2007 Lotus 2-Eleven
Discussion
Steve H said:
That’s good news Fonzey, I’ll be working on that event so will see you there 
Awesome, be good to meet you at last. See you there.EmBe said:
All being well I should be there (Cayman has an oil weep which the specialist is looking at next week so it's touch and go at the moment).
I think I booked a garage (can't find any confirmation that tells me what I bought) but if so you're welcome to use it if the weather's not great.
Likewise hope to see you there, fingers crossed you can get sorted! Very kind offer on the garage, at worst I might use it to hide some stuff in if the weather does turn a bit minging - but I'm fully expecting this later Summer to materialise just in time.I think I booked a garage (can't find any confirmation that tells me what I bought) but if so you're welcome to use it if the weather's not great.
Before packing up for Croft, I did a small job that I've been putting off for ages.
I've been tripping over a roll of PPF in the garage since I did the Tillett seats, and I'd saved just enough to cover the top and leading edge of the Reverie wing.
With the endplates off, I gave the wing a quick blast with a claybar followed by some polishing.
I've decided I really don't enjoy applying stuff like PPF, vinyl, stickers, etc- I just don't have the patience for it. This went half decent though.
The only thing I'm not really happy with is the trailing edge. I should have left a few inches so I could wrap it over the sharp edge and tack it down on the underside, but I didn't leave enough of a lip - so couldn't overcome the slight rigidity of the PPF and get it to stick. This left me with trimming the edge with a blade, which is OK - but a bit tatty in a couple of spots. I'll tidy it up when I have time.
Not quite a pro job, but definitely good enough to keep the carbon protected until I consider a proper job (which might be never).
I've been tripping over a roll of PPF in the garage since I did the Tillett seats, and I'd saved just enough to cover the top and leading edge of the Reverie wing.
With the endplates off, I gave the wing a quick blast with a claybar followed by some polishing.
I've decided I really don't enjoy applying stuff like PPF, vinyl, stickers, etc- I just don't have the patience for it. This went half decent though.
The only thing I'm not really happy with is the trailing edge. I should have left a few inches so I could wrap it over the sharp edge and tack it down on the underside, but I didn't leave enough of a lip - so couldn't overcome the slight rigidity of the PPF and get it to stick. This left me with trimming the edge with a blade, which is OK - but a bit tatty in a couple of spots. I'll tidy it up when I have time.
Not quite a pro job, but definitely good enough to keep the carbon protected until I consider a proper job (which might be never).
EmBe said:
I spotted you out on track a few times but when I came to find you, both times you'd just gone out 
Car seemed to be going well, looks and sounds great.
Not the greatest of days for me, oil weep was fixed but when I got to the circuit one of the front dampers wouldn't budge from full soft so I had to leave both fronts like that and only stiffen up the rears a little, meaning the car was a bit wallowy all day and as a result I didn't enjoy myself as much as usual.
Plus the endless red flags after lunch
Ugh, sorry to hear about your woes. Which Cayman were you in, was it a white one? The Red flags were quite irritating yes, always seemed to be on an out lap, so spent a lot of time baking in the pitlane waiting to go out again.Car seemed to be going well, looks and sounds great.
Not the greatest of days for me, oil weep was fixed but when I got to the circuit one of the front dampers wouldn't budge from full soft so I had to leave both fronts like that and only stiffen up the rears a little, meaning the car was a bit wallowy all day and as a result I didn't enjoy myself as much as usual.
Plus the endless red flags after lunch
I'll get a full T'Day report up once I sort some video out. GoPro/SD Card shenanigans again but I think I can salvage something!
Croft time baby!
First trackday since Spa which feels like a lifetime ago, it's probably the biggest gap I've had between trackdays outside of the Winter months since ever!
Since Spa the brake setup had remained the same, with the big discs all around and the road intended RS42 Pagid pads in the rear to keep the balance drivable. I would be karting along a set of 288 (OE size) discs and hardware to allow me to try downsizing at the rear as another experiment.
Also since Spa, I had spent what felt like hundreds of hours cleaning CV grease out of the engine bay, and I had upsized the supercharger pulley from 2.9" to 3.0". This would drop my maximum boost and hence power in my 'race mode' map, but hopefully drop IATs in both maps. With my ultimate power potential now a bit lower (I calculate around 15bhp down in the race mode map) I now feel brave enough to run it all day on the track, so really I am up on power compared to the rest of this year where I was timidly sat in the lower powered road map.
15bhp (and the associated torque) doesn't sound like much, but when you're right on the bubble for the accepted limits of the gearbox - it's a nice fluffy safety blanket.
The trackday was with Circuitdays, I think my first ever one. Some serious kit in attendance but a really good blend up and down the pitlane. From the trackday classics such as the Clio and the MX5 up to high end GT Porsches, race cars and everything in between. Special mention out to a pair of BMW cars, no idea what spec - but they were liveried up and seriously fast.
Sighting laps and first session underway, steady away really - reminding myself what the car felt like and where the track goes. Nothing exciting to report.
I was keeping half an eye on IATs, but just convinced myself to ignore them and review in the logs later. It can be misleading to watch stuff like that real time.
My passenger for the day would be short lived. Not literally, he didn't die - but he did forget his travel sickness pills so that was that :slight_smile:
Brakes felt good, still the very occasional wobble at the rear as it locked up (or tried to lock up, triggering ABS) so the bias I think was still a smidge too far back, but it was certainly driveable and would have happily kept going all day. External witnesses reported that my braking was inconsistent though, sometimes braking way too early, sometimes very aggressively deep into corners which apparently made following me quite interesting. Perhaps I was second guessing the brakes more than I realised from within the cockpit.
Slowly built up speed through the morning, felt like I was a fair bit off the potential of the car but I was enjoying it having a fair bit of mixed-pace traffic meant a slightly different vibe to the usual LoT day. It was fun, even if clear/flowing laps were rare.
A few of the NYLOC gang came out wielding cameras, so thanks PT and Mark for your content. Complemented the Circuitdays photography nicely.
Circuitdays photographer didn't seem to like the back of my car, luckily Paul stepped up.
Car felt really strong in the complex, and through the awkward Hawthorn into the chicane. The quicker stuff I felt like it struggled more than usual, wasn't getting the bite from the front end that I'd been accustomed to in this car. You could normally just flick the wheel at almost any speed and the nose would dart in, but at Croft I had to ease it in, wait for it to connect and then load her up. Initially I just put this down to the ageing AR1 possibly being past their best... I've had them well over a year now, and they even did a few trackdays on my Exige too before transferring them.
After I got home, it dawned on me that we'd made a damper change at Spa in a desperate attempt to stop the rears locking. I stiffened the crap out of the front to try and stop it diving on the brakes, and in hindsight I'm not sure I ever reverted that! At time of writing I haven't checked yet, as car is still in the trailer - but it's something I'll definitely check for.
In any case, it didn't seem to spoil my day - and in all honesty taking a steady line through the faster stuff wasn't all that upsetting - it's scary when you're on full attack through there anyway!!
At some time around midmorning I ran into Circuitdays Instructor, fellow 2-Eleven owner and PH poster Steve. Nice to meet you, I'll make CD a bigger part of my TD calendar in future and definitely try to get some time booked in with you. I've really missed tuition since getting the 2-Eleven but it sounds like you have a system that we could adapt, and get some value out of it.
At lunch time I really wasn't motivated to swap the rear discs over as I'd intended. The car was driving 'fine' and I was feeling pretty knackered from the morning excercise. Luckily though, I found somebody who WAS motivated, in stepped John from @seriouslylotus to kindly lend some tools, and hands, and expertise to get things swapped over sharpish.
The AP 2 pot calipers were fitted with spacers and longer bolts to allow for the large discs, so all we had to do there was drop the spacers out and refit the original bolts. The handbrake caliper though would remain offset by too much, so is effectively hanging off the disc now. This can be fixed if I commit to this route full time by modifications to the bracket, but in the meantime it would still function just fine.
I wanted to go straight in and refit the aggressive pads to the rears, but I was talked out of it. Keep the RS42 in and change as few variables as possible.
Going out after lunch the car immediately felt more comforting on the brakes. No question it had lost some all-out stopping power, but I seemed to gain a load of feel through the pedal when braking on the limit which was lost before. The power assisted, ABS brakes in the S2 platform have never been known for their pedal feel compared to the unassisted setup in the S1/Rover cars - but I'd been missing a bit of feedback without realising.
I'm not sure why this is, maybe because the stopping power is slightly less intense now and I have a bit more time to compute what is happening, or maybe because the balance is now thrown forward enough that it's the fronts reaching their limits first and the front circuit provided better feedback? Really don't know, but it felt better.
The next logical step is to put the aggressive pad back in the back so I'm matching compounds - but that's a job for the next trackday I think, I want to get used to my new baseline for now.
