turbotoaster

Dont want to get into the Rx7 thing, so im posting this on here for people to read something a bit different.


Im building my own car to take on the club class at time attack for the 2014 season, so hopefully ill be able to pester ronnie as ill have the same power to weight but ill be 400kg lighter.

there is a bit of copy and pasteing so bare with me on it.

First major thing is changing over to a lightweight exige body, this will be arriving next week so I started stripping the front end.

These are the weights ive measured.

Front clam including badge and little brackets that hold the wiring - 11kg
all electrics, lights, indicators, hinge and wiring - 2.5kg
front bonnet including grills and latch - 3.3kg

Ill be weighing the rear clam, boot lid as they come off next week, steveb weighed the roll over cover and rear window so I have those.

Not sure if I should do this as a build thread, but im building it this year to hopefully complete it next year in time attack, not going to be besting Jamie but hope to do well in Club RWD so if someone thinks I should have this seperate let me know.

Bit of a spec of what im starting with

Bought s1 111s
Turbotecnics supercharger conversion inc pistons/rods(full kit weighs 18kg)
Piper 270 cam kit(vvc delete kit)
Emerald m3kd
remote thermostat
ITG cone filter
janspeed 4-2-1 manifold, sports cat and exhaust
Large hofmans oil cooler kit in drivers side rear arch
Nitron NTR 1 ways Randy spec 450/650 with eibach helpers
pilbeam adjustable ARB
eliseparts ali bell discs
braided lines all around
removal of stereo, speakers and wires
lightweight golf cart battery(5kg)
battery cut off
fit small race mirrors
Harness bar and 3" Luke harnesses
eliseparts quickshift
eliseparts 50mm hub adapter, ebay snap off extender and 280mm wheel
padding removed from stock drivers seat and rotated to lower head height(im 6ft3 hence this and the wheel)
stock 111s wheels
75mm extended diffuser and 1mm ali undertray with no naca ducts
Carbon interior panels and doorcards.
92/102 ride height(did this by mistake, took 15mm off the coilovers and lowered it 23mm for some reason)

I think thats about it, car currently weighs around 730kg with an empty tank, my aim is 680kg which I think is achievable.

Stuff to do.

Equinox Fibreglass Products full Exige body including roof made to my specifications with a diolen/fibreglass mix with black gelcoat(is being made at the moment and due for me to pick up next weekend, expecting a 20kg+ weight saving)
Removal of rear glass for a bonded in carbon panel(already have it in the garage)
Full splitter with 4inch extension all around, mounted to chassis, crash structure and tow eye.
Large canards that will also connect up to the splitter
large rear wing the width of the rear clam(my aim is a total of 300kg+ of downforce at 100mph, will adjust the rear wing to balance the front splitter.
Ethos wheels from Sector 111 in 16x7 and 17x9 with 205 front and 245 rear(may go to 255 if theres room but dont think ill have enough power for a while to justify the extra rotational weight)
Innovate wideband connected to my emerald
Piper 285 inlet cam
remove janspeed manifold, fabricate turbo manifold, fit t3/4 and vxr injectors
big barrel chargercooler(keep my pump, lines and rad from the TT Kit)
Phoenix motorsport toelink kit, brace and then lighten my hubs(says can save 1kg per hub!)
My mate works for a carbon fibre manufacture so is making me a set of seats, expecting to save 10kg+ for this.
going to try a 300mm wheel as I cant see any of the dials properly

Few pics to let you know what im starting with, hopefully will have a few more next weekend of the new body, but included a few of the same kit.


seat adjusted, snap off kit and extender added

picture from recent pistonheads meet

front clam setup, though I dont think ill fit the lower clam parts.

roof will be removable without havign to take the clam off

diffuser added, I think from what people said when the exige body on its going to not stick out anymore, I might make an even longer one to help with downforce in the future

engine, still need to sort out a catch tank instead of running a simple breather.

new ITG filter fitted and intake tube, had the inlet the same as the throttle body(old stock setup had a small pipework

chargercooler pump died so had to take the clam off

clam put aside removed



Removed the rear clam, need to take off the drivers side wheelarch liner but couldnt be bothered removing the wheel at the time.


19row oil cooler, you can also see how small the chargercooler is, definete need for improvement


you can see how small the intake pipe between the supercharger and throttlebody is, that needs to be enlarged


this needs sorting out, theres no way I need this much wiring and pipework, will strip the wiring loom down and remove the excess and simplify the coolant system.


There has to be a simplier way of getting the gases out than this, lots of pipework and weight, probably take it off and use it as a template for a straight none cat setup

This will also mean I can make a new exhaust that can be bolted to the carbon panel that will bolt to the top of the longerons and also the spoiler


Mini-update, we are fetching the new exige body over easter so ive been working on the wiring to take what we dont need out of it(old vvc stuff) and also tidy it up.......what a complete mess it is, whoever was at it before clearly didnt have a clue what they were doing, im just starting to rewrap it now its all sorted.

Next job was to make something to hold my exhaust and provide me somewhere to put a bag of tools, jack and other bits and bobs ill need to take with me on track days.

