Caterham Turbo

[Smitters]

I was wondering if anyone had gone there? Essentially, I've really enjoyed this BRM thread ( http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a... ) and it has got me pondering - how would a low pressure turbo go on a k series Seven - minimise lag and make it nice and driveable and Bob's a close relative.

Has this been tried, does anyone know?

[Eric Mc]

I think it was tried in the early 90s and not pursued.

[radical78]

looked at using one from rover 75 but not sure if the turbo will fit beatween the starter and the chassie

[Toaster]

Supercharger kit from here http://www.hangar111.com/lotus/rover-k-series-supe...

http://www.evo.co.uk/caterham/7/13451/new-caterham...

Or how about the X330 (not a K series) http://www.evo.co.uk/news/8491/caterham-most-power...

Edited by Toaster on Tuesday 24th November 22:04

[framerateuk]

I'm a little surprised that there isn't a forced induction kit for the Sigma, given it's quite expensive to get more power from it in N/A form. I would have thought a supercharger would have been an obvious upgrade. (not from Caterham themselves though as they wouldn't want it overlapping the Duratec).

[Pdelamare]

I'm sure Richard at TTS will knock up a Rotrex kit for you.

[Smitters]

radical78 said:

looked at using one from rover 75 but not sure if the turbo will fit beatween the starter and the chassie

This is a good point. Mind you, I have a short footwell/race chassis, so I wonder if that helps things, and I could relocate the battery to make some space?

I know my car will need a skin-off refurb in the next ten years, and it's one of those projects that has me wondering. Supercharger is an interesting proposition too - the noise would be phenomenal!

[BertBert]

Mind you I an enjoying the Rover/BRM thread!

[K800 RUM]

I have also enjoyed reading the Rover BRM thread & for a non-mechanic I think it's brilliant what he has done.

[coppice]

Older readers may also recall that the late Mike Spence's(BRM F1 driver killed at Indy in '68) garage produced a very tidy Elan BRM with BRM livery and an upgraded 140bhp twincam. My own Seven is an homage to the BRM livery.

[BertBert]

Picture?

[culminator]

A few years ago I had a JPE Turbo and It was pretty brutal. The Standard JPE cost the original owner £38k and then he immediately spent another £60k at Courtenay Turbo having additional work done!!!!

It was Chargecooled and had a rather large Garret Hybrid turbo along with a quaiffe sequential box. With 320bhp and over 300f/lb of tourque it went quite well.......

[coppice]

BertBert said:

Picture?

Too technical for me - but if you are interested pm me with your email and I will oblige !

[scubadude]

culminator said:

A few years ago I had a JPE Turbo and It was pretty brutal. The Standard JPE cost the original owner £38k and then he immediately spent another £60k at Courtenay Turbo having additional work done!!!!

Really?! I'd love to know how they got that figure for bolting on a few bits :-) (or typo?)

[k20erham]

Hi, I have the other turbo car built by Courtney Autosport, and both cars cost over 100K according to Johnathan @ Courtney. Mine was the mint green car, specially made chassis by Arch to accommodate the M3 gearbox that was behind a Swindon racing engine modified by Courtney to 320BHP, a big 909 7.5" Ford motorsport diff, big JPE saddle tank, I still have the engine dyno sheets and rolling print out and the graphs for gearing that indicates 212MPH @8000 rpm. The engine and Box have long gone, but the car still retains the 909 diff and saddle tank, so over 60 in 1st and lots of fuel.

[normalbloke]

Which one of you chaps returned the Courtenay Turbo JPE back to standard? I remember buying the chargecooler, front rad and Hayward and Scott exhaust to go on my YB Turbo Caterham. That's a blast from the past.

[k20erham]

Hi Mine went to a K20 Honda Sadev box geartronics and Penski 3 way shocks Stack dash, I was going to N/A a YB 200 but amassed quite a lot of NBE K20 bits to make a stonking 245 @ the hubs 9200rpm motor, would have been rude not to!!

[culminator]

That was me Normalbloke. You would have come to my house in Banstead at the time. I still have the exhaust bracket :-)

[topvaux]

k20erham said:

Hi, I have the other turbo car built by Courtney Autosport, and both cars cost over 100K according to Johnathan @ Courtney. Mine was the mint green car, specially made chassis by Arch to accommodate the M3 gearbox that was behind a Swindon racing engine modified by Courtney to 320BHP, a big 909 7.5" Ford motorsport diff, big JPE saddle tank, I still have the engine dyno sheets and rolling print out and the graphs for gearing that indicates 212MPH @8000 rpm. The engine and Box have long gone, but the car still retains the 909 diff and saddle tank, so over 60 in 1st and lots of fuel.

Hello, gentlemen, do you mind if I just chip in here? I am aka Chris Courtenay and I have been interested to read of the two Caterhams I built in '98. Chinese whispers can skew the facts somewhat, so, without meaning to be a total anorak I'd like to just put the odd record straight:
1/ The engine(s) had nothing to do with Swindon and was entirely built by Courtenay Sport. The "Swindon" connection would be that I used to use a bench dyno facility run by Griffin Motorsport at Royal Wootton Bassett which is of course near Swindon!
2/ Neither car cost "over £100k" - I wish! The mint green car which was the first to be commissioned actually came to £94,500, a good deal of which was for original design and development work on what was a total one-off car with almost nothing to original Caterham specification.
3/ Hans Rausing's car effectively "piggy-backed" on the mint green car and he paid half of the development of that particular engine configuration which had no application in my mainstream business of modifying Vauxhalls. Hans' bill was for £22300 and that also included a new gearbox, chargecooling system and so on. I can only guess at the reason why the car was in the hands of a dealer within weeks, having driven just four miles since we delivered it back to him, but I suppose if you've got £5.2 billion to your name £20k-odd is loose change?

The mint green car was commissioned by a delightful young chap - British, but resident in Spain - who did me the most extraordinary honour by asking me to build for him the car I would build for myself if money were no object and he didn't want to know anything about it until it was finished! He would give me no input whatsoever - he wouldn't state any preference for the number of doors, the number of seats, roof or no roof, 2wd or 4wd, front or rear drive, colour, trim, road, race or rally........... he absolutely left it all up to me! So that car was entirely my fantasy and the matter of cost was "irrelevant" because there were to be no constraints!

Desperately sadly his amazingly successful business hit a cash flow snag and he had to raise funds fast so he sold the Caterham to a Swiss chap after only six months, but he was back in a position where he could have afforded to have kept it just a few weeks later. I think I was nearly as upset as him to be honest.

I hope you didn't mind my interruption, but I thought you might appreciate some facts unadorned by urban myth!

[kenny.R400]

That's brilliant info. It is very nice to hear things from the horses mouth so to speak.

However at least one of these cars sports a JPE number ie 1-53, I'd be interested to find out how that came about, I assume they were designated these by CC themselves?


Thanks