Komotec anyone?
Discussion
The Pits said:
Don't be too surprised if you get told katana from sinclairs. After a quick plug for the Honda engine, of course.
not at all....there are much better 2ZZ options out there asides the ones already mentioned.
I'm not about to start making suggestions as all that will happen is I'll cop s
t for it.An interesting thread - I will be interested to see some of the more sensible suggestions (other than get a Honda).
I've been toying with the idea of getting a Cayman, but coupled with trying to sell a relatively specialist RHD car in Europe and the high cost of second-hand cars compared to the UK, I have decided to stick with the Elise.
I was in an Exige two weeks ago that had a Komotec supercharger delivering a measured 282bhp. The power delivery across the rev range was ferocious.
However I use the car everyday and perhaps 1 or 2 track days a year, so am looking for something to make the car more flexible on the road rather than having to ragging the nuts off the car to keep it on the second cam.
At first I'd thought about the Lotus Motorsport ECU upgrade dropping the 2nd cam change over point, but having spoken with SeriouslyLotus and seen the offer they have at the moment with the kit from the Elise SC giving 220bhp and a stage 3 exhaust backbox "thrown in" - I am seriously tempted to do this, coupled with a new airfilter.
I've been toying with the idea of getting a Cayman, but coupled with trying to sell a relatively specialist RHD car in Europe and the high cost of second-hand cars compared to the UK, I have decided to stick with the Elise.
I was in an Exige two weeks ago that had a Komotec supercharger delivering a measured 282bhp. The power delivery across the rev range was ferocious.
However I use the car everyday and perhaps 1 or 2 track days a year, so am looking for something to make the car more flexible on the road rather than having to ragging the nuts off the car to keep it on the second cam.
At first I'd thought about the Lotus Motorsport ECU upgrade dropping the 2nd cam change over point, but having spoken with SeriouslyLotus and seen the offer they have at the moment with the kit from the Elise SC giving 220bhp and a stage 3 exhaust backbox "thrown in" - I am seriously tempted to do this, coupled with a new airfilter.
halfpenny43 said:
An interesting thread - I will be interested to see some of the more sensible suggestions (other than get a Honda).
Makes me laugh, who brought up the subject of Honda's? (Asides the fact that it's the only off-the-shelf sensible option of your target's are 300+ bhp)
There are quite a few supercharger/turbo kit's for the 2ZZ now, some are somewhat better than others. Asides the factory SC kit, the big issue with *all* the after market ones is ECU related, apart from Charlie's ECU mapping (and he appears to have disappeared now?), eveybody else is either using mix-match Lotus calibrations (ie. Komotec) that are best fit as opposed to calibrated for the install, or some bodgetastic pigg-back solution.
this problem will only be 100% addressed when there is a fully featured plug-play ECU replacement (or somebody is brave enough to encure the wrath of Lotus and re-map the Lotus ECU).
Eliseparts are about to launch their own ECU to meet this need, and apart from enabling them to then launch their own SC/Turbo kit's etc, will be an enabler to other kit makers to have a proper ECU solution, this should increase the options available.
kambites said:
Can the Toyota gearbox really deal with that kind of power?
Nope, std box is the weak link as many have found to their cost (this sort of shows the lie of how much power people claim)Once again, there is a solution to this available shortly using a Honda gearbox (I am sure this will have some of you going off one one again!).
Seems to be that there is a hardcore of people out there that have some real blinkers on, and realistically, the only people they are going to harm is themselves in the long run...
Scuffers said:
Shabs said:
plipule said:
Scuffers said:
Put it this way, if it was my car, I would not go there...
Would you go anywhere for an aftermarket S/c for the Toyota?Scuffers not everyone wants to bin a perfectly good toyota engine for a honda engine out of some pimpled youth's crashed hatchback.
My engine has only done 5000 miles to date, so I'm interested in uprating it but not beyond the capability of the gearbox, you seem to assume everyone wants 320bhp. In a car weighing 840kgs, 250bhp or thereabouts would be plenty and it also means not having to shell out for lots of other mods like a new gearbox, uprated brakes etc.