So i cut to shape a foam core carbon panel, bolted it to the car,


then drilled the holes for the exhaust to bolt to, its lightweight and stiff so should do the job


Here you can see most of the wiring is now wrapped, just this last bit, also had a think about where im doing to put my emerald and that black box at the bottom of the picture.


i dont want it getting wet or dirty from grime so we raided the cupboards and found a lockable plastic tupawhere box that will just about fit both in, so Ill be fitting that tomorrow, also means now we can drive it about without the rear clam on to do some final checks before bolting the new body on.

Next update will be early next week when I should have some pictures of the body all laid out for people to see :cool


Well yesterday i went and fetched my new exige bodywork, left at 8am in the morning, got home at 7pm, so along time on the road, met Dave at Equinox products and I have to say, really nice chap and would happily recommend him.
After getting home I finished the wiring off and managed to get it running making sure all the sensors work as they should

so we can officially say its moving from elise to elige as such.


Didnt really know what I was letting myself in for as ive never done bodywork before and was hoping it would be a case of drilling holes and bolting on, looks like im in for a bit more work than that!

Gave the panels a quick wash off just to see what we are starting with, my advice would be to paint these, but if its a racecar then it will be fine as it is, I think ill do a couple of seasons of time attack then maybe get it painted to match the doors.

Front clam(very light)


Rear clam(pretty heavy, but still 10kg lighter than stock)


what we are starting with, funny looks turning it around in my street, plus a few of the local kids thought it was a big gocart


tried the roof on, seems to drop in nicely and gives me an impression on what needs to be done to fit it.


You can see how much my seat it adjusted to keep me as low as possible, im 6ft3, I put my helmet on, doesnt touch the rollbar and I have 1inch clearance between the helmet and my the roof, would like more so hopefully the carbon seats will get my even lower.


Here you can see the gap between the window and the roof, need to sort out some window seals, I have seen you can use s2 exige ones on a s1 so might try that.


Dave had not fully trimmed the front clam so that we can adjust it to suit it better, so we made a start, theres still a bit more that needs doing to it, but at least now we could bolt it on roughly


Starting to look a bit like an exige now


Plenty more work to do, hopefully will able to get the front clam including chin and splitter completed by the end of the week, then next week make a start on the rear.


Was thinking once Ive got it all bolted on take it up to my mate who runs a body shop and get him to run over it for a couple of hours and get all the panels aligned correctly as they wont be perfect doing them myself.

trial fitted the arch extensions, only thing I need to work out is how to attach the bottom part of it, not sure if they get pop rivetted or bonded on factory exiges

you can see how wide the front arches are compared to the elise ones



Put the front splitter up to see what the fitment is like, seems fine, so tomorrow i will hopefully ill drill and bolt them together tomorrow



got the piece of 9mm home tonight, spoke to my mate and hes said he might make a carbon foam core version of it once we have trialled the ply version.

You can see how far it will stick out from the clam, but my god its heavy so I cant imagine ill be able to live with ply for very long.



Also contacted the supplier of the backbox im getting, hes had it on the scales at 4.13kg, now adding the small bit of flexy where it meets the manifold and a small elbow out of the box pointing down should get that up to just under 5kg, so thats a 8.7kg saving and hopefully a extra horsepower or two from lack of 3 bends the old system had.

this is the old janspeed setup with a represent over the top showing the new setup.


The only bend will be at the end pointing down at the track to help with driveby tests, ill put it on with a slip fit so I can adjust it away from the sensors depending on which track it will be.

The box should be arriving by friday and ill get it welded over the weekend



From watching and looking at my datalogs from emerald you could see that the inlet temp sensor was struggling a little with heatsoak from head.

So I decided to remove it from the lower inlet manifold and put it in the upper inlet manifold, so out came my drill and M10 Tap.

I used an old IAT sensor and ground it down top and bottom to remove all the sensor part, making sure that nothing protruded into the inlet stream so that each runner was getting the same amount of air.



This way ill know a more accurate idea of what the temperature is coming out of the chargecooler at all times.


Also my new backbox turned up, looks nice and I think this will be one of the most cost effective ways of reducing weight, whether its quiet enough remains to be seen.



You can see thats pretty free flowing!



On thing I did notice with the janspeed system is the internal diameter of the pipe work is smaller than 2.25" so hopefully it might realise a pony or 2

Dropping it all of with my friend in the morning, hopefully he will all get it welded up over the week


pics of bracket - 420g verses 51g!



We are using one direction carbon box section, strong as steel yet doesnt weigh anything, for example, 2m long 1"x1" box section weighs 300g!



Need to replace as many steel things I can with either ali or carbon, hopefully olly will be able to throw a few ideas at me.


Ok next I moved onto the rear of the vehicle, looks like more trimming to do.

At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now, plus its a nice feeling looking at it, makes me think its going to be worth the effort.

One thing I realised as once its fitted I really need to take it to the paint shop and have a proper body shop go over it from top to bottom and tidy everything up, luckily Ive got a friend who runs one and ive already ran it past him.

So ive placed everything where I want it, need to start at the front of the clam and work my way back.





