turbotoaster

Also in regards of my aero package, i contacted Simon Mcbeath to get his point of view on the car.

This was his response, the red font are his words

Hi Simon,

Im sure you get alot of messages everyday asking all sorts of questions so ill try and keep it relatively short, if you could add any thoughts to my aero package I would be most grateful.

I started reading info from yourself from Track Driver Magazine, then ive bought and read your book and started subscribing to Racecar Engineering, though I did start building the car before I bought your book so there might be a few bits that may not have followed the book.

Its a Series 1 Lotus Exige that I will be running in UK Time Attack Series next year.

Since I cannot afford a 500bhp audi/honda engine or the maintenance that will go with it, I decided to make up the laptime with higher apex speed and lateral G, so im running a 300bhp rover k series engine with a 700kg weight without driver, for reference im up against 600bhp/1000-1100kg cars.

The bit im stuck on is the rear diffuser and wing placement, now Time Attack is one of those rare motorsports where there are no aerodynamic limitations(like Pikes Peak), if you can dream it you can make it. I’m very familiar with TA, we have quite a few clients worldwide.

Your book mentions to run as steep an angle as you can get away with while keeping the air attached to maximise the flat floor area within the dimension restrictions.....but what happens if you dont have the dimension restrictions, if we forget rear wing interaction is it better to run it longer and shallower to allow for the gradual air pressure dispertion.

Im running a fully flat underfloor the width of the rear tyres, with end plates and skirts the full length so most air that gets under the splitter should make it to the rear of the car.

My diffuser is actually about 1 metre long and full adjustable from 3* up to 10* will the length give me any advantage?

Am I best just keeping it at the usual limit of 7* or will I gain an aerodynamic advantage by running it at a steeper angle, just film from behind to check tuffs are still pointing up to check attachment?My personal view is that a diffuser can be steeper than this on your type of car but it should only extend a short distance out at the rear. The reason for this is that you also get low pressure acting on the roof a diffuser that juts into the wake area, which will create some positive lift. There’s no arguing that bigger diffuser volume drives the underfloor harder to get more downforce there, but there must be a trade off and I don’t advise going as far back as you have gone.

Also since the lotus chassis doesnt have much front overhang it makes it more difficult to create decent levels of front downforce so what I have done for the splitter is have it extend from the front of the car buy 200mm, but rather than following the shape of the front clam(curved) maintaining 200mm, I have made the front square to maximise surface area, added 60mm end plates and large canards with endplates(the plates arnt shown) I didnt go any higher on the end plates on the splitter for fear of it negatively interacting with the canards. The front end kit looks aggressive, as it needs to be to balance a dual element rear wing, but I can’t see any major flaws from the photos.

I am going to cut out a big rectangle on top of the front arch to let any high pressure out and try and I have some space carbon angle to glue infront of it to allow the high pressure air to escape which should help against lift, I was going to try and make multple louvres along the length of the hole but I notice the LMP1 cars just have an open rectangle, this might be regs but wasnt sure.Louvre the cutouts so air can’t get in from the front.

Would you agree that im going along the right path(front wise)?yes


And the final thing Im wondering about is, your book pretty much says to put the wing as high and as far back as possible to get cleaner air to maximise downforce or the need to run less wing to reduce drag while still maintaining the same level of downforce, when you put the rear wing further back from the rear axle it creates a leverage that also lifts the front end up.

Now if I cannot create enough frontal downforce to be able to make proper use of the wing, would moving the rear wing further forward towards the rear axle allow more downforce to be applied to the rear wheels without adding excessive front end lift, Ive made the uprights a very simple design so i can easily slide the wing forwards and rearwards to find the best solution, once its finalised ill make some better ones without the 90* angle.It’s all a trade off – yes, further forwards means less unloading at the front, and also less Df at the rear tyres for the same wing setting. But this is also about getting the wing off or high enough above the rear deck so it doesn’t suck upwards on that.By eyeballing your photos I suspect you will have too much rear wing to be able to get a balance as things stand.

ie say I get 100kg of front downforce at 100mph and 200kg of rear, but the rear wing lifts the front up by 50kg, then moving the rear wing forward 15cm and turning the wing up a little to maintain the 200kg of downforce and only have 20kg of front lift........or does it not work that way?


Sorry for all the questions and thanks in advance for taking the time to read this, any information you can provide and thoughts on my project would be most grateful as i can imagine your a busy man but I didnt know who else to turn to as to save wasting any of your time.


From what I can read into that is that I should shorten my diffuser and bring my wing further forward to stop the leaverage effect which was discussed in this thread in detail ,

But from what he says I think that the larger diffuser will drive the underbody harder, hence create more downforce at the throat so providing more front downforce at the expense of the rear because my throat is fairly forward with the rake im running, now that actually might be a good thing as my rear wing will give me more downforce than I will ever need and its the front that needs the work, so trying the longer diffuser and more wing instead would give more front downforce compared to shortening it and running less wing angle.

Moving the wing forward 15cm seems the best thing to do to stop leverage effect, though its important to make sure the full underside of the wing is either high enough to stop it pulling on the clam or back far enough to stop the same effect, at 15cm im a of centremetre from overlap.

Made a start on helping reduce high pressure area in the front clam, there are 3 things to do, the first is to remove the lower sill extensions as they are working like little parachutes not letting the air out and generally catching bricks.


You can see them as the little black panels on the bottom right hand side
So off they came but that meant I had nothing to hold the rear of the clam from flapping, so I made some carbon extension plates to bolt everything together.



Also we finished up the turbo setup today, bolted it all onto the jig to check over everything before its all bolted to the car tomorrow night.

Im pretty happy with it all, seems to do everything we want, only extra thing we need to make is a turbo brace which will bolt from the inlet manifold to the turbo to help take pressure off the head. We will bolt a couple of rose joints from the upper inlet with bars connecting to the side of the turbo.

We have looked at a lower manifold mount as below but havent made the final decision on this as it potentially can cause issues by the metal pipe expanding putting vertical pressure on the manifold rather than taking the weight of the manifold off the head

WTF?!

I'm quite surprised you're using an old-skool T3/4 turbo and a Chinese one at that when the rest of the spec is all so trick.

TBH I think it will work fine, and I like what you've done engine wise, but quite surprised thats all.

turbotoaster

Its all about budgets, the plan is to run one of these for a while then move to a gt2871 once I have worked all the bugs out plus money is a bit tight this time of year

Bit of a mini update really.

We have had to make a few amendments on the oil drain to clear the alternator as it was a bit tight, so once thats done we can start the engine, getting a little bit excited now, be interesting to hear what it will sound like, then I can get it out of my garage and over to dan websters to sort the gearbox and suspension out.

Heres how it looks at the moment



Now a famous person once said power is nothing without control so I knew I needed to get a wideband in there, now in the past ive always ran innovate gear but alot of people have been recommending AEM as a much better unit so since they are the same price I decided to give it a go.



Spent some time making a carbon plate so house my battery cut off, wideband gauge and also left room for a oil temp/pressure dual gauge ill stick in it next year. So im hoping tomorrow if we havent got galeforce winds again im going to run the wires from the lambda boss to the gauge.


Fingers crossed the next post will be the usual engine running youtube video and if its not raining/dark me getting it out onto the street.

turbotoaster

Another little update.

We had to modify the oil drain to clear the alternator as it was touching, so finished that tonight and got some heat wrap, put it around the drain just to help against the heat as it comes past the manifold


Also got some heat wrap to do my fuel lines and anything else close to the exhaust system and if theres any left ill put some on my bulkhead around the turbo area


Also my dash panels we looking a bit of a mess with bits where the paint had chipped away, its been like that since I had the vehicle and has been bugging me like mad, so I took the panels in and using boiling water peeled all it all away back to bare ali, took quite a while to do.