And besides I'm very happy with the toyota engine. As far as 1.8s go it's up there with the very best of them (and designed by Yamaha too for badge snobs).
I don't need to win a GT race, I just want to put a few manners on a boxster S!
My engine has only done 5000 miles to date, so I'm interested in uprating it but not beyond the capability of the gearbox, you seem to assume everyone wants 320bhp. In a car weighing 840kgs, 250bhp or thereabouts would be plenty and it also means not having to shell out for lots of other mods like a new gearbox, uprated brakes etc.
And besides I'm very happy with the toyota engine. As far as 1.8s go it's up there with the very best of them (and designed by Yamaha too for badge snobs).
I don't need to win a GT race, I just want to put a few manners on a boxster S!
The Pits said:
Scuffers not everyone wants to bin a perfectly good toyota engine for a honda engine out of some pimpled youth's crashed hatchback.
My engine has only done 5000 miles to date, so I'm interested in uprating it but not beyond the capability of the gearbox, you seem to assume everyone wants 320bhp. In a car weighing 840kgs, 250bhp or thereabouts would be plenty and it also means not having to shell out for lots of other mods like a new gearbox, uprated brakes etc.
And besides I'm very happy with the toyota engine. As far as 1.8s go it's up there with the very best of them (and designed by Yamaha too for badge snobs).
I don't need to win a GT race, I just want to put a few manners on a boxster S!
Once again, you assume what I am saying rather than actually reading what I post.My engine has only done 5000 miles to date, so I'm interested in uprating it but not beyond the capability of the gearbox, you seem to assume everyone wants 320bhp. In a car weighing 840kgs, 250bhp or thereabouts would be plenty and it also means not having to shell out for lots of other mods like a new gearbox, uprated brakes etc.
And besides I'm very happy with the toyota engine. As far as 1.8s go it's up there with the very best of them (and designed by Yamaha too for badge snobs).
I don't need to win a GT race, I just want to put a few manners on a boxster S!
I am not suggesting you should go for a Honda transplant, it was not me that brought the subject up in this thread, you did that yourself.
If you actually bothered to read what I have posted, you might learn something about 2ZZ upgrades, but then again, I am not holding out great hope....
kambites said:
Well presumably the Toyota 'box can generally manage 250ish since Lotus ship cars with that kind of power. I guess the worst that happens is you lunch your gearbox internals and have to replace it with something a bit stronger.
problem is Carl, stronger internals is a bit of a sticking plaster to the problem..the issue with the box is that it's shafts are quite long between the bearings, are somewhat small in diameter, and the shaft spacing (ie. the distance between each other) is tiny, what this means is that for a given torque, the gears have a lot of leverage over the shafts, this then pushes the shafts apart, the teeth then are not 100% meshed, then one tooth will give, leading to catastrophic failure.
Now, putting gears with less/bigger teeth will make it harder for them to break a tooth off, but it does nothing to help the problem of the shafts flexing.
This is not to say the C64 is a bad box, only that it was never designed to be bolted to an engine making 200+ bhp.
Realistically, even the factory 260's/2-11's etc are really too much for the std box long term.
Fancy meeting my friend "The Pits" here !
Yet another story ! When I first retired about five years ago, a friend asked me if I would take his Elise Toyota out to Nurburg to have a supercharger kit installed, the firm was Komotec in Mendig. I'd not driven an Elise since my very early S1, driving out I thought the variable valve timing of the Toyota engine was appalling, the power coming ludicrously high up the rev range, basically to me it felt like you had to rev the engines heart out to make any progress.
I arrived at Komotec and found a super tidy, neat little factory unit full of Elise's having all manner of conversions, some the Rotrex supercharger that "my car" was to be fitted with, Honda conversions, the then very new Duratec being developed. All the parts for the Rotrex kit were beautifully made. Two days later I returned, the kit was installed, and off we went to a TUV approved rolling road, and the car made ( from memory ) 276 bhp, run after run. Komotec showed me power curves from the factory Lotus Supercharged car, which lost significant amounts of power, run after run as the heat soak built up. My drive home to England was inspirational, the car was totally transformed, the variable valve timing reprogramed to operate at under 5000rpm and just a huge wave of torque.
