able to carefully grab this arm here with that, and that allows me to put it in the gear manually, no different than I would a motorcycle. So I just have to do it nicely. Okay, Sean, why don't you go over on my right side here? I'm going to, I need to be able to roll the car a little and bump it, just like a motorcycle or a quad or something like that. One second. There's the gear. Now, to make my life a little easier in pushing this and turning it over, I want to stick it in first gear, probably stick it in like second. It is geared relatively tall because it's a road racing car. So Brian, would you be so kind as to help me push it forward? Now, what you guys may notice, and I'll do it a little faster, so hopefully you do it. When it gets to a compression stroke, there's no spark plug in it, so the air starts pushing out and you'll notice it will potentially lift that cover with the coil pack plugs. Ready? Here we go. See how, ooh, careful, we're getting crazy here. Okay, keep going. Okay, we'll stop there. That's literally all I need to do. I just need to get it past enough of a stroke that you know that whichever intake or exhaust valves were potentially open, you've gone far enough that they're now closed. So I'm going to go ahead and just stick it back back to neutral. It's first. Turn. Okay, and there's neutral. So, like a big fancy motorcycle. Okay, now Brandon, let's get it forward just a little bit so we can get to the jacks. Okay, Brandon, so what we're going to do is we're going to do either the rear or the front first. We don't want to do both at the same time because then the whole car will be resting on two jacks and there'll be not much pull. So, we've got our stands here I don't think you've done this yet. This is the one for the rear. That holds it just high enough that the tires are off. And this is the one for the front. The reason that one is taller, obviously, is because the monotoc comes up real high and there's a big gap in the rear end. So, does this look like a good place for it to sit for a couple of weeks? We've got plenty of room to get by the wing. Do you want to grab the rear jack and go for it back there? Yeah. I'll, no, where'd you put the wheel wrench, the hand wheel wrench? I wasn't here when it was dropped off. I'm not sure. It might be in the truck still. That's a meat house. Yeah, you were here. Okay, stick it under there a second, the second one. You need to be able to put it down enough. We're good there. Now, notice there's kind of cam locks in place but if you bump it just a little bit. The other thing is, the way this is, is if you don't have it in fully or if you have it in too far, you really shouldn't turn it because to turn it, it needs to be perpendicular in length. If you turn it like this, it'll start pivoting. If you turn it, it'll be, it won't be perpendicular anymore. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Where's the wrench, Sean? I don't know. Sean the sheep? Oh man, dude, we're putting air quotes on Genus today in Genus' garage. How did that, how? Who unloaded the trail? Was it me? Is it up here? Yeah, follow me around. Welcome, everyone, to the most interesting channel on YouTube. I'm being sarcastic. You know, if I do much more of this, I can open my channel intro. Like, who can be like, welcome to the dumbest channel on YouTube? Sean the sheep, where was it? Where was it? It was in the trailer, where I left it. Wait, you left it in there? I thought I did. Oh. Okay, fine, well, we've got it. So anyway, guys, this is our just hand-easy socket for the nuts on this car. As you guys know, it's actually special. It's got this ring inside here, which depresses the little automatic locks here. So it's important. And then, so when we're just transporting the car and showing it, we'll just hand torque it low and not worry about it getting crazy. So, Sean, would you just crack those loose so we can jack it up? As a note, guys, on cars such as this, the wheel nuts, oh, it's up in the air. Sir Brandon, whom the entire nation is cheering on, would you please put the car down? There you go. So the wheel nuts, how it works is, you tighten these, turning it backwards in rotation of the car, and you loosen it by turning it forward. It's the same thing on the other side. So as a note, people will try to remember, well, if it's the left side, it's reverse, and if it's the right side, it's normal. Don't do that. Don't think like that. Think about the rotation of the car, what direction it's going, and then crack it loose the way that it needs to go. Which way you turn it, Sean? Are you struggling? Yeah, it's not. Do you mind if I try it just to see what's going on? Okay, there you go. Don't, no, that's enough cracking. We still want it to support. So as a note for everybody at home, it's important if you have your car on the ground and you're gonna crack your lug nuts or lug studs loose, just crack them loose. Don't all the way loosen them. Then you can jack the car up. Then you can loosen them up all the way. Okay, you guys got that? Okay, yes. Yes, well done. Okay, now you wanna take them off? Now, another thing that's a little bit of a trick on this, you guys. So these are just the transport wheels. They're not pretty. They're made of steel. They're probably from a truck or something. And it's like the spare tire off of a truck. I don't know. Anyway, so the trouble is, the socket doesn't fit well into the steel and it's hard to get it on there enough to release completely. So sometimes we've gotta, see if you can get that in all the way. You're really gonna have to get it out. If it doesn't release, it doesn't release. Don't force it. Okay, tell you what, let me do my Swiss Army magic. Would you be so kind? Show them how pretty I am. Don't I look pretty? No. Okay. Okay, so what I'm gonna do here, guys, is I'm gonna just gently snug that back up. The problem was on the locks. And there's only safety. Correct, we've got two options here. If we're just gonna use this socket for transport, we need to turn down the outer diameter of the socket and get it smaller so it fits in inside this. Because right now, the flange here of the steel wheel is interfering, not letting you push it in far enough. So what happens is, if you notice, if I go to loosen this, boom, it hits the locks. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna push this in gently and make it kind of snug with friction. This is not the way we want to do it at the track because it's slow and makes us look stupid. But this is the smart way to do it right now to defeat the system. Ha ha, yes. No, I didn't spend part of my childhood picking locks. Yes. Okay. Very important thing, always put your nut back on so you don't lose it. That side. Come on, vice grip fingers. Not successful. Yeah, guys, we're really gonna have to. Okay. Oh, good, pushed it in properly. How nice. This one, I was able to squish in enough that it wasn't an issue. Okay, so what we're gonna need to do now, you see this guy right here? What I do is I like to line it up here. You see this quick fastener tool? Okay. It goes approximately three inches behind this. So this point here is where you want to put this. When you put it in, you need to look and see if it's centered from the rear because if you have it over too far one side, the mount top will sit here, but then this will put undue pressure on the lower wing or the under tray. Does that make sense? But in terms of where to put it, right here. Okay? Go for it. And then when you get it placed in position, I'll take a peek and then you can lower it off. Looks good now. Yeah. It was a little too far. Okay, gently lower it on that. If you hear any ugly noises, stop lowering. Okay. You got a half inch. Okay, we'll go back up. Let's try here. Come on, Steve, go down. Up. Down that way. Up, up. I'll go back to the original spot. Hit it. Okay, so naturally this is not what you tighten it down with. It requires a lot more torque and it's got this stupid adapter. So this is just what we take with us when we go on displays and stuff. It's the Columbus Carbon Profitable. Okay, sir, do you want to get the front jack and figure that out? So you've probably seen it done, but what do you think of, how do you think the front jack works and why? Does it go in the front? Yeah, go for it. The thing I'd say is make sure it's centered. Make sure it's in all the way before you do it. Bring it up to it. Give it a touch. Make sure it's all the way there. Yeah. Ready to get it? You go. We never practice this, but I think I can do it. You do the other one. Just don't let that pop off anywhere. Tell you what, before we do that, let's do something smart and put it on the stand first because we're making it teeter-totter a lot. Now this stand, you've got to be mindful because I don't want to go and hurt the suspension. You put it as far back as you can where it's not touching the lower A-arm right here. Does that make sense? So you can eyeball it from the top really easily. Okay, maybe come here and take a peek. So if that's the strongest point and best point, go ahead and lower it nicely. And then don't forget, the current leather car is just on the stands in the middle, so the width of where it pushes is only about this wide. It doesn't have a wide berth, so you can see it's a little jiggly. Wait a minute. I really need to go get lunch and coffee. I'm stupid. It's sitting on these wheels now because it's a stupid transport. I'm leaving the stand. I don't care. I'm not perfect. What? I'm laying off the coffee because it makes my digestive system freak out because all these students and everything else, and all you guys watching gives me lots of stress, and if I drink too much coffee, my gut's hurt. So I try to not drink coffee today, and now I'm stupid. I have to find the balance. Yes. How are we doing? You're with it. You should tell me what to do. It's this hat. I should try to make it flat-rimmed, so it should be wide-rimmed. And flat-rimmed and backwards. Wait. That's painful. Should it be slightly off to the side? Yes. Am I showing the sponsor properly? No, you're not. Should it go the other way? Yeah. Like this? Wait, is there a level where if I turn it too far? Did you ever see the movie in the 80s? There was a bunch of white kids from the Pacific Palisades or Bradley Hills or something, presumably, and they all wanted to be in Hood. And the only gun they could get was a Flintlock Wonder Bus. Do I look like them? Yeah. Okay, don't forget, if it starts to get, those locks are in place, and if you jam against them, you're gonna wreck it. So don't do that. Oh, no, you're doing fine. It's just the wheel being tilted, you're all right. But I appreciate that you have support for things. Here you are, sir. Okay, if you'd like to put it on the stand or the head, just make sure it's aligned properly. Now what do we do? Oh, we have to take these things off. Okay, I've never done this before. Let's take a look at the front to start with. And then we're getting lunch, so I'm less stupid. But make sure I curl my