Then wrapped them in 3M carbon fibre wrap, the idea pinched from another member on here

At the end of next season ill probably strip down the enter dash and make real carbon pieces for everything to save weight and make the dash look more uniform as at the moment I have 3 different types of carbon weave on my dash.


And fitted them back on


Also plumbed everything back in engine wise, just need to put a new oil filter on and fill with oil and ill be starting it up tomorrow, very excited!

Rab

This thread makes me want an Elise/Exige. And some talent. And ingenuity, I'd need that too.

Love what you're doing.

turbotoaster

Well I do love them, you cant get much of a lighter car unless you go cateram/westfield stuff.

Well she lives!!!

Working on it all day to get it started, fitting the oil drain and alternator on was more fun than I expected and had massive panic attacks when it seemed like the oil feed wasnt pumping oil.

Short video of it running, its quieter than when it was supercharged and driving it up the road you can hear the turbo spooling behind you.


Next I just need to get it over to a friend to refurb all the suspension, fit the lighten flywheel and ATB diff

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

You mean youll get me to mould you real ones in carbon

tgazvtr

What a project! Looks mental with all the aero hope it all works as it should as it looks like a lot of thought has gone into it. Look forward to seeing it at a few time attack rounds next year.

turbotoaster

Well erm......yes

Well plumbed in the boost pipes and to have a look at expected spool times.

In 3rd gear we are seeing 8psi at 3800rpm with a big boost leak and only 70% throttle(need to make a new throttle cable bracket as it doesnt allow full throttle operation) so hopefully with the amendments tomorrow we should get that down to 3500rpm, cant go any further until we put the bigger injectors in.

We will tune it at 15psi and see where we are power wise

Minirotty

Not before you finish mine

turbotoaster

Little update.

My sump baffle arrived in the post, looks fairly easy to fit, hopefully it should help keep the oil pickup ok under lateral G, havent really got the money for a dry sump and Ive heard a few issues with the accusump setup


Does anyone have experience with these in a race situation or on slicks?

Next I decided to go an weigh it, to see where we are as ive taken alot off but put alot on so.....so with no fuel it weigns 710kg which when you think im running a turbocharged/chargecooled engine, alot of aero and much bigger wheels isnt that bad I suppose, I would have liked it to be under 700kg, but ive still got an EP flywheel and a ali fuel tank so that should get me down to 700kg flat, Ive aimed for 680kg so need to have a good think about where else I can remove 20kg, the next thing will be carbon roof then maybe see what weight I can save on the brakes.

Also fitted a turbo jacket that came today to try and reduce some engine temps, only this is, I forgot about the internal wastegate until I came to fit it, so I had to make a little hole for it to pop through, dont know if this will effect anything as heat might be able to get inside the jacket through the hole, soon find out.



Also took the car for a run, used to get a very hot fuel tank from the exhaust manifold heat when it was supercharged to the point where I could actually cook food when driving, I was hoping that running the turbo up top would stop that happening and im happy to say it has, i put my hand on it and its cool to the touch

Just need to wrap the manifold and put some heat shielding on the bulkhead next time I pull it all off.

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

Plenty of places you can save weight.

roof
most your splitter tie bars have carbon tube for most of the length
dash - top and fascia
rear bulkhead in kevlar when you fit tank
holesaw bits of crash structure
inspect every metal bracket and see if it can be remade lighter or in carbon
trim bodywork where possible
lightweight fuel filler pipe and cap
holesaw bottom of doors
shorten wing mounts - remake more efficiently with cut outs.

And thats before you get to the expensive alloy hubs etc.

turbotoaster

ok warren, i give in, I will take the tie bars off and make them in carbon tube.....happy now

Dash is maybe something for the future, there is loads of bits we could remake, I think the roof needs doing before them as thats very heavy.....the car will end up having a higher percentage of carbon than your puma at this rate!

The rear bulkhead in kevlar, are you thinking we put the entire bulkhead out and then bond on a big flat sheet of kevlar, I suppose if I cut the bulkhead out leaving an inch all the way around it would give you something decent to bond to.

Dont want to holesaw the crash structure to be honest as its there for a reason, it might save me writing off the chassis if I bump it(once the ali is bent thats it, new tub time)

My fuel cap is about as light as I want it, I would just replace the filler pipe with silicone but it joins halfway up so it would need to be remade and the top section has a threaded part anyway.

Wing mounts I agree, they are coming off either tonight or tomorrow night as im taking my car to dan on saturday morning, once they are off ill do some calcs to see how light I can make them while still retaining the required strength.

It still will probably go to Oli so he can go over it and pull more weight out as going over it with ali bolts etc will probably help.

There isnt much in terms of brackets we can change to carbon, I can think off the coil packs one as thats just a flat piece of 1mm carbon instead of steel and the brace between the lower inlet manifold and the block, thats steel crush tube, which could be replaced with ali of the same diameter.

I would love to rip all the handbrake out of it and put front calipers on the back, that would save 6kg easy but then stuck MOT time.

turbotoaster

My aluminium header tank came today, just need to get a cap for it before I fit it, should help me get the water away from the red hot downpipe


also been having problems with my boost trace since i checked it out on the data logging, spoke to emerald today and they suggest running a filter in between might help calm it down as at the moment its just a wiggly line so i dont know how much boost im running.

Ive put some jubilee clips on after the picture was taken, will hopefully work so will see over the weekend

JFB Tech

The MAP sensor should be mounted with the stub pipe facing downwards, this stops any stray fuel and/or breather oil from getting into it. Any contamination is likely to screw up the sensor. The Motorola MAP sensors don't like getting wet either so make sure it is mounted where it will stay dry. Also make sure it has it's own dedicated vacuum line direct from the plenum, don't tee it off any other line. These things could all help.

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

While his car has been away having some work done, a new set of bucket seats have been found:

Mk4 Rick

What sort of power do you have planned for the chinease turbo?Do you they look ok?Would you let me know how it runs with the turbo when its done please

turbotoaster

With my car its all about trying to keep the wiring all together, at the moment its a bit of a mess and I would love to have a new loom made from scratch but its not a cheap affair.

It is run directly from the plenum with nothing tee'd off it etc, the fuel filter made a massive difference, datalogger is now nice and smooth so it was the pulses in the plenum messing it all up.

You bugger, dont go telling everyone about my secret race seats, everyone will want them, though you having to get me out of them when I got stuck like a tortoise was rather run, the look on peoples faces! They were actually very comfy

the final power output is aimed at 350bhp, which the turbo will be running at about 1.2bar/18psi

Ive been running it around only a little and only taken it up to 7psi at 4000rpm as I maxed my injectors at that point.

For the money they work perfectly well, its all about choosing the correct size to suit your application, the one I chose was a little to big so im going to drop to a smaller one which still should achieve the power I want.

The work has started on the suspension refurbish, these pictures are from dan, up to yet hes been great to work with and recommend him, he is gracious even when I am adding to his work pile and coming up with more crazy ideas

once these are done we will move onto fitting the quaife diff and EP lightened flywheel.

Ive also worked out what we are doing with the clutch, speaking to Helix, there paddle rover 220 clutch will fit on my flywheel and hold up to 400ftlb! strangely its the same one that adrian newey ran on his turbod elise.

Pulled the wishbones out.....very crusty!