One thing I noticed is how far the rear wheels are in stuck in the arches, they look a bit a bit lost!



So also made a post on here about what im going to do for tyres, ive done some measurements and these will be the ones ill be running


Rota GRID V



15x7 ET20 with 25mm hub spacers on 225/50/15 this will sit out 38mm than my stock wheels(ive checked and have the room
16x8 ET20 with 25mm hub spacers on 245/45/16 this will sit out 21mm than my stock wheels

Should look something like this when its finished


tomorrow we will have put the final couple of pieces on to finish mounting the rear clam, least then on monday I can drop it off at my mates garage to do my new exhaust.

this is how we are going to mount it, the light grey is the longeron and the bit sticking out that we are bolting it to is the fog light housing.

we are using some spare carbon angle that will be bolted in 2 places to the longerons and then the end of that will be bolted onto a 90* which is bonded to another 90* piece which is bolted to the clam, it seems like the simplist and lightest way to do it.


Next I tackled the problem of the rear wheelarch not bolting to the sill, the exige workshop manual doesnt seem to show that there is a bracket between them so im guessing the exige sill is wider than the elise.

Because its quite a struggle to do this with the rear wheels on(needed to so I could jack up the rear of the clam) I decided to make them out of 1mm ali, since they are very light ill try it out to see if theres any flex, good thing is now i have a template to make them out of carbon angle later ive saved ready.



Ill hopefully be finishing off cutting the engine cover up this week aswell so that the front section follows the contors of the roof, ive done the passenger side already, just need to do the drivers, you can see on this picture how much it currently sticks up



Again since it was sunny today I took a picture to give me a little inspiration that there is light at the end of the tunnel


Currently sitting at 92mm/110mm ride height, will be interesting to see if I can get it off my drive tomorrow!!

We have finished bolting the rear clam on so at least now tomorrow I can take it to have the exhaust made.

we used carbon angle that is bonded and bolted together, the good thing about this, once the bolt holes are lined up we know the rear is in the correct position, I might change over to quick release fittings in the future but for the moment it does a pretty good job, its only 2 bolts which takes a minute


Here it is made, didnt take long but it sure does blunt drill bits making the holes, being 3mm thick it will take a massive chunk of weight


Holds the entire back end rigid in place and only says 200g for the pair!

Here you can see how its bolted, ive put some weight onto it and seems fine, cant put to much weight on it as the clam is only thin and you risk spider cracks.



You can also see the diolen we have used to give the clams more flexability and impact resistance, this means we can go lighter and less chance of cracking.
The only bit he didnt do in diolen was the rear where the lights etc go, but alot of this will be cut out eventually so wont matter to much,


Looks pretty evil from the front, actually like how it looks without lights/indicators but dont fancy getting a daytime MOT for it incase i get caught coming back from a track day and it goes dark, if it was a race car I would put come blacked out headlight covers and be done with it.



Running so low the most challenging thing has been to work out how to get it off my drive!! but worked that out this afternoon, involved many different pieces of wood, still the lower the vehicle the better aslong as i can counter act the bump steer and wishbone angles.


marking out where the exhaust will go, thank god I went for the shorter one with the bigger diameter, I will be cutting all the exhaust section of the clam away to save weight but even so i dont think i would have much space for much more

Cant get it any closer else the box hits the subframe and im trying to avoid tight bends for better flow, the old system had the equivalent of 6 90* bends


Put roughly where we want it, i will then use a slip on 90* bend which ill be able to turn away from the direction of the sound recorders on trackdays



Got it home tonight after new exhaust, on idle it seems the same as before, on full throttle it sounds awesome, proper k series angry sound, dont think it will pass on drivebys but luckily I can adjust the angle of the tailpipe away from the sensors now, plus I have an extra external bolt on muffler for track days, you would say the same at time attack but actually listening to the cars there, there is no way they are only 105db on full boost, some of them you can hear on the other side of the circuit.

Here are a couple of pics

I tried to make a box to contain the ecu but in the end it was just a pain in the arse, so I decided to fit it to the carbon panel with velcro, its lightweight, acts as a dampener against vibrations and is easy to get to, i then velcro'd the relay box and map sensor onto the ecu.



We had to trim the panel to make the box fit as its set at an angle to be able to reach the clam outlet, I still have to remove all the inner part of the exhaust area which will also give me more room around the exhaust.


I have a little straight piece for when im on the road, but wanted to try the elbow to see how it fits, looks a bit weird but i suppose I wont be using it much, my girlfriend said it looks like a rats tail and now is calling it a rat car



Pretty close to straight through the system, will be interesting if there are any gains on the dyno


Put my rear lights and wiring in, actually the easiest job on the car by far, why cant it all be this simple!!



bolted on my old diffuser tonight, would sound like a simple task but it was anything but, started on it at 7pm, didnt finish till 11pm!!



Turns out that that it looks like the diffuser on the exige has different hole locations than the elise one, ie the holes are much further in on the exige body(about 25mm) but the clam sticks out much further, must be about 50mm

Which meant I had to lie in the dark with a torch in my mouth while I trimmed a 20mm strip of bumper off all the way along on the inside so I could get the panel fixings on, the battery dremel made things interesting!!