The afternoon continued being fun, didn't really feel like I was picking up any pace and started stagnating. The red flags didn't help, we seemed to have 5 or 6 within a couple of hours and always seemed to be as I was starting a session - but still got plenty of laps squeezed in.
Very late in the day a chap wandered up and asked for a passenger ride, to which I of course obliged. After getting him strapped in and out on track, the car felt really good for some reason. Normally you can really feel the penalty of a passenger in this car, but for whatever reason the stars aligned, we got nice flowing traffic and the car just felt great. Because of the sudden distraction of a passenger jumping in, I forgot to fire up the gopro but the ADU logs concur that it was my best, most consistent session by far. Very odd, as usually a passenger is worth a couple of seconds!
Eager to get out for one more ride solo, it dawned on me that I'd used the dregs of my fuel and that was me done for the day. I tried to sneak out for a couple of laps with Ishy (resident NYLOC driving instructor) but we barely made it round the outlap before the car cut out on a left hander.
Oh well, finished a bit early but the car finished without any niggles - pulled strong all day and we had some good science achieved on the brakes.
Rear tyres seem to be maximising their camber, and wear going down to the wear indicators. This may be because the front was too stiff after the Spa damper changes, but it may also mean I could benefit from a sliver more camber at the rear. Something to consider.
As for IATs, the logs showed a clear and consistent result of approx. 10C savings from stepping up a pulley size.
This is a snippet from a log from Donington earlier in the year, on 2.9":
And this is from Croft on 3.0":
Obviously different days, and different ambients - but the Donington IAT performance is consistent across all of my 2023 trackdays. Ambient has a very diminished effect on IATs when out on track IME, you need huge swings to see noticeable differences and it's typically a case of heatsoaking the hardware when stationary which is the problem rather than on-the-move performance.
I'm not sure what this means yet. As a result of the lower temps, my ECU was only retarding 0.5 deg rather than the 1.0-1.5 it was pulling at Donny. Is that enough to reclaim the 15bhp we've dropped by lowering boost? No idea. But it feels good to be stressing the hardware a little less.
Oh, and I used 'race mode' all day and nowt' blew up. That also felt good. Through capping my boost via DBW throttle in the road mode map, I'd been strangling the "vtec" lift gains more than I'd realised. A few times round Croft the car had really (pleasantly) surprised me once it was really singing. Felt great.
In terms of video, my ageing GoPro 6 has had a bit of a failure - the onboard GPS just doesn't work anymore. It sounds like a non-issue, but it's such a useful tool when buddied up with RaceRender software to just open up a clip, and instantly identify your 'clear' laps. You can turn a YT video round in minutes based on quickly picking out your quicker laps. Without it, you're left trawling through an hour or two of footage to pick good bits out, and I just can't be bothered anymore!
For that reason, I've just trimmed a full session and stuck that up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eB9h-8fZeg
It was quite late in the day, I think it was the session just before the mythical passenger session that I did (and didn't record). Not even watched it all myself yet, but from skimming through it seems a pretty fair representation of the day with regards to other cars on track.
Top day, not much to do on the car before the next one - but also quite a big gap in the calendar till' my next one - so need to find something to do.
First trackday since Spa which feels like a lifetime ago, it's probably the biggest gap I've had between trackdays outside of the Winter months since ever!
Since Spa the brake setup had remained the same, with the big discs all around and the road intended RS42 Pagid pads in the rear to keep the balance drivable. I would be karting along a set of 288 (OE size) discs and hardware to allow me to try downsizing at the rear as another experiment.
Also since Spa, I had spent what felt like hundreds of hours cleaning CV grease out of the engine bay, and I had upsized the supercharger pulley from 2.9" to 3.0". This would drop my maximum boost and hence power in my 'race mode' map, but hopefully drop IATs in both maps. With my ultimate power potential now a bit lower (I calculate around 15bhp down in the race mode map) I now feel brave enough to run it all day on the track, so really I am up on power compared to the rest of this year where I was timidly sat in the lower powered road map.
15bhp (and the associated torque) doesn't sound like much, but when you're right on the bubble for the accepted limits of the gearbox - it's a nice fluffy safety blanket.
The trackday was with Circuitdays, I think my first ever one. Some serious kit in attendance but a really good blend up and down the pitlane. From the trackday classics such as the Clio and the MX5 up to high end GT Porsches, race cars and everything in between. Special mention out to a pair of BMW cars, no idea what spec - but they were liveried up and seriously fast.
Sighting laps and first session underway, steady away really - reminding myself what the car felt like and where the track goes. Nothing exciting to report.
I was keeping half an eye on IATs, but just convinced myself to ignore them and review in the logs later. It can be misleading to watch stuff like that real time.
My passenger for the day would be short lived. Not literally, he didn't die - but he did forget his travel sickness pills so that was that :slight_smile:
Brakes felt good, still the very occasional wobble at the rear as it locked up (or tried to lock up, triggering ABS) so the bias I think was still a smidge too far back, but it was certainly driveable and would have happily kept going all day. External witnesses reported that my braking was inconsistent though, sometimes braking way too early, sometimes very aggressively deep into corners which apparently made following me quite interesting. Perhaps I was second guessing the brakes more than I realised from within the cockpit.
Slowly built up speed through the morning, felt like I was a fair bit off the potential of the car but I was enjoying it having a fair bit of mixed-pace traffic meant a slightly different vibe to the usual LoT day. It was fun, even if clear/flowing laps were rare.
A few of the NYLOC gang came out wielding cameras, so thanks PT and Mark for your content. Complemented the Circuitdays photography nicely.
Circuitdays photographer didn't seem to like the back of my car, luckily Paul stepped up.
Car felt really strong in the complex, and through the awkward Hawthorn into the chicane. The quicker stuff I felt like it struggled more than usual, wasn't getting the bite from the front end that I'd been accustomed to in this car. You could normally just flick the wheel at almost any speed and the nose would dart in, but at Croft I had to ease it in, wait for it to connect and then load her up. Initially I just put this down to the ageing AR1 possibly being past their best... I've had them well over a year now, and they even did a few trackdays on my Exige too before transferring them.
After I got home, it dawned on me that we'd made a damper change at Spa in a desperate attempt to stop the rears locking. I stiffened the crap out of the front to try and stop it diving on the brakes, and in hindsight I'm not sure I ever reverted that! At time of writing I haven't checked yet, as car is still in the trailer - but it's something I'll definitely check for.
In any case, it didn't seem to spoil my day - and in all honesty taking a steady line through the faster stuff wasn't all that upsetting - it's scary when you're on full attack through there anyway!!
At some time around midmorning I ran into Circuitdays Instructor, fellow 2-Eleven owner and PH poster Steve. Nice to meet you, I'll make CD a bigger part of my TD calendar in future and definitely try to get some time booked in with you. I've really missed tuition since getting the 2-Eleven but it sounds like you have a system that we could adapt, and get some value out of it.
At lunch time I really wasn't motivated to swap the rear discs over as I'd intended. The car was driving 'fine' and I was feeling pretty knackered from the morning excercise. Luckily though, I found somebody who WAS motivated, in stepped John from @seriouslylotus to kindly lend some tools, and hands, and expertise to get things swapped over sharpish.
The AP 2 pot calipers were fitted with spacers and longer bolts to allow for the large discs, so all we had to do there was drop the spacers out and refit the original bolts. The handbrake caliper though would remain offset by too much, so is effectively hanging off the disc now. This can be fixed if I commit to this route full time by modifications to the bracket, but in the meantime it would still function just fine.
I wanted to go straight in and refit the aggressive pads to the rears, but I was talked out of it. Keep the RS42 in and change as few variables as possible.
Going out after lunch the car immediately felt more comforting on the brakes. No question it had lost some all-out stopping power, but I seemed to gain a load of feel through the pedal when braking on the limit which was lost before. The power assisted, ABS brakes in the S2 platform have never been known for their pedal feel compared to the unassisted setup in the S1/Rover cars - but I'd been missing a bit of feedback without realising.
I'm not sure why this is, maybe because the stopping power is slightly less intense now and I have a bit more time to compute what is happening, or maybe because the balance is now thrown forward enough that it's the fronts reaching their limits first and the front circuit provided better feedback? Really don't know, but it felt better.
The next logical step is to put the aggressive pad back in the back so I'm matching compounds - but that's a job for the next trackday I think, I want to get used to my new baseline for now.
The afternoon continued being fun, didn't really feel like I was picking up any pace and started stagnating. The red flags didn't help, we seemed to have 5 or 6 within a couple of hours and always seemed to be as I was starting a session - but still got plenty of laps squeezed in.
Very late in the day a chap wandered up and asked for a passenger ride, to which I of course obliged. After getting him strapped in and out on track, the car felt really good for some reason. Normally you can really feel the penalty of a passenger in this car, but for whatever reason the stars aligned, we got nice flowing traffic and the car just felt great. Because of the sudden distraction of a passenger jumping in, I forgot to fire up the gopro but the ADU logs concur that it was my best, most consistent session by far. Very odd, as usually a passenger is worth a couple of seconds!