Hit them with the shot blaster


First coat of POR15


Also the ARB is getting done, all the suspension brackets and I assume the wishbone mounting points that go in the engine bay(ive forgot there name) also the roll bar braces are getting rubbed down POR15 and painted......least then ill have nothing left to go rusty again

Next we are going to fit spherical bearings to the lower wishbones so I can adjust my own roll centre to suit the car

Then its a case of plumb in my bigger injectors and my chargecooler and get it on the dyno to see where we are at

rear clam off so the rollbar arms can be properly sorted out, when I first got it I just rubbed them down and spray painted them but to be fair it wasnt a great job, so they are being looked after properly with POR15 and paint, so it wont come back in the future to haunt me.


Also gearbox is now out, very mucky it is to


im looking forward to seeing it all clean and shiny, its just a shame the weather is so bad here, im always looking at MotoIQ articles and they are replacing parts on cars that are 10yrs old and the undersides look like new

Im also hoping as it all goes back together that the gear shift is much improved as it was shockingly bad before

super clean gearbox casing and that all my gears have been given a clean bill of health so thats great news.

Need to put new diff bearings in replace one of the gearbox seals as there was alot of muck coming out of one that got pinched last time.



Having my roll centre bearing holders made next week so im looking forward to seeing how that works out, should in theory give me more camber gain under bump so might mean I need to run less static camber depending on what the pirometer says

My front clam vents arrived today after waiting a month from singapore as that was the only place I could find a set of vents I was confident would properly vent the arches by allowing a low pressure zone at the exit(all others I looked at didnt seem the best aerodynamically or cost a daft amount of money.


Also my new injectors turned up, 470cc should cover for up to 330bhp at 3bar of pressure and they flow well up to 4.5bar to get me up to 390bhp should I ever take the engine that far which is very doubtful seeing how much trouble the guy from NZ had to get his hold together at that level



All of the bolts, brackets and random bits get shot blasted and electro plated...


Then the box goes back together, clearances checked, new steel cage diff bearings installed and diff installed and checked for preload...

Then the lid goes on and the box looks better than new...


Gearbox mount also blasted and plated...

wide ka

are they vxr injectors?

turbotoaster

Yes they are, managed to grab the last set before they went on back order with vauxhall, for brand new injectors I think they are decent value for money

wide ka

how do you calculate what power there good for at what fuel pressure?

im running them in my car but told they were near the limit at 340bhp, i run 3 bar static fuel pressure 1-1 rising rate reg

turbotoaster

if you go online there are simple calculators to work it out for you, just type in injector sizing calculator into google and it will work it out for you. if you up the fuel pressure to 4.5bar you will get 575cc from the injectors, thats the max pressure you can run and still maintain the correct spray patten

turbotoaster

pulled the conrods out of there packet, seem to be everything they should be, checked the length and confirmed they were the new style ones, just need to sort out the ductile liners and pistons at the end of the month


nice rod bolts

turbotoaster

little update,

Got a full new set of ball joints and the EP rear caliper adapter to mount a pair of brand new AP 2 pots on the rear, going to order a set of 4 304mm discs with brake bias and larger master cylinder at the end of the month.......that should be all my braking sorted for the long term as the car is never going to be an endurance racer.

On a positive note changing all my brakes will save me about 8kg which is a nice saving as half of it is rotational

Im waiting on pro alloy to get back to me on what fuel pump will drop in there 48l tank, i think they said it was a walbro, but they are confirming it first.

Ordered some new faulkner springs, now the final weight of the car is targeted at 680kg, most of the weight has come from either in the middle of the car or in the rear and if anything ive added more weight to my front end than a factory elise so its sent my weight distribution further forward.

Im taking a guess at this, but with my front aero and bigger wheels/tyres I think my front end weighs about 300kg, where as my back will be about 380kg, this gives me a static weight distribution of 44/56 so in theory i would go for a similar distribution in the spring rates, but because the rear doesnt have an anti roll bar ive upped it a little to 41/59 which is 800lb/1150lb if i find im still getting rear roll i can always add a bit more up to 1250lb

Also got a couple of pictures from dan today......well i wanted them bright so I could easily check for damage/bent bits on track, look very funky




I think im going to paint my brake calipers the same colour, just need to takata green harnesses to finish the look

ball joints, rear caliper radial adapters and brand new 2 pots




wishbones all done, ball joints and Eliseshop spherical bearings fitted, getting there (y)



Upright bolts blasted and zinc'd


The problem with running my car so low is that you have roll centre problems, ie its to far away from the centre of gravity meaning you have much more leverage effect for roll, by reducing that you need to run less spring or anti roll bar.

Now the simplest solution is to buy Eliseparts GT race uprights, but they cost around Ł2000 plus needing alot of other stuff to go with it meaning you will end up spending about Ł4000 to achieve them.

If it was a pure race car with an unlimited budget but that not being the case I sat and thought about another solution.

After working it all out I put it into my geometry software to compare bump, droop and roll and its all looking good

running a 90mm rear ride height, this is what my standard geometry looks like when stationary without any modifications, as you can see the roll centre is pretty close to the ground.



And with the simple modifications you can see the big improvements, if you look at the info at the bottom you all should be able to work out what ive done.



Also got my new fuel tank yesterday.



Its a half width tank with foam core to help with surge. holds 19 litres plus the connecting pipes which is another 2 litres, it weighs 3.9kg with the connecting pipes, so a nice 6.6kg weight saving plus the fuel weight saved and less sloshing of fuel from side to side in the corners cant hurt in fast corner transitions



ive done some maths to see how much fuel i need to carry and come up with this calculation.

at 300bhp you need a peak flow of around 2000cc per minute, now you would assume that if you were accelerating constantly for that minute(repeating 40-140mph) you would average about 1800cc, if you are full throttle for 70% of the lap that means your using 1260cc per minute and an average lap in the uk should take 90secs, so 1890cc per lap, i should be able to run the tank as low as 4litres, giving me 17litres of fuel, or 9 laps of fuel, since time attack sessions are 10mins long that seems about right. if anyone can see something wrong with them calcs please let me know

Its a tank I can run for a while until i save up for a pro alloy tank as ive got to spend quite a bit of money on other things so this will cover me for a while

Also got my brake discs arriving tomorrow, 308mm front and rear, using a bias valve and maybe a compound change to control the front/rear bias

And ive ordered 2.25" race springs now.

Faulkner 900lbs 6" fronts and 1150lbs 6"






Thanks guys, its getting there slowly

One thing that is letting the car down is brakes.....but no more!!

My new discs arrived today from Kev aka SEN Lotus, just like many other people who have used him on the lotus forums, I cant praise the guy enough, such a nice straight talking bloke who helped me out massively and saved me alot of money aswell.

If you need anything making, whether your looking for an audi conversion, or like me your after one off bits, lotus or not hes the man to go to, call him on 07415 101868

So as usual pictures are taken in my kitchen next to my high quality Ł5 tesco toaster.

Here are the aluminum bells, lovely engraving telling you who they are from and what car they are going on, they are a 190.5mm PCD and weigh 777g each

One thing I like about them is all the edges have a radius on them so no sharp edges or potential stress points, more work involved but shows thought has gone into them.

Front face


Back face




Ok next onto the discs, now its traditional for the lotus community to buy AP discs, either because its what has been done or because thats what the 2 main sellers offer, these are different, Its always concerning going into the unknown but after kev doing some testing on track with them and I know another race car driver using these discs I was happy to give them a go.



These are a 308 x 25mm disc which I will be running front and rear.

Now I do love comparing so I went over the discs and took all the relevant measurements, ive then compared them to the closest AP disc that I could find.