At least now I have everything all lined up and bolted on, I wont be running this diffuser for long, just need to keep it to use as a template for where the holes are, ill be making one in a few months that extends another 200mm in length and another 100mm wider each side, that way when I seal in the area around the wishbones I will be able to make use of all the air travelling under the car,

Olly from phoenix was kind enough to lend me a roof clamp for a while as I dont have one, but being big and heavy and I would have to give it back to him anyway I decided to make one in carbon fibre, which since they dont seem to be that common or easy to buy in carbon or GRP ive decided to offer them to members looking to either save weight or if they have just bought a hardtop.

So start off with waxing the part with mould release wax then glueing on some edges


Nice layer of gelcoat


to make it stiffer we used some offcuts of carbon fibre as the first layer


We then added a layer of fibreglass and a foam core


another layer of fibreglass and start the last layer of carbon fibre


All done, just got to wait till thursday night to take the clamp out of the mould


Well released the clamp from the mould, strangley very easily, but then I did put alot of wax on it first

Cleaned it up and got my mate to put it in his work oven today, it needs to stay in there for a couple of days to make sure its cured all the way through.



We can then get the carbon and kevlar and make our first clamp

Also I ordered my lightweight engine mount and adjustable lower mount so that will save a bit of weight, another thing that cant rust and stop my engine moving around so much, the aerocatches are on the way also

Just need to check the bank account to see if ive got enough for my wing now

Manage to finish work a bit earlier today so started on making a splitter.

This is basically a template as my mate has decided we have to make one out of carbon fibre due to the weight so if I mess anything up it wont matter to much.

So its bolted with the 9 standard M5/M6 bolts onto the crash structure to start us off, then I added 2 tie bars at the sides as they seemed to be the most flexable part(i would have liked to have run longer tie bars but didnt have any)



need to buy some longer bolts for the ones that go into the splitter as theres not enough thread left to fully screw into the tiebar while having washers both sides so ill be off to b&q tomorrow to get some longer ones


I had to trim the chin to allow for the tiebars and also the edge of the chin would hit the poitn where the crash structure touches the splitter


Put 2 more tiebars into the crash structure to stiffen the leading edge up, though on the carbon version ill angle them out a little further rather than straight down as they are now


So the plan tomorrow if I get time is take the car up the 70mph dual carriage way, friend in another car filming just to see if we are getting any bending anywhere, to be fair if it does bend at least ill ive made it for free and its only bolted on short term.

Its slowly starting to look like a real racer!!

Got back in after and opened my boxes from Eliseparts to find my lightweight engine mount, adjustable mount and new headlight covers.




I also ordered a lightweight crank pulley but then later questioned is it like the stock one with 7 grooves, turns out it only has 5 grooves and since i run a 6 groove belt because of my supercharger it turned out I cant use it, luckily I called back before they had shipped it out.

I might do the engine mounts this weekend if I have time and motivation.

My carbon clamp mould has also now fully cured from the oven so ill be trimming that ready to lay the carbon in

fitted my engine mount today, thank god I have long fingers as its not easy to get your hands in the right position, so hopefully worth it, its always nice to get rid of something rusty!




We also weighed all the parts that came off and the new parts that went back on and there was a 1.737kg weight saving so not quite 2kg I hoped for but not far off, just have to see how rough it is to live with day to day.

will fit the lower mount tomorrow if I have the time, then it should be nice and solid

Also fitted my rear top brake light, that was a real pain getting it out of the 111s clam as you couldnt get your hands at anything, much easier on an exige


Then marked up my carbon sheet ready to be cut out to replace my rear window, once cut out all bond it in so hopefully it wont sound as noisy in the cabin as before.


finally been working on a design for the rear wing and confirming all the measurements on the car and the wing itself, im following the same lines as others have done only my connections to the longerons will be made of carbon rather than normal ali
So when done will effectively look like this


fitted my rear numberplate which only took a moment, the biggest thing I had to do today was fit the adjustable engine mount.

The only way it would ever take 30mins would be if you were on a ramp with the undertray and diffuser already off!!

Trying to unbolt them with a spanner and socket set was getting me nowhere.

After 20mins of pulling as hard as I can I eventually got the bolt to turn that is closest to the rear then had to put a 19mm spanner onto the nut on the otherside while a socket on the other, not sure how people do it when they dont have arms as long as mine!

Next came the bolt closer to the sump.......dont know what idiot put that on there but they never had intention of anyone ever being able to take it off!! it took a blow torch and a impact gun to get it to come off, which again is not easy to do lieing on your back looking up.

so the reason for the post is in regards again to weight saving, I weighed both the EP mount kit which came out at 495grams and the original which came to 850grams so 355g saving

So overall as well as stiffening my engine up I saved a total of 2092g which is never a bad thing.

Took it for a drive up and down the road and you can feel that stiffer engine mount, the cover that sits on top of my stack dash now vibrates!

Do I feel that it makes a difference, when the engine doesnt move as much under throttle compared to before but I dont feel it has made the throttle responce to anything any sharper.