My friend still has the car, he is a Nurburgring regular, he drives the car very, very hard, and it's still running without trouble, albeit as Scuffers intimates, the mapping is not perfect, but certainly livable with, but so far the hardware has been faultless !
Knowing how much "The Pits" loves the German's, I must tell you a small aside from this story, a German friend took me to Komotec the night before my appointment so that I could easily find them the next day. The "factory unit" next door to Komotec was lit up like a christmas tree, I asked what went on in the factory, my friend answer, "it's house of fun". Naively I asked "house of fun ?", he replied, " you know beatiful girls, money"...........
Yet another story ! When I first retired about five years ago, a friend asked me if I would take his Elise Toyota out to Nurburg to have a supercharger kit installed, the firm was Komotec in Mendig. I'd not driven an Elise since my very early S1, driving out I thought the variable valve timing of the Toyota engine was appalling, the power coming ludicrously high up the rev range, basically to me it felt like you had to rev the engines heart out to make any progress.
I arrived at Komotec and found a super tidy, neat little factory unit full of Elise's having all manner of conversions, some the Rotrex supercharger that "my car" was to be fitted with, Honda conversions, the then very new Duratec being developed. All the parts for the Rotrex kit were beautifully made. Two days later I returned, the kit was installed, and off we went to a TUV approved rolling road, and the car made ( from memory ) 276 bhp, run after run. Komotec showed me power curves from the factory Lotus Supercharged car, which lost significant amounts of power, run after run as the heat soak built up. My drive home to England was inspirational, the car was totally transformed, the variable valve timing reprogramed to operate at under 5000rpm and just a huge wave of torque.
My friend still has the car, he is a Nurburgring regular, he drives the car very, very hard, and it's still running without trouble, albeit as Scuffers intimates, the mapping is not perfect, but certainly livable with, but so far the hardware has been faultless !
Knowing how much "The Pits" loves the German's, I must tell you a small aside from this story, a German friend took me to Komotec the night before my appointment so that I could easily find them the next day. The "factory unit" next door to Komotec was lit up like a christmas tree, I asked what went on in the factory, my friend answer, "it's house of fun". Naively I asked "house of fun ?", he replied, " you know beatiful girls, money"...........
Scuffers said:
There are quite a few supercharger/turbo kit's for the 2ZZ now, some are somewhat better than others. Asides the factory SC kit, the big issue with *all* the after market ones is ECU related, apart from Charlie's ECU mapping (and he appears to have disappeared now?), eveybody else is either using mix-match Lotus calibrations (ie. Komotec) that are best fit as opposed to calibrated for the install, or some bodgetastic pigg-back solution.
this problem will only be 100% addressed when there is a fully featured plug-play ECU replacement (or somebody is brave enough to encure the wrath of Lotus and re-map the Lotus ECU).
Eliseparts are about to launch their own ECU to meet this need, and apart from enabling them to then launch their own SC/Turbo kit's etc, will be an enabler to other kit makers to have a proper ECU solution, this should increase the options available.
Thanks Scuffers. So if we don't want to wait for the EP ECU and SC/Turbo kit for the 2ZZ I think your saying that the "safest" upgrade path today is the Lotus SC kit ?this problem will only be 100% addressed when there is a fully featured plug-play ECU replacement (or somebody is brave enough to encure the wrath of Lotus and re-map the Lotus ECU).
Eliseparts are about to launch their own ECU to meet this need, and apart from enabling them to then launch their own SC/Turbo kit's etc, will be an enabler to other kit makers to have a proper ECU solution, this should increase the options available.
If you factor in the costs also, GBP4k for a fully fitted Lotus SC and stage 3 backbox by a Lotus Dealer seems like a cheap(er) option ?
Steven
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