The inner thickness of the disc is 8.3mm
The outer thickness of the disc is 7.6mm
Leaving an air gap of 9.1mm

Recommended minimum overall thickness when they are due to be changed is 22mm

They have a pad swept area of 49mm which is near enough perfect for the factory 2pots

the weight for each disc is 5kg

So as a comparison the closest disc I could find is cp4348-528 which is a 304mm disc,

that has a outer thickness of 6.6mm
An air gap of 9mm
PCD of 177.8mm
weight of each disc is 5.36kg

The weight makes sense due to the difference in PCD, and in theory if there were of comparable quality steel(which since they are massive brake casting manufacturer they should be) then you have a bit more thickness on the SEN discs which hopefully would give a good wear and heat absorption rate.

here is a picture bolted together




Just waiting on my springs and also bought a nytralon bushes to help with gear changes.

turbotoaster

New springs arrived, 900lb/in fronts and 1150lb/in rears, or if your a jap fan 16.1kg/mm and 20.6kg/mm......definitely not for street use!!


Also shot blasted the uprights, usual corrosion.....maybe something ill look at the future for paint

turbotoaster

So we are finally into assembly mode!!

Dan sent me this picture over yesterday showing the front end is starting to go together.

Should be rusty free for a good while now!




Also my roll centre adjusters are being made this week, thats one final thing that is ticked off the list, least now I will be able to run the car fairly low to get the ground effects working, chatting to one of the guys who races in the lotus cup they gained on average a 1sec lap by dropping from 90mm height to 60mm so thats a good bit of info.

I will be trying 70/90, which if you take out the increase tyre diameter and roll adjusters would be 95/112 so it should be ok from a roll centre point of view.

Once its all assembled, ive done a couple of trackdays ill look at how the driveshafts are doing, as then I want to lower my engine/gearbox another 25mm to get the centre of gravity closer to the roll centre to reduce pivot leverage.

Also got my 2 pieces of 2m carbon fibre to make up my sill extensions, they will be as wide as I can make them to maximise surface area but not that wide that I cant get out of the vehicle without stepping on them,

IainRS1700T

A compelling read as ever, & good technical info too.
Keep up the good work
Iain

turbotoaster

Also my roll centre adjusters are being made this week, thats one final thing that is ticked off the list, least now I will be able to run the car fairly low to get the ground effects working, chatting to one of the guys who races in the lotus cup they gained on average a 1sec lap by dropping from 90mm height to 60mm so thats a good bit of info.

I will be trying 70/90, which if you take out the increase tyre diameter and roll adjusters would be 95/112 so it should be ok from a roll centre point of view.

Once its all assembled, ive done a couple of trackdays ill look at how the driveshafts are doing, as then I want to lower my engine/gearbox another 25mm to get the centre of gravity closer to the roll centre to reduce pivot leverage.

Also got my 2 pieces of 2m carbon fibre to make up my sill extensions, they will be as wide as I can make them to maximise surface area but not that wide that I cant get out of the vehicle without stepping on them, the attachment points will be a combination of the foot and jamies as you both that come up with similar solutions to what I was thinking.

Just need to get it back, then on the dyno for a low boost map and ill be on track :cool

rear suspension fitted



One thing we come across when trying to take the brembo caliper brackets off was that you cannot get the bolts out with them hitting the hub, so basically everytime you want to change the bracket you have to push out the hub which wrecks the wheelbearing, which i dont really want to replacing every single year. So what im going to do if cut a circle out of the hub to allow for the bolts to be removed, I will of course cut out another the opposite side so that its balanced, thats a job for when I get home and bolt it in the pedestal drill

thats the rear done, the brake calipers havent been refurbished as they are only staying on for the MOT then moving over to 2 pots which I will refurbish to match the 2 brand new ones I have.



Will also need to get the ali double shear brackets from phoenix and also the brackets for the subframe before any spirited driving.

Gearbox is in, and also EP flywheel so thats another 3.5kg saved, needed to replace the clutch bearing as it was a bit mullered.

look at all the wiring and pipes everywhere, I really need to see if there is a way of simplifying all of it



tested the disc for fitment, couple of tweaks and they will be good to go!


pulled the pilbeam ARB and drop links off to refurb, the drop links have really seen better days so they will be replaced


After this its the rollbar stays and final fitment of the chargecooler and then ill be back to aero tweaking

ok, im thinking to save any more corrosion to my ali uprights I might get them anodised at the same time, basically take a pile of stuff to save some money, also take my new wing uprights when i make them properly.

Little update, its finally back on the ground, will run it on elise wheels while im sorting the rest of the bits out as I will need to buy some posh rubber for my bigger wheels.



Again short term we have cleaned the arb drop links up, ill buy some new bits and make a new set but these should get me about, you can see a before and after, I swear the car lived in a swamp before I got it.



The chargecooler placement is coming along well, about as short a piping as it could realistically be to help with response, still high up which isnt great for centre of gravity but the plan is to drop the engine/gearbox 25mm for lower centre of gravity which should offset that.



Also the vain part of me is going to paint the upper inlet manifold green to match

turbotoaster

Brace made to hold the chargecooler in place



Pretty short pipe work should help with throttle response

turbotoaster

Passed its MOT at the weekend so its now legal on the road so no massive panic when I take it for mapping.

In the mean time Im now completely skint, but I have loads of parts so decided to make a start on those.

First up was the lightweight ali fuel tank, changing that on my own on the driveway after work was a bit of fun! It was nearly midnight when I finished.

I have never seen so much dirt in my life on the shear panel, it was literally 10mm thick of sludge, must have been a kilo of the stuff, so that took alot of WD40 and 4 rags to clean up.

Next was getting the old tank out, my hands were to big to get the fuel connectors off from the interior side so I had to drop the tank and slide my hands in from below to get them off, alot of fun when it had 15litres of fuel in it aswell.

Finally out, took me 2hrs to get to this point including cleaning the panel



Next i pulled the fuel pump out to put in the new tank



The big concern I have is that I had an invoice for a 'motorsport' pump before I bought it and since im going to be aiming for 350bhp eventually I didnt want a pump that wasnt good enough, so I was expecting to have to buy a walbro 255LPH pump.......well the good news is thats exactly whats in there so thats one thing off my list

Dropped it back in my new tank and then bolted it all up, replaced all the bolts as I went with new stainless ones to hopefully make sure I dont have any crusty bolts in the future aswell.



Next thing to move onto is the brakes and side sills, but im going to try and get it weighed over the weekend first to see how light the car is.

turbotoaster

Decided to make a start on my side sills,

Cutting the shape out, the skinny section is on the inside of the front wheel.



made the passenger side first, carbon panel with aluminum angle underneath to help keep the high pressure air from getting underneath, once Ive got the car to the correct race height I will bolt on rubber skirts to the ali to maximise the low pressure zone.



Added a couple tie bars for strength and there isnt any flex anymore so should be fine at speed.

Only thing I need to do is take it all back off, the ali angle to paint black, I will use black resin to seal all the edges then glue on some knock on edging.




Im also going to attach some ali angle along to the back face on top to create a higher pressure above.

Put my wider wheels back on now I have some legal 255s on the back compared to the 235s I used to testing things out.


Finished off building the other side so just need to bolt that on when it stops raining

Sat at maximum ride height this is the first time I have seen the lower wishbones actually pointing the way you would imagine it should be, must be interesting to know how many people run there cars with the roll centre buried underground!


Also took the ali angle off to paint them black, including a little gurney flap that will hopefully do a few jobs, help keep the low pressure area after the skirt to allow it to extract better, create a high pressure area ontop of the skirt and maybe push some of the air away from getting into the rear wheel well.


Here you can see how tiny my garage is, means not alot gets done when the weathers bad


Since it was raining really bad today I decided to refit my wing as it was the only thing I could do without getting wet


Little bit of an update, fitted my 308mm front discs today, added the spacers, overall really nice and quick to do just needed to file away about 1.5mm of material from the upper inside edge of the caliper because of the larger radius



Got a brand new set of calipers to fit on the front and the old ones will be going on the back, but I will do that when i fit the rear discs as then it saves having to bleed the lines twice.

