Honda Powered Elise

[danwebster]

I've blogged about this for the last 8 months on a couple of sites I am a regular on, but heres the condensed version.

Last october I bought a lotus elise 111s with 38k on the clock. It was a nice tidy car with a full history.

A couple of weeks later I took it to pieces.



Rebuilt a honda K20 engine and gearbox...





Chopped the back of the car out and made a new bulkhead...





Refurbished all of the suspension...





Replaced all of the bushes with rose joints, fitted new ball joints and wheel bearings...



Lined the engine bay in gold and fitted the engine...



Made an exhaust system...



Made a gear linkage...



Painted the bodywork with plastidip...



Did a huge amount of fettling and finishing...



Spent a day and two tanks of fuel mapping it...still not finished!



Put all the bodywork on and went for a drive...





The end...for now.

[The Nur]

I'm actually a little disappointed that this thread didn't run for months and become frustrating.

The car looks awesome though, top work! Especially the F1 inspired Gold bulkhead. Very snazzy.

[clarkmagpie]

Love the idea, ruined by the exhaust pipe!
IMO.

[danwebster]

Single exit massively reduces the noise - its built for track days and is pretty quiet despite the proper box on the back (from a GT3 Exige race car indidentally).

I quite like it

[clarkmagpie]

I thought there must be a reason for it
Bet it's a hoot on track.
Always wanted to track my s2 but have never had the chance.

[P1H]

Looks great!

What is the approx. weight?

Do the gear ratios fit the car? (Track and Road)

[danwebster]

Not sure on the weight yet, under 750 I hope. Feels like it weighs 300 kilos to drive, its phenomenal.

Ratios are spot on, I changed the final drive.

40 in 1st
60 in 2nd
85 in 3rd
112 in 4th
140 in 5th
174 in 6th

[RobCrezz]

Awesome!

[stew-S160]

Nice work Dan.

[fuzzyyo]

Any videos of it going? What kind of power increase is the honda engine over the original?

[otolith]

Worth adding a link back to this topic to this one;

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[Mastodon2]

A great idea, the K20 is one of the great engines of our era. The exhaust tip is definitely not to my taste, though I'd have thought you could probably make a swappable tip, with twins for the road that sit just outside the body instead of a single pipe protruding a long way out. I'd also be interested to know how a dual exit would make more noise than a single - if the 90 degree turned pipe was split into a twin exit for the last few inches, the noise is limited by the 90 degree pipe.

[dai1983]

Awesome! That is all!

[MrC986]

Dan, Mr B mentioned your latest project! Have you any in-gear figures yet?

Will you give it a run to the MBC next Sunday?

Chris

[danwebster]

Hi Chris, no figures as yet but its quick through the gears...

I probably will come along next week yes

[Mister3man]

Very impressive work indeed. I'm a huge fan of the K20 as well

[danwebster]

We've spent the morning playing around with ignition timing, cam timing and vtec point and the final result is 222.1hp (the .1 is important) at 8050rpm and 151lb ft at 6500ish (I don't quite remember).

We've also put another 500rpm on the rev limiter which was set at 8200rpm. It only drops 5 or so hp from 8000 to 8700, but the difference in the curve where it drops back in after each gearchange is massive, somewhere in the region of 20hp, so it feels a lot quicker now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meuhe4c61Ek&fea...

We did probably 15 runs that were within 1hp whilst playing about with various things.

As a reference, a standard UK EP3 type R makes 187hp on this particular rolling road...so its 35hp up on a standard engine.

[DanielSan]

Awesome!

[s m]

Looks great Dan

Have you weighed it in road-ready format yet?

What's it like compared to the old car? Anything in particular you miss/prefer?

[Ved]

"...lined with gold..."

"made an exhaust system..."

Just so off the cuff