Eager to get out for one more ride solo, it dawned on me that I'd used the dregs of my fuel and that was me done for the day. I tried to sneak out for a couple of laps with Ishy (resident NYLOC driving instructor) but we barely made it round the outlap before the car cut out on a left hander.
Oh well, finished a bit early but the car finished without any niggles - pulled strong all day and we had some good science achieved on the brakes.
Rear tyres seem to be maximising their camber, and wear going down to the wear indicators. This may be because the front was too stiff after the Spa damper changes, but it may also mean I could benefit from a sliver more camber at the rear. Something to consider.
As for IATs, the logs showed a clear and consistent result of approx. 10C savings from stepping up a pulley size.
This is a snippet from a log from Donington earlier in the year, on 2.9":
And this is from Croft on 3.0":
Obviously different days, and different ambients - but the Donington IAT performance is consistent across all of my 2023 trackdays. Ambient has a very diminished effect on IATs when out on track IME, you need huge swings to see noticeable differences and it's typically a case of heatsoaking the hardware when stationary which is the problem rather than on-the-move performance.
I'm not sure what this means yet. As a result of the lower temps, my ECU was only retarding 0.5 deg rather than the 1.0-1.5 it was pulling at Donny. Is that enough to reclaim the 15bhp we've dropped by lowering boost? No idea. But it feels good to be stressing the hardware a little less.
Oh, and I used 'race mode' all day and nowt' blew up. That also felt good. Through capping my boost via DBW throttle in the road mode map, I'd been strangling the "vtec" lift gains more than I'd realised. A few times round Croft the car had really (pleasantly) surprised me once it was really singing. Felt great.
In terms of video, my ageing GoPro 6 has had a bit of a failure - the onboard GPS just doesn't work anymore. It sounds like a non-issue, but it's such a useful tool when buddied up with RaceRender software to just open up a clip, and instantly identify your 'clear' laps. You can turn a YT video round in minutes based on quickly picking out your quicker laps. Without it, you're left trawling through an hour or two of footage to pick good bits out, and I just can't be bothered anymore!
For that reason, I've just trimmed a full session and stuck that up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eB9h-8fZeg
It was quite late in the day, I think it was the session just before the mythical passenger session that I did (and didn't record). Not even watched it all myself yet, but from skimming through it seems a pretty fair representation of the day with regards to other cars on track.
Top day, not much to do on the car before the next one - but also quite a big gap in the calendar till' my next one - so need to find something to do.
Steve H said:
Nice writeup Fonzey and I look forward to seeing you on our days again and getting out in the car 
.
The BMWs you mentioned are regulars of ours, quick cars with good pedalers in them!
Since we are now after the event and you would just be referring to datalogs do you mind if I ask what kind of lap times you were doing on Monday?
I believe it was in the region of 1.33/1.34, does that sound realistic? I'll double check at the weekend..The BMWs you mentioned are regulars of ours, quick cars with good pedalers in them!
Since we are now after the event and you would just be referring to datalogs do you mind if I ask what kind of lap times you were doing on Monday?
I did check, and recall it being in the same ballpark as my Exige was a couple of years ago. This will be the first track I've attended this year where the car wasn't notably faster than my Exige was, so I do need to spend some time in the logs to find out why!
Since Croft the car got wheeled onto the ramp, and didn't move again until it was trailer time for Hethel.
In the downtime I made another rear brake iteration, by putting the performance friction pads back in the rear but retaining the smaller 288mm discs. I'd be taking the less aggressive pagid pads in the event I felt the rears were too keen once I got on track. As a reminder of my iterations to date:
308mm front/rear with PF08 front/rear at Spa: Far too biased to the rear, and very grabby
308mm front/rear with PF08 front and RS4-2 rear: Much more drivable, but a bit grabby occasionally still at the rear
308mm front/288mm rear with PF08 front and RS4-2 rear: More driveable again, but noticeable loss of bite
Whilst also poking around, I found my DIY archliner (roof flashing tape) had drooped on the driver side, just enough so that the tyre could pick up the tar-like substance (tar?) and fling it everywhere. I wonder if this contributed towards my occasional understeer in the car as the tyre edges were covered in it!
Luckily Mothers to the rescue.
Speaking of understeer, I also reset my dampers to service manual settings after cocking around with them at Spa to try and rescue the brakes.
I also tried some new shoes on whilst the car was up in the air. Pretty nice, a bit lighter than my 2-Eleven/240R wheels so these may find a spare set of tyres on them at some point even if I prefer the look of the 240Rs.
Cleaned up ready for action.
Next trackday would be Hethel, and photography is not really allowed here - so content will be limited unfortunately, but it was a belting day. First though you need to endure the drive there...
Best part of four hours, even with a quick pee break. Really hard work, but got to the Hotel in time for a beer and then the worst nights' sleep on record.
(not so) Bright and early at the circuit and soon made a friend in the form of John and his 2010 2-Eleven. I think it's the only other one I've seen at a UK trackday since I got mine.
Again, no photography or video so a quick summary of the day:
Car went great all day, another flawless day for reliability/performance
Without cameras and stuff like that to distract me, I got my head down and took some notes/observations about the car as I steadily built my speed up. The car has always had a small amount of turn-in understeer which I've found comforting, but I was curious to see if I could dial it out, and what impact that would have in other areas.
During my poor nights' sleep I'd read a few blogs and found a good high level cheatsheet here:https://suspensionsecrets.co.uk/how-to-remove-oversteer-and-understeer
To cut a long story short, over 3 or 4 sessions I ended up adding two clicks of rebound damping which really did tighten the front end up nicely. I struggled to understand the logic trackside, but in retrospect it makes sense that by limiting the rebound 'return rate' was slowing the weight transfer that move rearward as I transition back onto power at corner entry. I did try going further than this, but felt that was coming at a cost of a slightly looser rear when transitioning from brake to neutral through the slower hairpin corners.
In fact, I spent a bit of time playing with the compression damping at the rear to try to remedy that but that was still a bit inconclusive. I found I was taking away the gains I'd made at the front, and ultimately having a bit of rotation mid corner at a hairpin works well for me anyway.
It was an enjoyable experience, and I was really seeing a strong correlation between the theory and my experience on track. I think there's a lot of information out there which can be very confusing and sometimes sound contradictory because people interchange terms like stiffer, slower, harder, faster, damping a lot - and you can tie yourselves in knots and actually interpret something backwards.
I also dabbled with tyre pressures a bit, lowering a couple of pounds at the rear did help me a bit in the hairpins but it was much less obvious than the damper tweaks.
As for the brakes, they were the best iteration I've had since putting the larger kit on. Putting the aggressive pads back in the back gave me back some bite that I'd lost with the pagids in. I had a bit of side to side instability early on, but I just put this down to bedding in yet another disc/pad combo.
I had a couple of issues braking into the chicane towards the end of the Mansell straight. It's a very fast straight, almost 140mph in the 2-Eleven which is quite a feat for this brick but the track kinks slightly left in the braking zone (easily countered once you figure out to just drive down the centre of the track, and only aim towards the outside in a straight line under braking) but there's also a change in tarmac right in the braking zone. A couple of times this triggered my ABS to crap its pants a bit, giving me a hard pedal and massively reduced braking power. Not like the cycling pumping of regular ABS intervention.
I think people refer to this as "ice mode", and I have to say it's not really something that's bothered me across any of my Lotus to date. Time will tell as to whether this is another symptom of changing the braking setup, or whether it was just track/corner specific.
It was easily driven around though, maybe I left a bit on the table after experiencing it for the first time - but it didn't really bother me despite being quite unnerving the first time it happened! It felt like releasing pedal for a fraction of a second and re-applying immediately would get me hauling up again.
As good as the brakes were, they did seem to be making me ill - so I had an extended lunch break trying to find some medication.
Afternoon progressed without drama, just steadily built up speed and really enjoyed just finding a groove and pounding round. Hethel is still a bit of a weird track for me, I could really benefit from some tuition here but... well, 2-Eleven isn't really too suited for that unfortunately.
Car after my tweaks felt a lot more assertive when turning in. During faster turns the rear end is as solid as you like, but retains that bit of rotation through the slower stuff on demand. Looking forward to getting back to some familiar turf to try my tweaks there, and see whether there's measurable difference on a circuit that I feel like I "know" properly.
After playing pesticide for the day, I called it and prepared myself for the long trek home.
Oulton Park next towards the end of October.