Took it for a little spin up the road today, just to check everything works, all seemed ok until my indicator lense flew off then got run over by the car behind which was a nice feeling so looks like im spending Ł50 on a new one

While I was out I put some fuel in to get it off refill so I could get it weighed, so with 15ltrs(12.75kg) of fuel on board it weighs 710kg, now i need to add the headlights and engine cover which is 5kg combined, so this puts me at 703kg without fuel onboard which is pretty decent since ive got that super heavy ply splitter on the front and about 22kg of supercharger kit, since i know already of 36kg that can come out it looks like im on target!


Made a little progress tonight as I would like to take it up the cat and fiddle on sunday for the meet

Fitted the carbon panel to replace my rear screen, only thing I need to get hold off is either some foam or a door rubber to go on the top edge of the carbon where it meets the roof to give me a good seal.


Also my aero style catches arrived, came quicker than I expected.


Never done anything like this before so first thing I did was make some brackets out of 1mm ali, I will replace them with carbon, but I can use these as templates while I learn what to do.


Scared myself silly making the first hole into the engine cover thinking ill be calling equinox for another one as ill mess it up, good thing about making the brackets in ali was that when my bits didnt line up i just bent the bracket so that it fitted, once we got the first side fitted and checked I measured from each edge on the cover and duplicated it on the drivers side.


I then attached it with both and success, seems to work well!!


Fitted my headlights, indicators all the wiring and gave my temporary splitter a quick coat of paint so it doesnt look to daft



Also put some pre-preg carbon into my mould for my roof clamp, made it 12 layers of carbon with a piece of kevlar over where the bolt holes go, it will be that stiff the only way we will have problems is if the big head washers manage to pull themselves out of the roof.



Just got to get it over to my friends house now to make my turbo manifold

decided to take my car into work today, i knew it was losing a little bit of oil from the seals in the supercharger but cruising into work wouldnt really effect that.....big mistake, driving home tonight, was about 1/4mile from home the seals let go in a massive way and flooded the engine with oil, que filling the entire road in smoke and people having to stop behind me because they cant see!

Got home and took the plugs out, pulled the inlet off and there was about 300ml of oil in the upper inlet manifold and a big pool of oil in each lower inlet manifold runner.

Took a photo of the outlet of the chargecooler and you can see a big pool of oil in there.


So looks like the car isnt mobile anymore and the turbocharger setup has got to be done asap to be able to us it

I popped out my carbon roof clam out of the mold today, and trimmed it with an angle grinder(not super neat but doesnt matter to me) and drilled my 3 holes into it.


Its massively stiffer than the fibreglass one I took off, so shouldnt be going anywhere at speed.

Weighed an original one and it weights 1kg, this one is about twice as thick and weights 700grams, looks quite smart, doesnt have the smooth side on the side you see as its prepreg carbon, but better the fibreglass one.





To check everything is ok ive now removed the supercharger and ran the engine up to temperature a few times to clear the oil out.


Had to bodge it a little bit by just cutting the flange off the pipe so that I could get the vehicle running


Turns out with the supercharger, all the pulleys, brackets and belts it comes to around 10kg, a lighter crank pulley a change to turbo, pulling out the oil cooler and lines and moving from a 4-2-1 to a turbo manifold should save me about 5kg I would have thought.

Also getting close to road legal now, just need to cut the rear clam out properly to get the air in and out and also sort out the fog/reverse




Once the turbo is on, then its wheels, rear wing and we are nearly there, there is light at the end of the tunnel

turbotoaster

The stripping down ready starts for the turbocharger setup.

First pulling out faithful MSPaint to get my head around manifold design, it wont be an equal length but ive tried to minimise the differering runner lengths.


rear clam off, exhaust out

Might send this to the bodyshop to have the rear sections cut out neatly


This is where the car is kept while the manifold/downpipe is made


Lots of room down there with the janspeed 421 out


Schedule 40 stainless steel, very heavy but should never crack so if i decide to take it properly racing(30mins+) I have the reliability I need


pulled the old oil cooler out, another 2.5kg saving



Its good to pull some weight off the front end to maintain a good balance as at the moment all the weight is coming off the back, though I think the carbon splitter, lighter wheels and lighter suspension components are all thats left that I can do now on the front.


Now im just waiting for my manifold flange to arrive and we can start tacking the manifold together!

CrOwSoN15

Awesome!

Although I'd dare say a S/charger is lighter than a turbo set up, but I can't imagine there's much in it.

Very nice work mate.

DavebST170

This is amazing. Keep the updates coming

turbotoaster

well the supercharger itself weighs 5kg, then all the brackets, oil cooler, lines and everything else weigh 10kg

A turbo weighs about 5kg so they cancel out, then the turbo manifold and downpipe compared to the 4-2-1 I would imagine would be 2kg heavier tops.

So its a 3kg weight saving when I think about it

Ill save 1.5kg by running a lighter crank pulley, which means im 4.5kg lighter than before, ill know for sure how light we are when all the remaining parts are in and we put it on a proper cornerweight scales.

Thanks, hopefully have an update later on this week with a bit of progress

turbotoaster

Little update, been busy with work and holidays so havent done much on it.