hat again so I don't end up in jail for going outside with a flat-brimmed hat. Everybody in popular culture thinks it's other things. It's really just because of your hat. That's why most wars have been started. It's because of land, which invisible guy in the sky you like, or your funny hats that aren't like somebody else's funny hats. World history. You're welcome. All right, so, well, that's buried. But it's not so buried that we can't get wrenches on it. Cheekily, we try. Brandon, do you see where it is? The bolt comes from the front, goes through, and there's a jet nut on the back of it? Yes. And it's on the lower A-arm? Yeah, that's the A-arm. Okay. So if we release that, that's fine, but what we're also gonna have to do carefully is we're gonna have to come up with things to support each corner, because there will be nothing supporting. I don't really wanna remove the entire corner. Does that make sense? Yeah. The other thing we need to do is mindfully remove each one of these covers, because that's the only way we're gonna be able to get this bolt out. And there's an Allen wrench here, and there may be also something here. So let's get at that. And then this one, this one's a little easier, kind of. It's got a 12-point bolt on the front, and then a jet nut on the back. Do the carpet covers come off? Yes, but don't worry about them now. You can get it without. You can ease it off on the, pull it on out. We'll worry about taking that off afterward. The other thing we're gonna have to do really smartly is we're gonna put tape around it. We're gonna mark each one for each corner, because when Mike remakes a new one, he's gonna drill it on a steel table, and we're gonna get pushrods that are identical. So theoretically, we should literally be able to put them right back on, and the car will be still out where it was. All right, you guys. So I pulled the top bolt here. So you should be ready to pull your bolt out here, because you got the nut out? Okay, cool. Let's see that bolt. Light your face. I'm trying to let them see your beautiful face. Your beautiful face. It's kind of hard to. Come on, camera, you can do it, yay. All right, so that's out, huh? Okay, so you wanna try to pull that out? Tell you what you oughta do. Brandon, hold the wheel nut, the axle part right there, and lift. Pull that wood out first, that's supporting it. Okay, lower it a little bit and hold it. And then that should give you the ability to pull it out easier, Sean. Lower it more, Brandon. Can you do that? Okay. Okay, Brandon, I'm gonna do something. Lift a little. Do not drop it. Let it down as far as you can reasonably. No, that's, back up, back up. Okay, what can you do, Sean? Tell you what, Sean, why don't you take my phone, and I'm gonna do, do as I say, not as I do, kind of a thing. Brandon, go ahead and stick that wheel on the knees just in case, again. So the carbon fairings on this are being kind of a jerk. So you've got the bolt out, right? Yeah. It's a bolted brake. What a dick. Do not drop it. So much of it's just being a dick, right? Yeah, it just doesn't work. It might be stuck on the brake lines or something. There's a bunch of cables. It's partially out. I'm sure there's some brilliant, really annoying, wow, this thing's really annoying. Why do you have to be such a dick? I see what his problem is. It's just sort of so tight, and then someone put zip ties right here to hold something. Always a tie. This is probably not included. Yeah, there we go. Match my finger on the side of it all the time. You heard the deal? It's the brake line, yeah. Put the wheel under it then. Damn, did that hurt? Yeah, it just, it was just captive and being stupid. Did I mess up anything? My finger. Yeah. You guys may have seen, but it is a conventional steel chromoly-type pushrod inside here, and the carbon is a fairing, which is pretty darn cool. It uses helicopter tape to go around it, and frankly, the carbon, if I'm not mistaken, is literally helicopter taped in place, which some might think is dumb, but it is really smart and lightweight and works really well. So we'll have to untape it, but there's the first one. Okay, I want lunch. Shall we? Okay, guys, that is it for working on the Lotus Exosphere. Actually, that was like a couple of days ago. Since taking all the pushrods to Mike and we went to lunch and we were burned out and working really hard to get it done. So I hope you guys forgive us about not showing you like literally everything, but there will be more video when we put it together. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. You're gonna learn a lot. So hope you enjoyed it. Hope you enjoyed just seeing everybody being very real, working on a car that is very, very techie and very zoomy, but it's gonna be good and really appreciate what Mike Meyer at Legacy Autosport is doing for Genius Garage. Really means the world. So hopefully I'll get that car together relatively soon with stronger, better pushrods, and get to go test it and then be out racing later this year, perhaps the VSCDA HSR race at Road America. I think in September it could be a really good venue. So we'll see what happens, but check out Genius Garage. If you feel like it, donate below because you gotta keep the lights on somehow. And just because somebody gave us a really cool car, doesn't mean that we have any money to actually get lunch. And I don't get paid, everybody volunteers. So it does mean a lot if you all see fit. But thanks for watching. Please subscribe and see you guys next time. ♪♪♪