In the downtime I made another rear brake iteration, by putting the performance friction pads back in the rear but retaining the smaller 288mm discs. I'd be taking the less aggressive pagid pads in the event I felt the rears were too keen once I got on track. As a reminder of my iterations to date:
308mm front/rear with PF08 front/rear at Spa: Far too biased to the rear, and very grabby
308mm front/rear with PF08 front and RS4-2 rear: Much more drivable, but a bit grabby occasionally still at the rear
308mm front/288mm rear with PF08 front and RS4-2 rear: More driveable again, but noticeable loss of bite
Whilst also poking around, I found my DIY archliner (roof flashing tape) had drooped on the driver side, just enough so that the tyre could pick up the tar-like substance (tar?) and fling it everywhere. I wonder if this contributed towards my occasional understeer in the car as the tyre edges were covered in it!
Luckily Mothers to the rescue.
Speaking of understeer, I also reset my dampers to service manual settings after cocking around with them at Spa to try and rescue the brakes.
I also tried some new shoes on whilst the car was up in the air. Pretty nice, a bit lighter than my 2-Eleven/240R wheels so these may find a spare set of tyres on them at some point even if I prefer the look of the 240Rs.
Cleaned up ready for action.
Next trackday would be Hethel, and photography is not really allowed here - so content will be limited unfortunately, but it was a belting day. First though you need to endure the drive there...
Best part of four hours, even with a quick pee break. Really hard work, but got to the Hotel in time for a beer and then the worst nights' sleep on record.
(not so) Bright and early at the circuit and soon made a friend in the form of John and his 2010 2-Eleven. I think it's the only other one I've seen at a UK trackday since I got mine.
Again, no photography or video so a quick summary of the day:
Car went great all day, another flawless day for reliability/performance
Without cameras and stuff like that to distract me, I got my head down and took some notes/observations about the car as I steadily built my speed up. The car has always had a small amount of turn-in understeer which I've found comforting, but I was curious to see if I could dial it out, and what impact that would have in other areas.
During my poor nights' sleep I'd read a few blogs and found a good high level cheatsheet here:https://suspensionsecrets.co.uk/how-to-remove-oversteer-and-understeer
To cut a long story short, over 3 or 4 sessions I ended up adding two clicks of rebound damping which really did tighten the front end up nicely. I struggled to understand the logic trackside, but in retrospect it makes sense that by limiting the rebound 'return rate' was slowing the weight transfer that move rearward as I transition back onto power at corner entry. I did try going further than this, but felt that was coming at a cost of a slightly looser rear when transitioning from brake to neutral through the slower hairpin corners.
In fact, I spent a bit of time playing with the compression damping at the rear to try to remedy that but that was still a bit inconclusive. I found I was taking away the gains I'd made at the front, and ultimately having a bit of rotation mid corner at a hairpin works well for me anyway.
It was an enjoyable experience, and I was really seeing a strong correlation between the theory and my experience on track. I think there's a lot of information out there which can be very confusing and sometimes sound contradictory because people interchange terms like stiffer, slower, harder, faster, damping a lot - and you can tie yourselves in knots and actually interpret something backwards.
I also dabbled with tyre pressures a bit, lowering a couple of pounds at the rear did help me a bit in the hairpins but it was much less obvious than the damper tweaks.
As for the brakes, they were the best iteration I've had since putting the larger kit on. Putting the aggressive pads back in the back gave me back some bite that I'd lost with the pagids in. I had a bit of side to side instability early on, but I just put this down to bedding in yet another disc/pad combo.
I had a couple of issues braking into the chicane towards the end of the Mansell straight. It's a very fast straight, almost 140mph in the 2-Eleven which is quite a feat for this brick but the track kinks slightly left in the braking zone (easily countered once you figure out to just drive down the centre of the track, and only aim towards the outside in a straight line under braking) but there's also a change in tarmac right in the braking zone. A couple of times this triggered my ABS to crap its pants a bit, giving me a hard pedal and massively reduced braking power. Not like the cycling pumping of regular ABS intervention.
I think people refer to this as "ice mode", and I have to say it's not really something that's bothered me across any of my Lotus to date. Time will tell as to whether this is another symptom of changing the braking setup, or whether it was just track/corner specific.
It was easily driven around though, maybe I left a bit on the table after experiencing it for the first time - but it didn't really bother me despite being quite unnerving the first time it happened! It felt like releasing pedal for a fraction of a second and re-applying immediately would get me hauling up again.
As good as the brakes were, they did seem to be making me ill - so I had an extended lunch break trying to find some medication.
Afternoon progressed without drama, just steadily built up speed and really enjoyed just finding a groove and pounding round. Hethel is still a bit of a weird track for me, I could really benefit from some tuition here but... well, 2-Eleven isn't really too suited for that unfortunately.
Car after my tweaks felt a lot more assertive when turning in. During faster turns the rear end is as solid as you like, but retains that bit of rotation through the slower stuff on demand. Looking forward to getting back to some familiar turf to try my tweaks there, and see whether there's measurable difference on a circuit that I feel like I "know" properly.
After playing pesticide for the day, I called it and prepared myself for the long trek home.
Oulton Park next towards the end of October.
Yazza54 said:
Really Good Info
I'm also crap at multi quoting so I'll just pick up on your points in turn:Rake: This is an interesting one and could be an area for improvement. The front of my car is relatively jacked up mainly for ground clearance purposes. If racing and going for a balls out laptime setup, lowering the front a touch would probably be helpful.
ARBs and responsiveness vs grip:
I fully agree that there's a trade-off, and I personally seem to respond well to the car feeling sharper to drive even if it's at the cost of ultimate grip. Feeling the front end bite and react gives me the confidence to keep creeping up to the limit, and is why I'll probably never ever be fast in the wet as all feeling vanishes!
The Lotus platform only runs a front ARB, so we're limited on what we can play with here. Aftermarket kits exist for blade-style rear ARBs but they're pretty rare. I had some advice years ago from a driver that I trust who just said to adjust the ARB to max stiffness and forget about it, and seek car balance everywhere else (tyres, dampers, driving style, etc). That way you've always got an option to soften it right off, or detach it completely in monsoon conditions to allow the tyres to work a bit harder.
The last track car I had with both front and rear ARBs was my Impreza, which was plagued by chronic understeer until I softened the front right off, and stiffened the rear right up. It was noticeable and measurable, and probably would have gained fistfuls of lap time in a competitive environment.
Caster is maxed out with the shim arrangement, can't remember the exact figure - but I can't feasibly add more.
Croft: The car was definitely lazy and (I think) I complained about it at the time. Particularly with the JC Esses I felt like I was scrubbing off way too much speed waiting for the front to hook up and let me commit. I think here a skilled/confident driver could overcome it and push through, enjoying the understeer as a bit of a safety margin - but for me, it was a sign to keep scrubbing speed and try to keep out of the field.
My damper settings were all over the place for Croft, after I had been frantically cocking around at Spa trying to carry the brakes. I'm happy to say that the car at Hethel was very different, and much better in this department. Hopefully at Oulton I get some good footage and it would be interesting to see your observations of that and how it compares to Croft.
AR1s:
I haven't had any specific advice on how to use the wear marker, that's just the way my current geo/pressures is using the tread surface. The rear is even gobbling up part of the marker: Front/Rear here:
Wear across the surface is pretty even to be honest. I keep taking my very expensive IR camera/gun thing to trackdays and never remember to whip it out to measure tread temp.
The 2-Eleven can run much more camber than a standard Elise/Exige, but I'm still running 'book' figures which is close to what I had my Exige maxed at. I'm steadily collecting materials and equipment to give myself a proper alignment rig at home and I'm hoping to spend some time this winter on it. This will free me up to go to a local track like Blyton for instance with a much more aggressive setup as an experiment, knowing that I can easily revert if it's a disaster.
Camber opinions in the Lotus world seem to be largely divided. Particularly the US auto-cross guys chase massive camber figures, as much as they can front and rear. In the UK we're a lot more conservative and keep close to what Lotus recommend, with -1.5 to -1.7 at the front and ~ -2.5 at the rear. Based on my shims I think I could easily achieve -2.5F and -4R if I really wanted to.
I believe the Lotus geometry allows for camber change to be largely independent to toe adjustment, so you can afford to make regular changes trackside if so desired. Food for thought.
Joehow said:
Love the write ups on this. I'm pissing around with damper settings at the moment on my lowly Elise and find the process fascinating.
Car looks mega as always
Thank you! Yes I'm enjoying the process too, I've had adjustable dampers on cars before in which frankly I couldn't notice any difference! This is incredible though how just one or two clicks can alter the car.Car looks mega as always
Nothing lowly about an Elise
Oulton Update
Day started well as I fell off my trailer ramp unloading the car into a wet and miserable paddock.
As it's October of another busy year, the splitter was looking tatty anyway so a quick repair job to see the season out and we're on our way!
It was raining a bit for the sighting laps but we never got another drop after that. The track took an age to dry though, which meant for a slippy slidy morning session.
Was a pretty cool day, because for the first time the three Lotuses that I've owned would all be present at the same trackday. My Laser blue 111R, Laser blue Exige S and then of course the 2-Eleven. We hoped to get a good photo of them all flying in formation but it didn't really work out.