But the turbocharger arrived today




T3T4 with internal wastegate, rated at 420bhp, v-band turbine housing, quite a large turbo to comp wheel ratio which will induce a late boost threshold but my supercharger made 10psi at 5200rpm, so anything better than that will be a bonus, ill only be running around 1bar so should be about 300-320bhp if I can keep the inlet temps down.

Manifold 90% done, just need to order some pipe for the downpipe now


And my new wide flat floor with tabs for plastic skirts(ala late 70s f1)and diffuser setup is nearly made, its 120cm wide and about 95cm long so hopefully will have a decent effect and if working correctly with my splitter will help give the front end some much needed downforce.

Ill put some pics up of it when im next over t

AustenW

Nice Car

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Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

Im slowly getting him addicted to carbon

XRT_si

iTrader: (2)

That's looking pretty cool!

CrOwSoN15

Fair point mate, I suppose every gram, let alone kg counts in your position.

JonnyBravo

Cool project, not sure I'd be bothering with a nasty eBay turbo though, not unless you have someone who can check it over for you ?

Twins

iTrader: (18)

Great looking project

Red16

Lovely little project, I'm envious of the carbon stuff, it looks superb!

IanC

Them eBay turbos ain't all that bad mostly garret parts

NEIL A

iTrader: (6)

Nice project , will be following it closely.
I just missed out on a exige converted elise on ebay this week, fancy something like that as a fun road/track toy.

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

copy of garrett parts you mean!! You can even see on the housing where the "garrett" text was ground off the original "plug" used to make the casting.

Thing is i dont get why the chinese make crap turbos. Some of the stuff they copy is actually just as reliable as the originals. If they spent a fraction more time on quality control and a few pence more they could make a decent product to rival the proper stuff!

IanC

The castings are all copy's but the core is garrett I've got a mate who's is an ex garrett engineer he has rebuild a few and told me they are garrett cores

turbotoaster

from what ive been reading they arnt the best quality but there a few things you can do to help against failure.

One of the common problems is they blow oil seals, this is because the ones they use done like alot of pressure, so to get around this issue you need to fit a 1.6mm restrictor in the oil line, this will lower the pressure but still allow enough oil to lubricate the journal bearings.


Ok mini update,

Just got back in from fetching my new race seats.




The stock current seats weigh 9.5kg including the runner.

These only weigh 3.02kg each, now ill need to make some ali frames, but that should be less than 1kg so theres a combined weight saving for 10kg.

Even though its a race car ill need to run both seats for the time attack rules.

Seem to hug my hips well, I wouldnt want to put any more weight on though else they would be uncomfy, would have liked a bit side support on my upper back but thats what the harnesses are for

Also sorted out my new rear wing, took a while to find a supplier who could make my what I wanted who wouldnt charge an arm and a leg, should be with me in a couple of weeks



Having a 250mm cord, 1750mm length and 300mm end plates, so will look similar to this one, only bigger

Lambchop

iTrader: (1)

Nice Project

turbotoaster

making my wing and ordered my ali for the wing uprights, the wing will sit roughly inline with the roof, maybe a couple of cm above


I would have gone wider, but I have a narrow driveway and if it sits to far out from the rear arches I might scrap it on the wall

RONNIE AMIS

iTrader: (17)

Looks a good project mate. Good luck with it all.

turbotoaster

Thanks, its certainly going better than the last build now I have total control over it rather allowing someone else to do it for me.

Hopefully you will still be in club class next year as your my main target as daft as it sounds, what you will gain on me in hope (+230bhp) im hoping to make back on weight(-370kg)

Have you manage to get yours under 1000kg now, im sure I remember reading you were at 1050kg but had some more weight to pull out of it?

Glenn_

iTrader: (1)

Cool project.Will be fun when its all done.

CrOwSoN15

Good god those seats look comfy

Red16

They're deceptively comfortable actually, believe it or not!

turbotoaster

Mini update,

Sat down last night and designed my aluminum subframes.



The good thing is, that they can be reversed to allow people who bond big nut fasterers into the seeat rather than simply drilling and bolting it through.

Ive designed them so the seat is touching the rear bulkhead and the underneath is touching the floor.

This will give me maximum space, keep the centre of gravity as low as possible(I am the heaviest item in the vehicle) and keep my knees away from the steering wheel.

Done some calculations and they should weigh 0.35kg each so overall the seats are a big weight saving.

turbotoaster

Picked up my wing yesterday from MVS Racing in Wales, really nice people and seemed interested with that im building.

Shes a big old girl at 1750mm long




They did make me a set of end plates but after more discussion it was decided that they werent going to be big enough, so are making me some 600mm long ones(500mm below, 100mm above wing)

This should really give the wing a fair chunk of downforce with I can tune with angle.

One of the reasons I went down there instead of having them post it to me is to take my front clam.

They are now going to custom make me 4 custom canards to go on the front end, we marked up where they are going to go and made a few decisions about angles, so I hope they do the job, basically I want a massive chunk of downforce on the front end because its always easier to add downforce to the back than it is the front.

sticks out from the clam at the front by 20mm then runs straight out to 100mm past the arch at which point the splitter endplate connects to it(the splitter sticks out by 100mm at the edges

They should look like these when they are done.