Shows the difference between the discs




Looking at it, it tooks like 330mm discs maybe possible but there wouldnt really be much point with 2 pots

Also took this picture as I thought it looks likes hes smiling


I should fit both my skirts tomorrow and maybe the splitter if i have time

Bit more work today on the car as the weather was pretty decent, even if it did rain, hail and have sunshine.

Fitted the front splitter


Then fitted the rear diffuser


You can see how wide the rear tyres are and it seems I was correct running et-10 which is the widest you can go on a stock exige body

Installed the undertray aswell, you can see how much different is than the factory one and how much of the underneath ive tried to close of, the only area I couldnt was the suspension mount on the lower wishbone as when jacked up it would bend the undertray



Took it for a run up the road to a friends and took a couple of pics outside his house, looks funky



Just need to fit my skirts and canards im 90% done on aero.

Fitted my completed side skirt today, when the car is at track height it should hopefully make a difference as the bottom of the end fence will be 44mm from the floor




Also a few people have mentioned to me that they think the front splitter wont make it to 50mph never mind 150mph so i decided to stand on the edge to see what happened, bear in mind im 110kg and all the weight is being distributed through 2 feet compared to the downforce which will be more distributed across the surface of it, i would have done this before but never had my mate to take the pics with me at the time

Sorry the quality isnt good, he text them over to me just

Hands out to show im not holding onto anything


The car is still on ramps one side as i was doing the skirt so thats why it looks one side of the splitter is higher than the other


Just to show theres nothing underneath, you can see one of my 3 skid plates I made so they will rub getting out of my drive, under braking on track rather than risking damaging the splitter


Also weighed it before I added the aero back on

[img]

Thats with another 16kg to take off that figure
-2kg for front rota wheels that i need to swap the tyres over
-1kg for the water bottle full of water
-5kg swap to carbon roof
-4kg worth of fuel in the tank
-4kg for swapping to ap 2 pots on the rear

So 654kg for a fully turbocharged and chargecooled s1 is not bad going[/img]

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

I did suggest me standing on it as true test but he didnt want me to snap his car in half

scottmasterton

Such a cool build what's next?, we really want to build a lotus similar to this its just the initial cost of the lotus thats taking time, plan is to either use a k20 or a duratec V6 if we can get it to fit

turbotoaster

The next bit is mapping and to put my bigger brakes on the back,

Also im just starting to make a shifter pedistal to raise the entire shifting mechanism up 7inches, this will mean the gear knob is inline with the centre of the wheel, means I will have less distance to travel to change gear keeping my hands more on the wheel which if im pulling a fair bit of lateral g will be useful.


after that I can get it on track and enjoy it a bit while making tweaks as I go along

turbotoaster

Had a bit of time today so decided to make a shift spacer to get the gearknob closer to the steering wheel

Started with a length of carbon tube


And some spare 5mm aluminum


Mark out the 3 holes that hold the shifter into the floor


Drill, attack with angle grinder and bolt together


You can see how much closer it is here, currently 100mm higher, I will eventually raise that to 175mm when I remove the handbrake as it will also get the gearknob completely clear of my knees


Fitted my vxr 470cc injectors tonight, great as they were identical fitment as the stock ones, so swapping them over was pretty easy.

The spacing is about 10mm out from number 1 to number 4 which is a shame as its a nice rail.



I might be able to swap also the fuel pressure regulator from the metal vxr rail into the factory rail as they look like it will fit, just need to get a star fitting to removing the one from the vxr one.

Already got the car running aswell, did some tweaks and idles ok, though its booked in for mapping on the 30th so we can get it running properly

Made use of the spare green paint I had and decided while I was motivated to sort out my manky manifold.

Ive got a green theme going on so I think I will get green harnesses, and maybe paint the brake calipers



just going to let it dry over night then laquer it tomorrow and stick it back on

Been wanting to trim my wing end plates for a while, just needed to do a little more research into end plate design, the actual area under the wing that most of the low pressure is created and also what I think looks ok.

After much reading, drawing versions in mspaint and drawing on the actual endplates i came up with these.

They keep the 400mm under the wing that I wanted

Masking tape and pen

Attack with angle grinder, first one cut out

Second one cut out

Inlet manifold put back on


Also pulled off the wing pylons, will be remaking them as I mentioned before, but while I come up with the final design painted them black

made a start on fitting my rear brakes today, had to remove some of the material from the hub to allow the bolts holding the caliper bracket on to be removed, without it every time i moved from handbrake to 2 pot calipers i would have to press the hub out and replace the wheel bearings, then bolted on the new caliper brackets


put the 308mm discs and 2 pots on


another rear shot, painted the wing pylons



ok mini-update, all brakes are now on, new pads all around, loads of copper grease, bled all the air out of the system, under light load coming to junctions they squeal there brains out, but im guessing its because they need bedding in, just running pagid road pads for the moment as I have no plans on being last of the late brakers on the road, I have my PF01 for track use.

Painted the old red calipers a bright shade of blue and put them on the back to match my brand new calipers i put on the front


Fitted ready to bed in


I will put a bias valve on, will be having a leaver style version so its easier to mess with on track, going to get someone who can cut and fair brake line to do that though as its something I dont want to potentially bodge myself.

Also took my sump off so that I could fit the baffle plate system, scared myself silly reading all the threads of people killing engines, spoke to elise spares where I bought it from and they said never to weld it, none of there race cars have welded them and never had a failure from it, so decided to go that way.


With the expected lateral g force its something I will definately need, how much g I can pull before it stops working im not sure currently, dont really know at what point moving over to a dry sump is required.

Forgot to take a picture with the baffles in, ive got a magnetic sump plug which had a bit of very fine metal on which i cleaned off, shows its doing something.

Then because the weather was nice today took the car up the cat and fiddle pass up to the pub for a drink, was good fun and gave me chance to a bit of low speed mapping on the way.


A few people asked me about the car and I let a few of the children who came to have a look sit in the car aswell, they seem to enjoy it.


Got back on with sorting out the downforce on the front end, no point having a massive rear wing if you cant make use of it.

So first thing to was to put the canards back on, nice and simple.

Need to make some end plates up for the canards when I get chance.

While i had the front clam off I also cut most of the chin lip away so that the clam is easier to get on and off, which will be useful at the track.



Next its time to get all the high pressure air out of the from clam, so I got out the dremel and cut out the back near the door, I was tempted to cut it all out, basically from the top of the wheelarch just cut horizontally back but for the moment im going to just be conservative and get it on track and maybe do that next winter.


Next something ive been wanting to do for a while but ive been putting it as even I was a little bit apprehensive about cutting 2 massive holes in the top of my clam, in the end I just bit the bullet and made the first cut

Cut the hole out where i think will have the most benefit.


The issue you have with an s1 is there isnt a flat panel anywhere on the front and since the vents are all straight angles my concern was how to get them to fit neatly

Since I had 4 vents I used one as a test piece and basically hacked it up to remove anything I could see that would stop it bending to shape I wanted.

I fitted it and then marked and drilled the holes to bolt it down, the good thing with this is it showed me what needed to bend and be good on my best vents and also showed me what bits of the clam will flex to ensure its a nice fit.




As you can see ive cut the ends off as i was concerned it wouldnt bend side to side, but this left me with the rough edges of where i have cut into the clam which doesnt look pretty, but now I knew what i could and couldnt get away with.

So next I came to trial fitting my best ones with the modifications I had learned from my test piece



Here you can see how much they will vent, should be pretty effective, you can also see how I have got it to bend to the shape of the clam


My mate gives it the sign of approval


Im painting them black, in my kitchen drying overnight, so I will lacquer them tomorow night



As soon as the canard end plates are done I will start back on the rear wing pylons a few more weight saving ideas I have.