I was on the AR1 tyres but had some AD08 in the trailer. As the track was just damp, I stuck with the AR1 and I was pleasantly surprised. Had loads of grip in the nose of the car and traction seemed ample... until suddenly it wasn't.
Did my first lap at what I thought was a fairly steady pace, then about half way into the second one I lost the rear of the car quite badly in the Britten's chicane. I don't mind the car moving around on a wet day, and have thoroughly enjoyed my last few Anglesey's in monsoon conditions but this caught me completely by surprise and had to flail around to catch it in the most undignified way.
Back in for a breather, checked pressures and bolts and stuff like that and then went back out, desperately trying to build back up but feeling like I had no trust in when the grip would be there, and when it would not.
I quite enjoyed the morning, but I was easily one of the slowest cars on track. Just couldn't find a groove but I had a bit of fun chucking it into the chicanes and spent a lot of time working on my braking technique.
My recent habit of bias troubles and ABS drama encouraged me in the damp to be really progressive on the brakes rather than just stomping the bulkhead, and it quickly started to pay off.
Just before lunch, the faintest dry line was appearing and it looked promising for a dry afternoon.
First PM session was probably 70% dry and I quickly started piling on the speed. The mobile chicane I'd been driving in the morning quickly started becoming the hunter and as I leaned on the tyres more and more, the car responded and grew into the day nicely.
I did 3 or 4 sessions in the afternoon and they just got progressively quicker and quicker, I continued my braking technique from the morning and this was really paying dividends now. No ABS triggering at all, nice bit of rotation on entry when trailbraking and the stopping power was immense. Up near 1.65/1.7 G according to my dash which when achieved consistently represented a personal best.
Some time during the day I met and spoke to a previous owner of my 2-Eleven which was nice. Told me some tales to go with the many photos I have stored from previous ownerships, and filled in a few blanks too. Nice to meet you Simon.
Final session was an absolute belter, track was fairly empty and got a fair few clear laps in, building up and up and the car just kept giving and giving. Didn't touch my damper settings from Hethel but happy to say they weren't a fluke, and that the car felt mega in the dry here too. I had one complaint creeping in on this final session, I'm not sure if it was my imagination but my clutch pedal felt like it was a bit slower to come up after a gear change. It wasn't impacting the drive, but it was just an odd sensation under foot. I need to investigate. Oh, and I had one instance of ABS ice mode braking gently into druids.
I also had a passenger in for this session, and there's definitely nothing more to be said about that.
Based on my last experience out here in my Exige, I made pretty good advances in the first sector of the lap. T1, Cascades and Island Bend all significantly quicker (13kph quicker minimum speed in some corners) and my confidence on the brakes into the hairpin allowed for some real gains here. The generous camber of the banked corner goading me in, and rewarding with plenty of stability and no drama.
Around Druids I was still a bit tentative, I think I was second guessing the grip level at that end of the circuit, the blind (and very fast) corner leading into it was giving me cause for caution, but the net result was coming away feeling like I'd learned loads about the track in the last couple of hours - and pretty excited to get back there. I don't do Oulton as often as I'd like.
The only real mechanical/reliability issue was once again... GoPros. I had a brand new one on for today, GoPro Hero 10 rigged up with the media mod case and my external microphone setup, all tested nicely beforehand - but for some reason the battery just kept dropping from 100% to zero, then wouldn't take on any charge for ages.
Pic from a quick test at Hethel, though filming wasn't allowed here so couldn't use it in anger.
Really annoyed, GoPro support have had me do a manual firmware update which I was sceptical about, but in the days since the battery seems to be holding OK... so maybe. I do have the camera wired in whilst driving, so for my next outing I may try it without the battery completely and rely on the 12v from the car giving it juice.
Last session particularly would have been great footage so I'm pretty miffed - but if that's the only thing I broke, I won't cry too much.
Day started well as I fell off my trailer ramp unloading the car into a wet and miserable paddock.
As it's October of another busy year, the splitter was looking tatty anyway so a quick repair job to see the season out and we're on our way!
It was raining a bit for the sighting laps but we never got another drop after that. The track took an age to dry though, which meant for a slippy slidy morning session.
Was a pretty cool day, because for the first time the three Lotuses that I've owned would all be present at the same trackday. My Laser blue 111R, Laser blue Exige S and then of course the 2-Eleven. We hoped to get a good photo of them all flying in formation but it didn't really work out.
I was on the AR1 tyres but had some AD08 in the trailer. As the track was just damp, I stuck with the AR1 and I was pleasantly surprised. Had loads of grip in the nose of the car and traction seemed ample... until suddenly it wasn't.
Did my first lap at what I thought was a fairly steady pace, then about half way into the second one I lost the rear of the car quite badly in the Britten's chicane. I don't mind the car moving around on a wet day, and have thoroughly enjoyed my last few Anglesey's in monsoon conditions but this caught me completely by surprise and had to flail around to catch it in the most undignified way.
Back in for a breather, checked pressures and bolts and stuff like that and then went back out, desperately trying to build back up but feeling like I had no trust in when the grip would be there, and when it would not.
I quite enjoyed the morning, but I was easily one of the slowest cars on track. Just couldn't find a groove but I had a bit of fun chucking it into the chicanes and spent a lot of time working on my braking technique.
My recent habit of bias troubles and ABS drama encouraged me in the damp to be really progressive on the brakes rather than just stomping the bulkhead, and it quickly started to pay off.
Just before lunch, the faintest dry line was appearing and it looked promising for a dry afternoon.
First PM session was probably 70% dry and I quickly started piling on the speed. The mobile chicane I'd been driving in the morning quickly started becoming the hunter and as I leaned on the tyres more and more, the car responded and grew into the day nicely.
I did 3 or 4 sessions in the afternoon and they just got progressively quicker and quicker, I continued my braking technique from the morning and this was really paying dividends now. No ABS triggering at all, nice bit of rotation on entry when trailbraking and the stopping power was immense. Up near 1.65/1.7 G according to my dash which when achieved consistently represented a personal best.
Some time during the day I met and spoke to a previous owner of my 2-Eleven which was nice. Told me some tales to go with the many photos I have stored from previous ownerships, and filled in a few blanks too. Nice to meet you Simon.
Final session was an absolute belter, track was fairly empty and got a fair few clear laps in, building up and up and the car just kept giving and giving. Didn't touch my damper settings from Hethel but happy to say they weren't a fluke, and that the car felt mega in the dry here too. I had one complaint creeping in on this final session, I'm not sure if it was my imagination but my clutch pedal felt like it was a bit slower to come up after a gear change. It wasn't impacting the drive, but it was just an odd sensation under foot. I need to investigate. Oh, and I had one instance of ABS ice mode braking gently into druids.
I also had a passenger in for this session, and there's definitely nothing more to be said about that.
Based on my last experience out here in my Exige, I made pretty good advances in the first sector of the lap. T1, Cascades and Island Bend all significantly quicker (13kph quicker minimum speed in some corners) and my confidence on the brakes into the hairpin allowed for some real gains here. The generous camber of the banked corner goading me in, and rewarding with plenty of stability and no drama.
Around Druids I was still a bit tentative, I think I was second guessing the grip level at that end of the circuit, the blind (and very fast) corner leading into it was giving me cause for caution, but the net result was coming away feeling like I'd learned loads about the track in the last couple of hours - and pretty excited to get back there. I don't do Oulton as often as I'd like.
The only real mechanical/reliability issue was once again... GoPros. I had a brand new one on for today, GoPro Hero 10 rigged up with the media mod case and my external microphone setup, all tested nicely beforehand - but for some reason the battery just kept dropping from 100% to zero, then wouldn't take on any charge for ages.
Pic from a quick test at Hethel, though filming wasn't allowed here so couldn't use it in anger.
Really annoyed, GoPro support have had me do a manual firmware update which I was sceptical about, but in the days since the battery seems to be holding OK... so maybe. I do have the camera wired in whilst driving, so for my next outing I may try it without the battery completely and rely on the 12v from the car giving it juice.
Last session particularly would have been great footage so I'm pretty miffed - but if that's the only thing I broke, I won't cry too much.
Silverstone update.
All too soon, it's time for the season finale at Silverstone once again with Lotus on Track.
After the traditional meet up in the local premier inn pub the night before, it was time to brave the cold and shake off last nights beers for the trundle into the circuit. I commented last year on how daunting and impressive the place was... and it very much still is! Something about the sheer scale of the place, and today... it was ours.
The garages are absolutely mega here. Enough space for probably 12 cars comfortably, a private bog, lighting. What's not to love?!
It was wet, and very cold. The rain was barely an icy drizzle and didn't really persist beyond the first session but as with Oulton, the cold yet humid air meant that the track would stay moist until well into lunchtime.
