caterham engines.....
Discussion
Serious mode then...
The K is very light, no doubt. But the reason it is light is it's undoing as it also makes it fragile when subjected to serious abuse (for many reasons). They're incredibly reliable when mounted mid in an Elise or front in the plethora of Rovers that it's fitted to. However, in a front engined, RWD combo in a heavily tracked car I've seen more K's go pop than any other car engine. They are also very expensive to get decent power out of. 190bhp comes in at £6.5k, 240bhp at £12k. Very silly money when compared to an admittedly lardier 2.0 XE.
The Zetec is better IMO as it is stronger and certainly in 2.0 form, much torquier. Tuning is still not in the league of the XE though as it's reletively easy to get them to 200bhp but after that it's very big bucks and question marks on longevity.
The Duratec, the engine that IMO Caterham should have used, is lighter than a K and out of the box on TB's produces 190bhp. With the potential of 290bhp it should have all the strength and the tuneability of the XE with lighter than K weight.
The XE is old and no one makes them anymore. Current VX engines aren't really anything special. Honda's, brilliant though they are, are prohibitively expensive. Leaving you with the flawed K, the limited Zetec or IMO the future classic Duratec.
The K is very light, no doubt. But the reason it is light is it's undoing as it also makes it fragile when subjected to serious abuse (for many reasons). They're incredibly reliable when mounted mid in an Elise or front in the plethora of Rovers that it's fitted to. However, in a front engined, RWD combo in a heavily tracked car I've seen more K's go pop than any other car engine. They are also very expensive to get decent power out of. 190bhp comes in at £6.5k, 240bhp at £12k. Very silly money when compared to an admittedly lardier 2.0 XE.
The Zetec is better IMO as it is stronger and certainly in 2.0 form, much torquier. Tuning is still not in the league of the XE though as it's reletively easy to get them to 200bhp but after that it's very big bucks and question marks on longevity.
The Duratec, the engine that IMO Caterham should have used, is lighter than a K and out of the box on TB's produces 190bhp. With the potential of 290bhp it should have all the strength and the tuneability of the XE with lighter than K weight.
The XE is old and no one makes them anymore. Current VX engines aren't really anything special. Honda's, brilliant though they are, are prohibitively expensive. Leaving you with the flawed K, the limited Zetec or IMO the future classic Duratec.
The bullet proof engine is a myth. There is no such thing.
The closet things out there are the 2.0 XE's which can be taken to 300bhp and the Cosworth YB which N/A can hit 300+bhp and turbo'd well over 500bhp. They are hoogely strong because they have very heavy iron blocks and serious internals. Yet I still managed to pop my very mildly tuned (200bhp) N/A Cosworth and I saw a VX go pop about a month ago. The reason mine went pop was a piss poor baffled sump+Yoko 32R rubber+Donington Park. I've now had it re-built and it's now got a VERY expensive dry sump system. We shall see how it gets on.
As for the K thang: A SLR went pop yesterday at Donington, I've seen a R500 go pop at Oulton, a 160ish bhp SL spec supersprint be rebuilt 3 times in a year and one brand new SL that blew the engine 3 times before Caterham finally accepted that the engine was knackered and fitted a new one.
I have never seen a Zetec pop which is quite impressive as the ratio of Zetec Westies/Sylva/Locosts to K Caterhams at trackdays is pretty similar.
The one thing in common with all these cars is that they were all reletively heavily used on trackdays (not raced). Read into that what you will but my personal point of view when it comes to a car as blatently track biased as the SL/SLR/SLR500 is that they ALL should be well up to it. That they are not (not counting the R500) is a major bad on Caterhams part IMO.
>> Edited by juansolo on Thursday 26th September 17:35
>> Edited by juansolo on Thursday 26th September 17:37
The closet things out there are the 2.0 XE's which can be taken to 300bhp and the Cosworth YB which N/A can hit 300+bhp and turbo'd well over 500bhp. They are hoogely strong because they have very heavy iron blocks and serious internals. Yet I still managed to pop my very mildly tuned (200bhp) N/A Cosworth and I saw a VX go pop about a month ago. The reason mine went pop was a piss poor baffled sump+Yoko 32R rubber+Donington Park. I've now had it re-built and it's now got a VERY expensive dry sump system. We shall see how it gets on.
As for the K thang: A SLR went pop yesterday at Donington, I've seen a R500 go pop at Oulton, a 160ish bhp SL spec supersprint be rebuilt 3 times in a year and one brand new SL that blew the engine 3 times before Caterham finally accepted that the engine was knackered and fitted a new one.
I have never seen a Zetec pop which is quite impressive as the ratio of Zetec Westies/Sylva/Locosts to K Caterhams at trackdays is pretty similar.
The one thing in common with all these cars is that they were all reletively heavily used on trackdays (not raced). Read into that what you will but my personal point of view when it comes to a car as blatently track biased as the SL/SLR/SLR500 is that they ALL should be well up to it. That they are not (not counting the R500) is a major bad on Caterhams part IMO.
>> Edited by juansolo on Thursday 26th September 17:35
>> Edited by juansolo on Thursday 26th September 17:37
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