Bolted on the painted ones, looks smaller in the pictures than in real life



Will this do for the moment, i still havent finished the front end yet, though next month a youtube car company is coming to film to so maybe it will look different moving, i havent put the clam on as im building a bracket for the fuse box as that normally attaches to the wheelarch liner



Made my first canard end plate, just need to make another when i can get another piece of carbon


Fitted it and popped up a local car meet, its starting to look more complete now from the outside


Did a bit tonight, im waiting for my new longer bolts to arrive so I can raise my gear shift mechanism even higher, because ive moved my drivers seat closer to the centre of the car and im 6ft3 even with the shifter raised 100mm over standard the gearknob is right by my knee when in 5th, so the plan is to raise it another 50-75mm.

The issue I have at the moment is that the forward/rearward movement of the gearshift is fine as the plinth I made is a triangle, but because its an isosceles one, there is alot of side to side movement, when moving the gearshift even more I knew this was an issue.

So what I did was use one of the rivnuts in the passenger compartment as a fixing point with a spare tie bar and connect it up, putting a few millimeter of tension into it, now theres no play side to side so its easier to get reverse/5th, also being adjustable there is still enough thread in it to allow me to raise the shifter higher.


Also when dan made me a brace to hold my chargecooler over the inlet manifold, perfectly fine but made in steel which im trying to reduce in the car because of rust/weight issue, since I had a piece of carbon tube spare I decided to save a bit of weight.



got some longer bolts so i could raise the gear stick 165mm to its final position, its much better now and the gearstick is only about 70mm from the wheel, so now I can keep both hands on the wheel for longer and the gearknob clears my knees in 5th, took a bit of adjustment because of the new position but now the gear change is silky smooth.



Also finished the other canard end plate so that stage 1 of aero is now done, just need to do some testing now to see what the aero balance is like, if I still havent got enough downforce on the front end I will switch to my high downforce canards


Little bit of an update today.

Stripped my nitrons down so that I could fit my race springs, amazing how much crud and muck collects everywhere, took quite a while to clean them all properly

Big difference between 450lb and 900lb springs!


Next I fitted my roll centre adjusters, took a bit of fiddling to get it all together but glad its done


Also dropped it down to race height to check everything clears, looks good!


then did the same on the rear

650 vs 1150lb


fitted, I kept the helpers as im not sure if they are needed or not so better safe than sorry


This is my final ride road height, 98/115


Had a bit of a busy day today.

Woke up this morning and decided today would finally be the day to cut out of my roof, another thing ive been putting off for while but with how hot everything is getting when theres some spirited driving I decided now was the nice to sort it out.

As they say the first cut is always the worst!


Its a bit rough but with my limited skills it will do the job, can aways get a bodyshop to make it look nice after a few season racing.

Needed to put an oil catch tank on the car aswell so made up a bracket to hold it with carbon tube, just need to change the fittings on the catch tank and get some tube to hook it up



Also had a youtube channel visit me today to run a feature on me and the car, should be up on youtube within the next 10 weeks, but they have already put a picture on there facebook page, alot better than my dodgy mobile phone pics



Well I decided I really needed to get all the wheels pointing the correct way today and the handling was peaky to say the least, especially on bumpy roads, I knew the car was running way to much camber on the front and to much toe out so as much I wanted to set it race height and get it all geo'd for that, I knew for the moment I just needed it a bit safer to drive.

So I popped into Blink Motorsport this afternoon for him to have a look over the car and generally try and tidy it up......as you can see from the picture below, it was a good reason we did.

Putting the hawkeye sensors on the wheels

The interesting results, the toe out at the back and the massive front camber explains no wonder it wanted to dance around even in a straight line(im guessing when the youtube video comes out you will be able to see how hard im concentrating to drive it)


The camber at the front is still with some shims in, so the good thing it I should never be camber limited no matter what tyres/slicks I run in the future

After plenty of tweaking we got it everything more in line with what it should be, its still fairly aggressive(what you would run on a elise trophy race car) but much more inline compared to before.


Next up we tested bump steer, since im running an eliseparts steering arm kit with bump steer adjustment I didnt really know how to stack them up, so we loaded the car up and watched the screen and the good news is under bump the toe doesnt increase/decrease which for the moment I would rather have as I would like bump steer to be taken out of the situation for the moment so I can concentrate on the rest of the suspension tuning.

Then it came to seeing what it weighed, now ive mentioned in previous posts what i thought it weighed and also that I had used a local weigh bridge to get me in the ball park, in my head I had a figure of 730kg fully fueled and turns out I wasnt far off.


This is with 99kg of ballast on the drivers side and about 10kg of fuel in the tank

As you can see, for the big chunk of ballast in the car its not that bad side to side weight balance, shows though either I need to loose 20kg or the car does(I plan on pulling more weight off the engine aswell as myself)

But the cross weight was out at 47.8% so 2 quick spins on the rear passenger side coilover and we are at 50%


One thing I also found interesting was the front to rear weight balance, ive tried to take as much weight out of the back end as I could, but then ive added a big heavy turbo, thick walled manifold, heavy wheels with hub adapter spacers, bigger undertray, big diffuser and rear wing and it still seems im lighter percentage wise than a stock car.



Finishing everything up

Overall im really happy as I was something I needed doing, mostly because I wasnt enjoying driving it up to that point and also because I was worried I would run out of front tyre before long!

Blink Motorsport were great, everything he did he explained the reasons why and what we can and cant do, which was great information for when im at the track. They also do mapping which I wasnt aware of and are very interested in mapping the car which since there local once ive put on a smaller turbo we are going to give it a go


http://www.carthrottle.com/this-big-...eve-ever-seen/

Well the article is out, overall they got most of it(i threw alot of info at them) and I like the pics, have a read as it covers where im up with the car up to yet



Little bit of an update,

Fitted my oil catch tank ive modified it to fit larger inlets and also put an additional inlet so that I can either take a feed from other side of the rocker cover or ive been thinking recently about trying to take a inlet from the dip stick to help let the crank case breathe as I saw it on another build on here.

High quality engineering!




I also wanted to start removing any mild steel and also im not a fan of the long nuts I used but at the time it was the only thing i could think of, so i made a start and removed them and used carbon tube, ive kept the adjuster as I still dont know the perfect angle of the diffuser until we go tuff testing.


Then i have been wanting go get rid of the factory header tank, theres nothing wrong with it, but having something plastic so close to my downpipe didnt fill me with confidence if im going to creating an awful lot of heat on track, plus it being held on partially by a cable tie wasnt the best solution.

So I replaced it with an ali one,



im just waiting for the cap to arrive, while im not driving it this week ill pull the manifold off so i can wrap it aswell

turbotoaster

Decided while the weather was nice it was time to wrap my manifold.

Been meaning to do this for a while as it will help keep my engine bay temps down and also make sure more of that heat energy gets to my turbine wheel.

The turbo and manfiold come off together as its easier to get at the manifold bolts into the head then the ones between the turbo and the manifold.

Its had a new nice heat cycles and has a lovely shade of blue, shame I wont see it again!



After having a good think about how to cover everything, not run out of wrap and also do the wrap in one piece to have having to metal cable tie each end I came up with this.



Lying on the garage floor for an hour pulling heat wrap through it tons of times wasnt fun especially in shorts and a t shirt, every part of me is itchy now!

Also turbo seems to holding up well, no smoke, no play at all in the shaft, no marks on any of the blades, been a good little turbo even when I have had it glowing red.


All bolted back in with the engine running giving it a nice bake, left it for 10mins running it let it smoke.