Many lols aimed at the 2-Eleven driver for his poor choice of winter track toy, but I was pretty toasty on track to be fair in my longjohns and fleece. Less so stood around in the pitlane though, it was FREEZING!
Caught up with plenty of old faces, and met a few new ones too. Including long time sufferer from our small ECUMaster&Lotus community Stewie in his S3 Cup Elise, also bristling with Ecumaster toys. Nice to meet you! Car went great.
My experience of Silverstone last year was tainted a bit by me feeling a bit under the weather. We had a completely dry day, but I still just couldn't find my mojo and never really felt like I was leaning on the car.
Though it's a very wide circuit, with loads of run-off in place, it just wasn't somewhere I felt comfortable pushing on. I was determined to fix that this year.
Venturing out for the damp first few sessions I made it a point to get the car moving around a lot in the slower sections around Village. This seems to be my trick now on trackdays, if I get the car moving early in the day - it gives me a reference point and raises my comfort bar considerably. Once it dries out, I tend to carry this confidence forward and occasionally throw a decent lap together.
If it's dry and sticky from Lap 1, I sometimes fall too far short of the limit - and never really give myself that reference point.
After slipping and sliding around a bit, I was soon stringing some half decent (but still wet and slow) laps together. Last year was a turkey shoot with the Porsche GT cars and bigger powered V6 Exiges in attendance, but this time I felt like I was earning my spot on the track and was much less of a mobile chicane.
My first two sessions were pretty long, around 30mins each as I was convinced it was going to chuck it down and reset my calibration, so I wanted to make the most of the drying track and slowly build into it.
As Lunchtime approached, the track was almost totally dry everywhere but the Stowe -> Club section which stayed remarkably slippery. After lunch it was still a bit sketchy around there, but now we were properly leaning on the cars a bit and it was feeling great.
My speed relative to the other cars on track was completely different to last year. Though a 4cyl car is never going to be winning trackday P1's at Silverstone, the 2-Eleven had a brilliant showing and it was flattering me nicely.
Compared to last year I was significantly more committed in the flowing sections such as maggots/becketts and I was carrying much better speed on entry into the Luffield swooping loop final corner. The 2-Eleven party trick on the brakes doesn't get much opportunity to be exploited at Silverstone, but the ability to just shift direction with light throttle lifts was gaining me huge ground over the slightly heavier cars that needed to dab on the brakes and upset their momentum.
Had a few moments pushing too far into Becketts as the long left on entry would sucker me in to applying throttle sooner and sooner, to suddenly find I was running out of track for the tightening right to get onto the hangar straight. Was lots of fun though.
My commitment on entry into the two quick rights of Copse and Abbey was still weak. Always came through those with LOADS of track left to use, so need some brave pills here. Stowe I improved a bit on compared to last year, but still feels like there's room to push there too. The exit curb just jumps out at you for Stowe so it can rattle you a bit if you mistime entry.
It wouldn't be a trackday without a GoPro fail. It survived until the first session after lunch, but then it had it's weird overheating/crashing issue that it had at Oulton. After this it stopped recognising the external mic, as I later found. More on GoPros to come in my next post I think.
This was a decent lap as the track was drying. Ultimately I'd go on to be another couple of seconds quicker than this but my later session laps are borderline unwatchable as the external mic failed. The noise is horrific, but if anyone REALLY wants to see some laps from that session I'll oblige..
The main time gained in later laps compared to the video was speed carried into Stowe after it fully dried, but also not having the traffic through the Vale/Club section. Aside from that the lap is fairly representative of where I ended up.
According to what I can tell from videos, I'm 8 seconds faster than last year.
Traffic was a bit of an issue towards the end of the day, and light was fading quickly (particularly behind the tinted visor!) so ultimately called it about 35mins early with a very achy neck, but a s
t eating grin you could probably see from Brands Hatch.
Was a tremendous day and I've got a totally different opinion of driving Silverstone compared to this time last year.
Car was just a bit quicker through the various mods (plus I'd like to think a bit of driver improvement!) that I didn't feel like a rolling roadblock, yes it's not a race yada yada but it does get a bit irritating when you're constantly glued to your mirrors when trying to find some rhythm.
Some notable stats from GPS:
- 12kph quicker on the hangar straight compared to 2022.
- 10kph higher minimum speed through Stowe
- 15kph higher on Maggots entry
- 10kph higher on Becketts exit
Still plenty of speed to be had, you can see from the video that I'm rarely troubling exit curbs or even some apexes in fear of finding some water hiding on a curb, but the care felt lively yet reassuring and was a pleasure to drive.
It was a nice feeling to load back into the trailer with a fully working car. GoPros have been my only concern since Spa really, which is a good problem to have.
She's now tucked up in the garage. I think I said something earlier in the year along the lines of "the car is done, I just need to drive it now" but we'll see about that. Already been sorting and resorting my tools in the garage to try to keep busy...
All too soon, it's time for the season finale at Silverstone once again with Lotus on Track.
After the traditional meet up in the local premier inn pub the night before, it was time to brave the cold and shake off last nights beers for the trundle into the circuit. I commented last year on how daunting and impressive the place was... and it very much still is! Something about the sheer scale of the place, and today... it was ours.
The garages are absolutely mega here. Enough space for probably 12 cars comfortably, a private bog, lighting. What's not to love?!
It was wet, and very cold. The rain was barely an icy drizzle and didn't really persist beyond the first session but as with Oulton, the cold yet humid air meant that the track would stay moist until well into lunchtime.
Many lols aimed at the 2-Eleven driver for his poor choice of winter track toy, but I was pretty toasty on track to be fair in my longjohns and fleece. Less so stood around in the pitlane though, it was FREEZING!
Caught up with plenty of old faces, and met a few new ones too. Including long time sufferer from our small ECUMaster&Lotus community Stewie in his S3 Cup Elise, also bristling with Ecumaster toys. Nice to meet you! Car went great.
My experience of Silverstone last year was tainted a bit by me feeling a bit under the weather. We had a completely dry day, but I still just couldn't find my mojo and never really felt like I was leaning on the car.
Though it's a very wide circuit, with loads of run-off in place, it just wasn't somewhere I felt comfortable pushing on. I was determined to fix that this year.
Venturing out for the damp first few sessions I made it a point to get the car moving around a lot in the slower sections around Village. This seems to be my trick now on trackdays, if I get the car moving early in the day - it gives me a reference point and raises my comfort bar considerably. Once it dries out, I tend to carry this confidence forward and occasionally throw a decent lap together.
If it's dry and sticky from Lap 1, I sometimes fall too far short of the limit - and never really give myself that reference point.
After slipping and sliding around a bit, I was soon stringing some half decent (but still wet and slow) laps together. Last year was a turkey shoot with the Porsche GT cars and bigger powered V6 Exiges in attendance, but this time I felt like I was earning my spot on the track and was much less of a mobile chicane.
My first two sessions were pretty long, around 30mins each as I was convinced it was going to chuck it down and reset my calibration, so I wanted to make the most of the drying track and slowly build into it.
As Lunchtime approached, the track was almost totally dry everywhere but the Stowe -> Club section which stayed remarkably slippery. After lunch it was still a bit sketchy around there, but now we were properly leaning on the cars a bit and it was feeling great.
My speed relative to the other cars on track was completely different to last year. Though a 4cyl car is never going to be winning trackday P1's at Silverstone, the 2-Eleven had a brilliant showing and it was flattering me nicely.
Compared to last year I was significantly more committed in the flowing sections such as maggots/becketts and I was carrying much better speed on entry into the Luffield swooping loop final corner. The 2-Eleven party trick on the brakes doesn't get much opportunity to be exploited at Silverstone, but the ability to just shift direction with light throttle lifts was gaining me huge ground over the slightly heavier cars that needed to dab on the brakes and upset their momentum.
Had a few moments pushing too far into Becketts as the long left on entry would sucker me in to applying throttle sooner and sooner, to suddenly find I was running out of track for the tightening right to get onto the hangar straight. Was lots of fun though.
My commitment on entry into the two quick rights of Copse and Abbey was still weak. Always came through those with LOADS of track left to use, so need some brave pills here. Stowe I improved a bit on compared to last year, but still feels like there's room to push there too. The exit curb just jumps out at you for Stowe so it can rattle you a bit if you mistime entry.
It wouldn't be a trackday without a GoPro fail. It survived until the first session after lunch, but then it had it's weird overheating/crashing issue that it had at Oulton. After this it stopped recognising the external mic, as I later found. More on GoPros to come in my next post I think.
This was a decent lap as the track was drying. Ultimately I'd go on to be another couple of seconds quicker than this but my later session laps are borderline unwatchable as the external mic failed. The noise is horrific, but if anyone REALLY wants to see some laps from that session I'll oblige..
The main time gained in later laps compared to the video was speed carried into Stowe after it fully dried, but also not having the traffic through the Vale/Club section. Aside from that the lap is fairly representative of where I ended up.