They have 90* angles at each end so that I can use a piece of carbon as an end fence so that all downforce is pushed onto the splitter rather than risking them 'folding over' or pulling out of the thin clam.

turbotoaster

Will be fetching my front clam back next weekend with my new monster canards.

Also finished my new diffuser and undertray.


tried my best to clean up the air around the rear wheels so ive come up with this solution, when the car is jacked up, only where the wishbone meets the upright would it touch, so I cut around for it, as you can see it now gives a better route for the air to hit the diffuser, after this picture was taken we added the vertical skirts so they will sit 40mm off the floor front to rear.

Excuse the rusty wishbones, they will come off for powdercoating and the toelink kit will be added.


Here you can see the size of the diffuser, if you look at the holes in it, the ones to each furthest end bolt to the end of the clam, so anything after that sticks out, it extends about 400mm out the back, with the stakes bent at 7 degrees. Should look pretty mad and help give me a larger lower pressure area, ill be also using tie bars at the end of it to attach to the body to keep it stiff.


Because of the giant wing and diffuser I was concerned a little bit that even with the 100mm splitter, big canards and ground effect skirts I might not be able to balance the front with enough downforce.

One issue the exige has is that the front of the car past the wheels is pretty small, theres not alot of overhang so your limited in how much downforce you can make in that area.

Luckily because I have no restrictions and picking up on what Jamwill said Im remaking my splitter while also saving weight by moving from ply to carbon(saves around 1kg)

Now this piece of carbon ive got it 100mm narrower but im going to make it extend out from the front of the clam by 200mm and also make it square rather than round to maximise surface area, it should be up by about 70%
The only thing im going to have a look at on monday is the wishbone angles on the front on monday with the car jacked up to see if it can run the splitter wider and further back instead of narrowing down where it bolts to the vehicle(hence ill use more of the carbon i have and have a longer narrower section) that should help the vehicle all around as less high pressure from the front wheelwell messing within my downforce, basically try and mirror what ive done with the rear of the vehicle.




Because the very long lengths of my diffuser/splitter i have ordered 2m of M6 threaded bar and a pack of 10 'Long Nuts' these will allow me to run my tie bars as long as I want so even though the parts are very long, they will be very stiff and wont move.

Painted my diffuser and undertray today, look alot better black and should be more stealthy




Also finished my design of the front splitter, did some measuring and realised I can run it another 10cm wider on the inside of the wheels so should hopefully help a little against the bottleneck you make the air pass though from the wide splitter.



You can see the comparison between my old ply on and the new one, I doesnt look it, but theres a massive increase in surface area on the carbon one, yet it is 0.6kg lighter.


Fitted my diffuser and splitter and flat undertray tonight.

Looks pretty extreme but then once the rear clam is on you wont see about 30cm of it

Ended up using some threaded bar and long nuts to extend my tiebars, seems to work a treat and allows me to alter the diffuser angle(ill be attaching tuffs to make sure the air stays attached) ill also add another 7 bolts between the clam and the diffuser to make sure its super stiff



I then fitted my carbon splitter, it does touch the anti roll bar when the car is jacked up so I might need to trim it a little, but apart from that it seems to do the job.


Just need to fetch my front clam so I can work out how wide I can run my tiebars without interfering with the clam(my old splitter was stiff in the middle and wobbly at the sides as the front tiebars were to close together)

All being well ill have my front and rear clams back on by mid next week, add wing, wheels and we are almost there!!

thebronze

Nice work

turbotoaster

Mini update, started work on making the manifold finally.

After alot of thinking and trial and error ive come to the conclusion that making a manifold for an s1 exige is actually very easy, only need a little bit of short straight and eight 90* bends

Its short, simple and will mean the turbo will be centered(the image shows where the actual turbo will sit) and easy to get access to.



The turbo will sit above the head with the downpipe going over the gearbox and then dropping down to the exhaust outlet.

Also popped over to demon tweeks with my mate so he could buy some stuff, while there I bought a couple of tow straps(one front, one rear) hopefully ill never need to use them.



i didnt want to use the stock front towbar because its heavy and it rusts, so ive removed it, I did look at the stainless version, but again its weight I dont want to carry.

Ive worked out how to mount the front using the 3 holes in the top of the crash structure(one off the old towbar) and 2 extra ive added for the splitter tie bar, ill use a piece of spare 5mm ali bar between those 3 holes with the towstrap in the middle one which will help spread the load if it does need towing out...simple and lightweight

The rear I wont know yet until I put the rear clam back on, put im hoping a longeron is in the right position

Just bought my wheels today

16x8 et 20 fronts and 16x9 et15 rears, so fairly extreme.

on the fronts ill be running 20mm hub adapters from 95.25 to 108 and on the rear 25mm adapters from to either 100 or 108 depending on the studs.




so the fronts will stick out 20mm more than exige wheels and the rears will stick out 21mm more than exige wheels, but ill be running alot more camber than a stock exige so my calcs say with will be just about ok.