Since ive removed the wheel arch liners front and rear to help release any high pressure air my sills were starting to take a battering from stones and muck, so to stop that i have covered them in kevlar.

Finished the rear tonight, should get the front finished tomorrow





finished off my front kevlar protection this afternoon, so thats ticked off the list


Also decided to make some stone protectors while I at it, looks pretty funky.

Made a cardboard template from looking at pictures online of other exiges




While I wait for my new rear uprights I knew I needed to sort out the safety aspect of my rear toe links, I had installed an S2 phoenix motorsport toe link kit with brace bar, thats great but the major issue with it was its designed for steel uprights, with the aluminum uprights being weaker they will twist at the toe link end, so you need a brace to put the toe link bolt in double shear and take some of the pressure off the upright.

So I managed to get a pair of used brackets cheap, rubbed them down to remove any surface corrosion and gave them a link of paint




Took a bit of tinking to get them on, got some 12.9 cap head bolts on order so used some normal hex head so I could get it back in the garage




Next i have been thinking about making some diffusers for my front splitter, these wont be seen from the outside and basically are in between the front clam and the wheel, they will help create a lower pressure area under the car.

Because I hadnt made these before I decided to make one out of paper first so I could work out what bends and angles to put into the aluminum , once they are made ill cut out the splitter, paint and bond them in

The shaded area is the horizontal section that gets bonded to the splitter

Minirotty

Love it...

http://www.carthrottle.com/shows/rea...oull-ever-see/

turbotoaster

Little update,

Went for a run up the cat and fiddle last weekend, ive now got the engine up to 7000rpm and 16psi and seems to go pretty well, I would like to rev it more to widen the powerband but since im running shorter rods I dont really want to rev it above 7000rpm for the moment.

All was going great until the way home as I went from third to fourth and got no gears, thought I had just missed a gear and went to put back in and couldnt select any gears! pulled over trying to get it to go in and ripped the cable out of the casing

So after turning the engine off and pushing the cable back down the sleeve with my fingers I just managed to get 4th, and then had to drive home in that gear, so pulling off from stationary was fun with all the traffic lights, I suppose having the short ratio box helped in that moment.

Also the reason I couldnt select gear was the slave cylinder bracket had decided to pull one of the bolts out of the gearbox! so the cluthc wouldnt disengage, ive ordered new motorsport cables from yvo and a brace to see if that will help, if it doesnt then ill have to get the welder out and weld onto the slave mount so it can hook up to another bolt in the box

next thing was I wanted to try a smaller turbo on the car so I can work out which will give me more area under the graph with my current gear ratios.

Its much smaller than my current turbo, this new one is a T3 with a 27lb compressor wheel and a 0.48 rear housing, its not going to make much power but it should be nicer on the road than my big one which I will either run on track if the dyno agrees its faster or ill save it for the big spec engine im building where I know ill be able to rev it to 8000rpm and produce alot more exhaust gases lower in the rev range to help with spool.

60mm wheel vs 76mm wheel!!



Installed, was actually a nightmare and took me 6hrs to swap, I though it would only take 1hr max, but it turns out that smaller compressor and turbine housing caused alot of issues.

First it meant the wastegate bracket wouldnt bolt to the comp housing so I had to modify the bracket and the housing with the angle grinder and the drill.

Next up the oil drain wouldnt fit onto the core because the core had been moved over about 20mm by the rear housing and it was also touching the front housing, so had to grind it smaller to clear, once I managed to get that on I couldnt tighten the bolts between the turbo and manifold because the oil drain was in the way, so in the end I had to pull the turbo, manifold and oil drain out, assemble it all together off the car and then bolt everything back on, which then because the oil drain wasnt in the same position as before meant I couldnt get it back onto the sump properly, hence more swearing(at this point its 1130pm) so eventually I get it back on after alot of shouting. Only to next find because my rear housing is now moved the downpipe is in the wrong place, so got the drill out and made new holes for the exhaust bracket.

Eventually got it all on and started it up about 6pm today after a final hour on it after work

Looks so small, I think it will probably max out at 250bhp which I suppose for the road wont be to bad


Just got to put the cables on now and then we are off to the dyno

Well its been a fun couple of days this week as I decided it time to get the car on the dyno, make sure my mapping isnt shocking and also get an idea where I am power wise so that I can see where I need to improve.

Ok on Wednesday night I went out to do some more mapping, got my 16psi map pretty much spot on but when I turned the boost up I realised it went completely off the map, after closer inspection it turned out I only had a 2 bar map sensor!

Looked online an a 3bar one is Ł70, being super tight that i am, I reasoned that well, im not going to be running 30psi of boost for a long time, at best i maybe would get up to 22psi, so how much is a 2.5bar one.......closer look and they are Ł25 brand new......much better, got one sent out to arrive with me thursday night.

So after asking what changes to make to calibrate it, im told it reads 10-250kpa at 4.5v, the emerald asks me what does it read at 5v and what to do with the voltage offset.

Started the car and my map was complete garbage, everything was wrong from idle, cruise, acceleration, ended up messin with the kpa and voltage setting to get off my driveway, plumbed in a boost gauge and went for a ride to try and adjust it so that it was reading close to what the boost gauge. After 10mins I had it close enough to make me happy.

And needing to be back in 30mins I had to pretty much map my car doing a few pulls watching the wideband and making changes accordingly. Its an old emerald ecu so i dont have any adaptive learning etc, got to do it all by eye.

So its D day, dyno time, will it blow up, will it over heat, will I make low power.......so many questions in my mind as I set off to face my doom!!

I turn up earlier before it opens so I can let it all cool down to give it a fighting chance, really nice guys at Blink Motorsport, second time ive been there now and they are really helpful, offer impartial advice and generally helped and gave me ideas to think about.



Next it was time to bolt it up to the hub pack, never seen this before so it was an interesting to watch how it all goes together.


Looks quite cool I thought.

So next its time to run it up and do some system checks.

Even only up to 3000rpm when its been loaded there is alot of pressure coming out of the catch tank, to the point it looks like we have boiled a kettle, im thinking to myself that its a bit of a worry and is the engine breathing very hard so are the rings knackered, throwing alot of boost at it might not have been the best option.

We noticed that we could keep the temps down and it was getting hot, suddenly it overheated and through about a litre and a half of water out of the headertank all over the floor.

The Radiator is cold so somethings going on, turn everything off and let it all cool down, top it up with water and try again.

Turns out there was a massive air bubble in the system which was moved when we jacked the car up to put it on the hub dyno.

So this time its much better, water temps are stable, air temps are a little higher than I would like but generally I was expecting that.

after doing some more held runs up to 4000rpm it looks like its getting a bit to warm though so we decide to switch to pulls straight through.

Set the ramp angle to 10seconds like you would do for alot of vehicles, and probably brought the turbo in boost similar to the higher gears in real life.

First pull at we hit 282ftlbs with the torque at the hubs still climbing and then the clutch slips.........not a good sign!!

So the ramp angle is turned to 6 seconds to try and take the pressure off the clutch.

Ive gone very conservative on the ignition timing on the road as I didnt have any det cans, so 13 degrees at 16-18psi should be ample.

So first pull made 233/233, we kept adding a bit more timing up to 17 degrees and came out with 248/247 all at the hubs in the end.

This is at 18psi peak dropping to 16psi.....I was tempted to turn the boost up some more but in the end I thought its best I run it as it is for the moment and see what the car is like on track, after that ill put a bigger compressor wheel on and aim for 300bhp-320bhp

Still dont know where the limit of these pistons and rods are, I was going to limit myself power wise to 250bhp at the flywheel but its holding together I may aswell do a bit of science for everyone else.