According to what I can tell from videos, I'm 8 seconds faster than last year.
Traffic was a bit of an issue towards the end of the day, and light was fading quickly (particularly behind the tinted visor!) so ultimately called it about 35mins early with a very achy neck, but a s
t eating grin you could probably see from Brands Hatch.Was a tremendous day and I've got a totally different opinion of driving Silverstone compared to this time last year.
Car was just a bit quicker through the various mods (plus I'd like to think a bit of driver improvement!) that I didn't feel like a rolling roadblock, yes it's not a race yada yada but it does get a bit irritating when you're constantly glued to your mirrors when trying to find some rhythm.
Some notable stats from GPS:
- 12kph quicker on the hangar straight compared to 2022.
- 10kph higher minimum speed through Stowe
- 15kph higher on Maggots entry
- 10kph higher on Becketts exit
Still plenty of speed to be had, you can see from the video that I'm rarely troubling exit curbs or even some apexes in fear of finding some water hiding on a curb, but the care felt lively yet reassuring and was a pleasure to drive.
It was a nice feeling to load back into the trailer with a fully working car. GoPros have been my only concern since Spa really, which is a good problem to have.
She's now tucked up in the garage. I think I said something earlier in the year along the lines of "the car is done, I just need to drive it now" but we'll see about that. Already been sorting and resorting my tools in the garage to try to keep busy...
Happy Winter everyone.
I think I said sometime in summer that my car was effectively 'done' and it was just maintenance and trackdays from now on. Obviously that was wrong.
The brake updates I made mid-year have been steadily improved upon through the year. Playing with different compounds and disc sizes on the rear has got me to a place where the car does stop harder and better than it did originally, and still remains driveable when carrying some braking into corners etc.
Deep down though I do feel like I'm compromising the new setup, and running weaker pads and/or smaller discs in the rear to return some bias towards the front feels like I'm taking away some of the 'upgrades' that I'd invested in.
The setup I had going at Silverstone was really very good, and I should have left it at that. Obviously I haven't.
I had two main things to 'resolve':
Getting adjustable brake bias would allow me to put the bigger hardware back onto the rear, and control the balance at the master cylinder instead.
Then I had ABS. It's clear that the changes I've made are proving a little confusing to the ABS computer, even with the bias in a much more driveable state I'm getting fairly regular 'ice mode' on track. Now I know about it, I can drive around it - but it's still feeling like a bit of a regression.
Any fixes towards these two issues would need the front clam to come off. Luckily the work of a moment, think I have this down to about 15mins.
Aeroscreen comes off first, gets stored somewhere safe, then it's barely a dozen other fixings accessed from either the cabin or under the front splitter, then the car just sort of falls apart.
My prey for the first phase:
The two ways to get adjustable balance is either by restricting the rear circuit via a proportioning valve or to get a setup which uses twin master cylinders and a balance bar.
The Factory master cylinder has two outlets, one for front circuit and one for rear - with a fixed bias between the two.
I ruled out the proportioning valve because the plumbing with ABS was giving me a headache. The MC sends pressure to the ABS pump, then the ABS pump splits that out between the two rear wheels - so I'd need to have the valve between the MC and the ABS unit, and doing that whilst making the valve accessible to the driver was feeling like a pain.
Non ABS cars have a single brake line through the centre console, then it T's out at the rear - so much more convenient for sticking a valve in.
As for switching to twin master cylinders, I initially reached out to Pilbeam Racing as they're well known for doing Lotus pedalboxes. Their product is well tested, lots of happy people with them - but unfortunately part of their supply chain has fallen over, and currently none are being made. I then got bored of chasing somebody who clearly isn't bothered about selling any more, so that was that.
The only other ready made option I could find was the concept of a bias cage. Compbrake in the UK make some, they replace the booster and master cylinder on the clam side of the bulkhead, but leave the actual pedals and mechanism alone. The Compbrake ones look pretty flimsy, and don't get rave reviews.
I then came across an option from the US via BOE Fabrication.
After some discussions with them about choosing the right MC sizes, we ended up going with twin 0.75" units. Usually you'd run a smaller one for the rear circuit, to get more brake actuation at the back - but as I wanted to dial the rears back a bit, the even sized cylinders would hopefully bring me somewhere back in the 'zone'. There's then a remote adjuster which can be mounted in the cabin to give me a fairly wide range of adjustment to dial it in.
The construction seems very good, very solid and perhaps overengineered in a few areas. I guess any flex is bad with regards to pedal feel, and will lead to inconsistent pressure differential between front and rear circuits if the whole cage is flexing. There's no danger of this doing that, it's solid as you like.
An additional benefit over the pedalbox is that the MC's are plumbed into the fluid reservoir in its original position, unlike having independent 'pots' per MC. On a 2-Eleven that would be logistically very challenging as you get a tiny aperture in the clam to top up fluid.
The big change I've glossed over is losing the brake booster. Unassisted brakes, here I come. I'm actually quite hopeful about this change, as it's obviously a light car - and as light as the lightest factory S1's which all came without boosted brakes.
If you ever drive a Toyota Lotus back to back with a Rover one, the Toyota brake pedal truly does feel awful. The booster introduces a tiny bit of 'mehh' at the top of the travel, and I've experienced it on every single Toyota car ever driven. No amount of bleeding or fettling can remove it, IME.
My hope is that a passive benefit to all this is that I'll finally get a proper pedal. My dailies all have better brake pedals than the Lotus, which is a real shame for such a drivers' car.
Step one, upside down in the footwell to detach the rod from the pedal.
Was my first time doing this since getting the Tillett seats. Had my very own Nutty Putty experience upside down in the footwell. Google that if you don't like sleeping at night.
Was the matter of a few minutes to get the booster disconnected and pulled from the car after straightening my back out.
That little flanged adapter for the booster is one of those occasional nice finds of "nice bits" you find in a Lotus. Can't explain what I like about it, it's just nice.
After a few trial fits, I decided I wasn't happy with the pushrod that connects the pedal to the balance bar.
The "long" clevice was loctited onto the solid end of the rod, with the shorter one screwed into the other end with the jamnuts. This indicated that the rod length is adjusted by spinning the short clevice, but the long clevice is the one that fits around the brake pedal. This would put the adjustment and the locknuts in an inaccessible position within the assembly, meaning I'd need to remove the bias cage each time I wanted to tweak the length of the rod.
As a result, I took it apart and swapped the ends over. Much better.
I can now (Nutty Putty style) lay in the car, adjusting the length in situ and even get a miniature spanner on to lock up the locknuts.
After getting it bolted up, I then had some major concerns about clam clearance.
You can see the top row of my rad where the fins have been bent... this is where the front clam sits flush. The Tilton MCs come with -3an outlets and these random adapters were in just to keep crud out, but there's no way these would work. Luckily the Tiltons are machined for banjo bolts, which should allow me to run a short length of flexi from the MCs to some junction boxes/manifolds for brake pressure sensors.
I couldn't get over the clam clearance concerns, so popped the clam back on for a trial fit. It's close! But close works.
You can see where I've fettled the radiator lip down a bit. I'll maybe trim this, or fettle it a bit more once I know what the plumbing run looks like.
I'm pretty happy with the install, it's pretty tidy - and if I was leaving ABS alone then the install would probably be almost finished now. I'd just need to make new lines up from MC's to ABS unit, then job jobbed.
However... ABS is not getting left alone.
Three main choices here to fix the ice mode:
1) Toggle the ABS off when I get to a trackday. Easy thing to implement, but would then rob my ECU of speed sensor data meaning no traction control.
2) Delete ABS completely. Leave the electronic gubbins behind to retain the speed sensor data.
3) Motorsport ABS.
At time of fitting this bias cage, I genuinely didn't know which way to go. I'd taken the ABS pump out just to give me some working space, but no decisions had been made.
If I go for an ABS delete, then plumbing is just MC -> T Piece -> 2x Calipers for both front and rear circuit. Could be done in a few hours and that's job done.
If going for Motorsport ABS, then depending on what that looks like, how big it is and how it's orientated - I'll need to find a home for it, then custom plumbing, and some electrics, new wheelspeed sensors (need Hall effect sensors), etc. Lots of work.
Despite no decisions being made yet, I still took a hub off. You know, just to take a look.
That's about up to date now, decisions will influence next steps and timescales - but so far, happy to be back on the spanners again.
I did find a kink in my chargecooler hose which is likely contributing to my perceived poor flow rate in the 2-Eleven. The Exige one always seemed to flow better, tbh. This will be an easy fix.
I think I said sometime in summer that my car was effectively 'done' and it was just maintenance and trackdays from now on. Obviously that was wrong.
The brake updates I made mid-year have been steadily improved upon through the year. Playing with different compounds and disc sizes on the rear has got me to a place where the car does stop harder and better than it did originally, and still remains driveable when carrying some braking into corners etc.