In an ideal world I would only be running 15mm adapters on the front but they cant be made that small, I have wondered about having the inside face of the wheel machined to take off 5mm but not sure where to take it to for them to do it as even though theres alot of meat on them, some places might be concerned about doing it.

the reason for the width is im running 225s on the front and 265s on the rear, this should balance the car out compared to 245s rear and allow a massive amount of grip

nevsrevs

looking cool,
what angle is your rear defusser?
we went for 10 degrees in the end.
remember once you got the air under the car you want to keep it there and speed it up, so some good funneled skirts would be ace,
I guess your thought of this already.
keep up the good work

Zetecfiesta

Awsome work! Good looking car.

turbotoaster

I have set the bends at 7 degrees as I read that was the generally accepted the maximum angle for a diffuser without any interaction with the spoiler.

The good thing is, if you look at the diffuser, I have used extended tiebars on the edge connected to the chassis, this allows me to adjust the angle to whatever I choose with a turn of the bar, so we will try a few different angles with knitting yarn to see at what angle the air detaches from the diffuser.

If also I decide to shorten the diffuser then ill be able to run it at a steeper angle as the spoiler will be able to drive that angle

We have already sorted keeping the air under the car, along the length of the body there are rivnuts put into the chassis, we will use ali angle bolted into the rivnuts and then thick rubber sheet bolted the angle, this will be similar to the 70s f1 cars, they will rub on the floor to find there 'natural' ride height

Ive encorporated this from the front wheels back with no gaps at all to stop the air getting in, also the rear wheel wells are generally high pressure zones so ive removed the inner arches so the air can vent up and out of the clam rather than risking it pushing itself into the underfloor.

I just havent bought the rubber yet, but i think they sell it at b&q and according to wind tunnel data on an exige it should give me about 4% more downforce.

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

When are you fitting the upside down hovercraft lift fans to suck it onto the road??

turbotoaster

if it will help suck your stinky farts out of the car then im all for it.


Another update on the front end.

Went down to collect my front clam today after having a set of canards made for it,

Got home tonight started to fitted them.



You can see they are fairly wide, its easy to add rear downforce, the front is where the hard work goes in.

I then put the clam back on the car to see how it looks




this only shows 3 as one was slightly wrong so will be getting it remade when I get chance.

Ive got a low downforce set as per the pictures and a high downforce set which is more at a steep angle, ill be trying the low downforce set first to see how the aero balance is, then keep turning the rear wing up till I get understeer then put on the high downforce to see if it balances out and if it does truely add more downforce

Next up was to fit some tiebars to stiffen it up, now on the previous splitter I made the mistake of fitting the front tiebars to close together and ended up with the corners a bit to flexable, this time ive ran them out fairly wide to try and stop that, also because it sticks out more at the front i need to reduce flex.




Next thing for me to do is hook up 2 more tiebars to the outside rear sections just infront of the wheels to stop and droop there, I also have one tie bar after that which I might but in the middle depending on how it reacts at 100mph.

i also have some large end plates to fit to the ends of the canards which will then be bolted to the splitter aswell so that all the downforce is spread throughout the front end rather than risk having a component flex

Also refitted my rear clam with all the rear section cut out, it saves weight, reduces drag as it gives the inlets somewhere to go and also helps vent all the hot air from the engine.


The next job is to fit the rear wing and the place at made the wing is also going to make me a set of kevlar doors with polycarb windows which should save about 26kg total.

Twellsie

iTrader: (1)

i hope the front end bracketry etc will cope with the extra strain

Mk4 Rick

Hi mate loving the build.Are these ebay turbos really that good?they seem cheap to buy lol.I also seen an ad for a turbo repair on ebay for some thing like Ł250 or there abouts im sure it used to be more expensive some yrs back.Do you think in your opinion that these people that are offering a repair service are competing against the companys that are selling these cheap turbos?Any way I think your work on your car is top notch and ive enjoyed reading your thread.

It's Czech Mate

Interesting build. Subscribed.

Like the attention to weight

turbotoaster

Ive got one more tierod to fit which will go directly in the centre of the splitter, this will mean I have 5 tierods connected to the splitter and the canards are connected to the splitter with endfences

Well im not really sure how long it will last but ive bought it to last me short term so I can get the engine up and running so I can at least get it mobile, if it lasts a while then great news, if not ill put some money aside for a garrett.


Fitted the larger of my rear wings today, took a fair bit of thinking and calculating so that i can choose the right levels of AOA to make sure it works properly, but all works now and can move from 5-18 degrees.



Just waiting on my large end plates for the wing then I can add a upper element to finish it off.

I can put my full weight on 1 of the pylons(108kg) and no movement which is a good sign.

I know there has been a worry about it flexing from side to side, so the next job will be to cross brace them together, im thinking tiebars but not 100% yet.


Also ive taken doors off to have them moulded in kevlar should have them about the 12th of october,



worked out that using kevlar doors with polycarb windows and small mirrors it should save around 13kg for door, so 26kg saving total which should cover for all the extra weight ive added with aero and turbocharging.

ajamesc

Is that front ready for the snow to earn money clearing drive ways lol.