Here is the final graph.

On the road it makes full boost at 3700rpm rather than 4500rpm, its just on the dyno it made the clutch slip coming in that early so I think its got more torque than the graph shows



You can see it uses boost to make its torque, but then drops off, so the plan is going to be to put a slightly bigger compressor wheel on there and maybe open the head up a bit to the torque from dropping off which should also help overall power.

Not bad for a setup that cost less than Ł1k

If i get the weight to 680kg and the power to 320bhp then i will be happy

ok so rad turned up today, so spent an hour stripping the car, ive had the clam on an off so many time since ive built it that i can have the clam off in 10mins and the rest was getting the old chargecooler rad and engine rad out, I few rusty bolts needs talking to with an angle grinder!



Now my old chargecooler rad was 300mm x 300mm in size, this new one is 465mm x 220mm so about 10% more surface area but importantly nice unrestrictive inlet/outlets so this will be my test to see if increasing the flow through the system lowers my inlet temps.

Couldnt fit the chargecooler rad with the fan in stock position so Im attaching it to the chargecooler rad which should blow through both to keep my engine temps cool, since I dont spend alot of time in traffic its going to be for those times when I come into the pit lane, pro alloy do something similar but with twin fans.



What I will do is if the chargecooler rad isnt big enough I will find another engine rad from another car suitable, running another elise rad would be good but ideally would want a twin pass so I can keep my coolant lines on the passenger side to offset the driver weight, this rad only cost Ł18 brand new so if the experiment fails its not cost me a fortune

Well i look at it, the more money I save on building it(but including all the aspects I want) then the more money I will have to be able to get it on track and enjoy it, I know things could be done 10 times better if the budget was doubled, but sometimes you just have to work with what you have or what you can make, anyway we will see how I fair after my first trackday when ill get to really lean on it as running it hard on some A roads just isnt the same.

well that was a horrible experience for the evening, I dont have a lift so had to do this under a jack that was only lifted the car up about 40cm so it was nearly on my chest the whole time.

Firstly having to remove the old 12mm ID chargecooler lines out, that just took some pulling and messing around for 10mins per side.

Then i hole sawed the passenger side to 38mm x 76mm so I could put both pipes through the chassis.

this is when it got really difficult, getting these 25mm ID lines through the chassis took me 2hrs, I had to take off the side skirt, and the chassis panel under the fuel tank, only then to find I had a big plastic/foam construction bonded inside the sill, so alot of screaming, crying and general wimpering was involved in trying to pull all that out.

Finally managed to get one line through and then the second line took about 20 attempts as it kept getting stuck halfway down, or folding around on itself so each time I thought it had gone in the correct amount only to climb underneath to find it nowhere to be seen, that caused alot of head scratching!

But eventually got both lines through.


Just now need to get some jubilee clips to tie all the front together and then go to the back to wire in a pump and connect it up to my chargecooler.

I hope all this extra work was worth it when we review the inlet temps

Currently my setup will be

cinquento rad with 32mm inlet/outlet - 32mm to 25mm reducer elbow - 25mm pipe - chargecooler 25mm inlet/outlet - 2500l/hr pump with 27mm inlet/outlet - 25mm pipe

Im hoping the 32mm inlets on the rad will help offset the restriction of the core slightly, we will see

decided that to make best use of my splitter I would make some proper end fences to keep as much high pressure air as possible on top, so its similar to what Peugeot did with there pikes peak car, ive also added one of the canards back into to also keep the end fences from simply bending over at speed.




Tomorrow ill be adding some canards onto the end fences to again try and create a little more downforce.

Havent quite decided the shape or angle of them so thats a job to think about tonight.

Also picked up a new vice today so I will start making some front diffusers this week

found a picture today from the sprint when the car was set at race ride height



Installed my new oil catch tank tonight, its a big old girl at 2 litres but thats what the regulations ask for, that was the last thing required for racing on the car so im hopeful for brands hatch in november



Just need to get a M14 bolt to plug my inlet manifold so I can run the second breather from the rocker cover to the oil catch can now

After visiting the Time Attack Scrutineers at Silverstone so they could have a look at the car I seem to have been given the green light by the MSA inspector, I do have to make a few changes but nothing major in the scheme of things.

They werent a fan of my big aero as they said I was closer to pro class than club class, but with me not having much power I think in the end club class should be where I go really

Me and my 2 mates


Well since i have removed the outside canards I decided its about time I start working on more front downforce, Ive booked the car in with a paint friend and we are going to cut away front half of the bonded on sill completely and also part of the lower door, we will then fibreglass it back to allow all the pressure out of the arches the best i can, on the sills I will leave a 35mm gap to allow my 2 water pipes to travel along but that will be about it, dont think anyone has gone this far before on this aspect so will be cool to see how effective it is, ill get some pics up when it gets to the bodyshop.

Today I decided to make my front splitter diffusers, I went for the tried and tested option of 8 degrees, I would like to go steeper but without testing its best to go conservative.



Spent ages trying to decide the best way to do it will keeping the change in angle smooth, in the end since my splitter is foam core carbon I sliced through the upper carbon only which allowed it to bend and keep a nice radius underneath.



Made them as wide as I could up to the point of the crash structure and used my splitter end fence to actually close the diffuser

Im booked onto snetterton next monday with a brand new set of kumho v70s so if the engine stays together and I dont crash hopefully I will be able to see if what I have created is actual quick or not

Got my trailer closing to being complete, had to make some really long ramps(16ft) to get the car on with the race height I want to run, I could have raised the car to road height and run shorter ramps but for those times where its the end of a trackday/race weekend and its raining and i just dont want to mess around changing the height I would rather just drag the car onto the trailer and go home.

The reason for the length is not really the ride height but the overhang from the front axle which causes the issues





We just need to add some strapping points for the wheels tomorrow night, put my kumho tyres on and get all my tools and equipment together for the trip.

got this nice little picture coming onto the main straight



Bit of an update, had an interesting couple of weeks assessing the damage and slowly making changes ready for the next track day

First up looking at what got cooked on the track day

Thats the spark plug cover for the bin

burnt a hole in the pipe between the airfilter and the turbo

melted the bottom of my air filter

also a bolt dropped down into the cambelt gear

blew a chunk out of the housing and cambelt


Repair time

Replace air filter with larger one since i will be also increasing the power

Installing turbo with 12.9 bolts and k nuts(special thanks to darren for them) to try and keep them together under heat


Temporary relocation of the air filter to get to some cool air




The obvious question is why not just use the drivers side inlet for the filter instead of the long journey through a hot engine bay, but for the moment that inlet is blocked by an oil cooler so until i move that over to the other side and have new oil lines up it will stay there.
I did strongly think about running the turbo inlet pipe straight through the bulkhead and have it in the car but since its noisy with the turbo behind my head I think it might be to loud with the airfilter sat behind the passenger seat, still tempted to try it.

Also mini update, sat down this morning to start drawing up my aero modifications for the next stage, this is stuff i want done before the end of the month, the main aim is to vent both front and rear arches to reduce lift and also drag.



The front design will need adjusting slightly after having another look at the car this morning but the fundementals are there.

So made a start on the back, before cutting looked at other competitors just to make sure they have been running something similar and there cut lines are similar and running in club class.


Saved 4kg off the weight of the car, so i think im about 705kg now, only another 25kg to go to meet my target,will need to change the diffuser mounting points to add some strength back into it as ive removed 5 mounting bolts but overall it should do the job well



next thing i need to do is find someone who can machine 5mm off each of my rear wheel spacers to allow the car to run lower without the tyres touching the outer arches

CrOwSoN15

Just seen on facebook, hope you're okay mate!

How bad is the car?

Carlos-Titx

What's happened?