VVC and VHPD

they both go bang but the VHPD probably a bit more than the VVC

Thanks for your erutite and informative contributions to this thread, Mars.

Perhaps you'd care to expand on your knowledge and experience, and how you arrived at such detailed conclusions?

There's nothing stopping VVC's having the standard Caterham dry sump system.

its not that simple though... and to infer that my one single failure contributes 100% to my opinion is just a little bit insulting to my intelligence


i've been around the k series since 1998... i've met hundreds and hundreds of lotus and caterham owners at road meets and i've met and seen hundreds and hundreds of k series owners/cars at trackdays. I was around when the R500 was launched. Good friends of mine owned them and I was on the phone to them days after they threw conrods through through blocks. I know people who have raced the VHPD extensively in the early JCC challenge and the early 750mc Roadsports series, and elsewhere, and I was behind the scenes in the Autobytel championships and have an insight into exactly how much work and how many engines they used to get through on the Lotus motorsport cars between meetings and between races. Then we get onto conversations Ive had with caterham racers, tuners etc.. and then also theres trackday organisers I know who for 9 years or more have witnessed K series cars on a weekly basis attending their events.

So, you see, my own engine is just one little tiny part of it (actually 2 engines... teh VHPD in my 340r went bang as well). And my world experience is not just limited to the rose tinted single-marque purchase-justifying playgrounds such as blatchat. My knowledge base about the K is built up over 10 years over a very large sample size and REAL world proper usage.. i.e. people who race these engines or use them properly on trackdays .....NOT jewellery wes who venture out to snake pass twice a year or turn up at the Brands festival to do a few of the anniversary parade laps. I am not a maladapted keyboard warrior whose finest hour was purchasing a K series caterham and therefore has to sit there defending it to the last liek it was one of my kids. I own all engines, all makes, all marques and all configurations. I have no allegiance and I don't fall into that sickeningly embarrasing trap of loving a marque or loving a particular dealer or workshop. I am a realist and I see what is real. If I own a car that is utter crap, I won't sit there defnding it, i'll rag the pants off it, tell you its crap and made of cheese then get rid of it. A pragmatic realist... the K series was no good so I solved it asap by being the first person in the world to regularly track a duratec powered caterham. And guess what... it worked !

and of course, my opinion of ALL units is not coloured. There are obviously be thousands of them out there that have and will be totally reliable.... including yours. But you see its about sample size and % failure rate and on that score, its quite clear that aside other sundry endogenous design weaknesses, the K was never ever designed to spin that fast no matter what bearings you put in it.

Against the '100 other people' (names and addresses required, here, please... forgive me for being a teensy bit sceptical that you are on intimate terms with 100 other owners of an engine as rare as the VHPD ), you can set Jackal's two failures and add one for me (guess why my Westfield FW400 is no longer fitted with the VHPD engine it was originally equipped with?).

So even if you really do know 100 other VHPD owners (and to borrow your own phrase: cobblers), that's still a 3% failure rate based on the limited sample of people who have contributed so far to this thread.

If 3 out of every hundred VVC equipped MGF's had gone BANG!, do you not think it would be pretty common knowledge that they were best avoided by now?

So we have no stats verified by independent agencies, but Jackal's experience is based on a wide view. We can't tell whether the VVC is any better or worse than other K engine configs of similar power output (that's why a comparison betw VVC and VHPD isn't very easy).

But anyone who's had any experience of the (tuned) k world would be completely out of touch with reality to suggest that it's not fraught with HG (and other) failures. Interestingly, I don't think that the HG featured highly in the list of the original R500 engine problems. The why's and wherefores are wide and varied and often to do with the installation as much as the known design and quality problems with the k.

However, it's a fantastic engine and I won't hear a word said against it!

Bert

I have a SLR that was doing 190 horses. It's now doing 240; i got it upgraded when I had the engine refreshed and strengthened at a very reasonable cost (around 3k I think). I know that at some point the engine will go bang, but it is a race car with a number plate so what do I really expect from 1.8 (now 1.9) litres? When it does, I will get a Duratec put in. In the meantime, I think the SLR is a performance bargain versus the Duratec engined current cars so really for me it's just a cost benefit thing right now.

The lower powered cars are always more reliable, but it's a question of how many horses does a man need... And there's only one answer to that

Factor in annual mileage also. Say a VHPD should be refreshed every 20k miles or so, then that's a lot of years versus what a real world caterham drives.

Having said all that, if you want something that only needs 200 quid a year spent on it on basic maintenance then don't buy a VHPD. If you don't mind the odd payout go for it.

The main issue with VHPD's as with most other K's is the integrity of the cooling system. Change to steel dowels, switch to a newer design of head gasket and make sure the liner heights are correct and the engine will be better than when it left the factory. There are lots of minor mods which aid reliability and lets face it 20K is probably 3-4 years for most Caterhams. There are plenty out there running ok, the R400 sold a fair number and it is very close to the original VHPD from all accounts.

Buying the SLR also will automatically give you an LSD/big brakes/Carbon etc, these things are available as an upgrade but they quickly add up. I would buy one again unless I had way more money in which case I would build a duratec, the K was good in its day but it is not the engine of choice IMO in this day and age.

The choice is yours, the VHPD isn't all bad if you look after it. Get yourself along to an owners club meet and speak to the people there, most are very honest about the highs and lows of ownership. Whichever K you buy it will be nothing like as unreliable as Arnies