Deep down though I do feel like I'm compromising the new setup, and running weaker pads and/or smaller discs in the rear to return some bias towards the front feels like I'm taking away some of the 'upgrades' that I'd invested in.
The setup I had going at Silverstone was really very good, and I should have left it at that. Obviously I haven't.
I had two main things to 'resolve':
Getting adjustable brake bias would allow me to put the bigger hardware back onto the rear, and control the balance at the master cylinder instead.
Then I had ABS. It's clear that the changes I've made are proving a little confusing to the ABS computer, even with the bias in a much more driveable state I'm getting fairly regular 'ice mode' on track. Now I know about it, I can drive around it - but it's still feeling like a bit of a regression.
Any fixes towards these two issues would need the front clam to come off. Luckily the work of a moment, think I have this down to about 15mins.
Aeroscreen comes off first, gets stored somewhere safe, then it's barely a dozen other fixings accessed from either the cabin or under the front splitter, then the car just sort of falls apart.
My prey for the first phase:
The two ways to get adjustable balance is either by restricting the rear circuit via a proportioning valve or to get a setup which uses twin master cylinders and a balance bar.
The Factory master cylinder has two outlets, one for front circuit and one for rear - with a fixed bias between the two.
I ruled out the proportioning valve because the plumbing with ABS was giving me a headache. The MC sends pressure to the ABS pump, then the ABS pump splits that out between the two rear wheels - so I'd need to have the valve between the MC and the ABS unit, and doing that whilst making the valve accessible to the driver was feeling like a pain.
Non ABS cars have a single brake line through the centre console, then it T's out at the rear - so much more convenient for sticking a valve in.
As for switching to twin master cylinders, I initially reached out to Pilbeam Racing as they're well known for doing Lotus pedalboxes. Their product is well tested, lots of happy people with them - but unfortunately part of their supply chain has fallen over, and currently none are being made. I then got bored of chasing somebody who clearly isn't bothered about selling any more, so that was that.
The only other ready made option I could find was the concept of a bias cage. Compbrake in the UK make some, they replace the booster and master cylinder on the clam side of the bulkhead, but leave the actual pedals and mechanism alone. The Compbrake ones look pretty flimsy, and don't get rave reviews.
I then came across an option from the US via BOE Fabrication.
After some discussions with them about choosing the right MC sizes, we ended up going with twin 0.75" units. Usually you'd run a smaller one for the rear circuit, to get more brake actuation at the back - but as I wanted to dial the rears back a bit, the even sized cylinders would hopefully bring me somewhere back in the 'zone'. There's then a remote adjuster which can be mounted in the cabin to give me a fairly wide range of adjustment to dial it in.
The construction seems very good, very solid and perhaps overengineered in a few areas. I guess any flex is bad with regards to pedal feel, and will lead to inconsistent pressure differential between front and rear circuits if the whole cage is flexing. There's no danger of this doing that, it's solid as you like.
An additional benefit over the pedalbox is that the MC's are plumbed into the fluid reservoir in its original position, unlike having independent 'pots' per MC. On a 2-Eleven that would be logistically very challenging as you get a tiny aperture in the clam to top up fluid.
The big change I've glossed over is losing the brake booster. Unassisted brakes, here I come. I'm actually quite hopeful about this change, as it's obviously a light car - and as light as the lightest factory S1's which all came without boosted brakes.
If you ever drive a Toyota Lotus back to back with a Rover one, the Toyota brake pedal truly does feel awful. The booster introduces a tiny bit of 'mehh' at the top of the travel, and I've experienced it on every single Toyota car ever driven. No amount of bleeding or fettling can remove it, IME.
My hope is that a passive benefit to all this is that I'll finally get a proper pedal. My dailies all have better brake pedals than the Lotus, which is a real shame for such a drivers' car.
Step one, upside down in the footwell to detach the rod from the pedal.
Was my first time doing this since getting the Tillett seats. Had my very own Nutty Putty experience upside down in the footwell. Google that if you don't like sleeping at night.
Was the matter of a few minutes to get the booster disconnected and pulled from the car after straightening my back out.
That little flanged adapter for the booster is one of those occasional nice finds of "nice bits" you find in a Lotus. Can't explain what I like about it, it's just nice.
After a few trial fits, I decided I wasn't happy with the pushrod that connects the pedal to the balance bar.
The "long" clevice was loctited onto the solid end of the rod, with the shorter one screwed into the other end with the jamnuts. This indicated that the rod length is adjusted by spinning the short clevice, but the long clevice is the one that fits around the brake pedal. This would put the adjustment and the locknuts in an inaccessible position within the assembly, meaning I'd need to remove the bias cage each time I wanted to tweak the length of the rod.
As a result, I took it apart and swapped the ends over. Much better.
I can now (Nutty Putty style) lay in the car, adjusting the length in situ and even get a miniature spanner on to lock up the locknuts.
After getting it bolted up, I then had some major concerns about clam clearance.
You can see the top row of my rad where the fins have been bent... this is where the front clam sits flush. The Tilton MCs come with -3an outlets and these random adapters were in just to keep crud out, but there's no way these would work. Luckily the Tiltons are machined for banjo bolts, which should allow me to run a short length of flexi from the MCs to some junction boxes/manifolds for brake pressure sensors.
I couldn't get over the clam clearance concerns, so popped the clam back on for a trial fit. It's close! But close works.
You can see where I've fettled the radiator lip down a bit. I'll maybe trim this, or fettle it a bit more once I know what the plumbing run looks like.
I'm pretty happy with the install, it's pretty tidy - and if I was leaving ABS alone then the install would probably be almost finished now. I'd just need to make new lines up from MC's to ABS unit, then job jobbed.
However... ABS is not getting left alone.
Three main choices here to fix the ice mode:
1) Toggle the ABS off when I get to a trackday. Easy thing to implement, but would then rob my ECU of speed sensor data meaning no traction control.
2) Delete ABS completely. Leave the electronic gubbins behind to retain the speed sensor data.
3) Motorsport ABS.
At time of fitting this bias cage, I genuinely didn't know which way to go. I'd taken the ABS pump out just to give me some working space, but no decisions had been made.
If I go for an ABS delete, then plumbing is just MC -> T Piece -> 2x Calipers for both front and rear circuit. Could be done in a few hours and that's job done.
If going for Motorsport ABS, then depending on what that looks like, how big it is and how it's orientated - I'll need to find a home for it, then custom plumbing, and some electrics, new wheelspeed sensors (need Hall effect sensors), etc. Lots of work.
Despite no decisions being made yet, I still took a hub off. You know, just to take a look.
That's about up to date now, decisions will influence next steps and timescales - but so far, happy to be back on the spanners again.
I did find a kink in my chargecooler hose which is likely contributing to my perceived poor flow rate in the 2-Eleven. The Exige one always seemed to flow better, tbh. This will be an easy fix.
The decision was always to just go for an ABS delete, as Motorsport units were on my radar and just far too expensive for something as unsexy as braking.
That changed a month or two back when I saw a used Bosch M4 kit come up for same from a 2-Eleven race car. It was like it was meant to be, wiring was sure to be right for the car and it even included the later S3 Elise wheelspeed hubs that worked with Hall effect sensors. Oh, and it was a fraction of the cost of a new unit.
I discussed a bit with the seller, but eventually bottled it. No problem with the seller at all, shared all the info I could possibly need and the unit was priced fairly but I spoke to a couple of Bosch specialists about the serviceability of these just in case I needed support with it down the line who all reported that these units could not be serviced at all, and if they die... they die.
Despite this M4 still being much cheaper than new, it was still a lot to spend on something with unknown history, so I bailed.
The way my brain works though, meant I'd now approved a spend for that amount... and in steps SCS Delta.
SCS are in the standalone ECU market and I believe have some ex-Lotus bods on the team, so they've always been on my radar for the PnP kits that they provide for Lotuses. They also happen to be one of the few to come out with their own Motorsport ABS unit and it's extremely close in price to the used M4 I was considering:
This is the GenII version, I think their GenI has been out for a couple of years now but the II has only just surfaced. I won't pretend to know all the details between the two but the main pump seems a lot more compact (and lighter) and the electronics are all built into it now, whereas GenI had a standalone ECU for it.
It's suspiciously close to the Bosch units both in physical appearance, the switchgear/accessories used but also the CAN stream uses an identical format and address schema.
This still wasn't a slam dunk, and I meant it when I said that I was still debating this as I was bolting the brake bias cage to the car, but I guess it was always inevitable.
This is exciting to me for two core reasons, one that I get to 'fix forward', maintain ABS and arguably improve the potential of the brakes even further, but second as this adds some nice data into my datalogging suite that I'm steadily building up.
The strategy on the ABS unit uses information from a supplied yaw sensor and also brake pressure sensor for both front and rear circuits (I think rear sensor is informational only), and all of this information can be spewed out over the canbus along with wheelspeed data from each corner.
I currently collect wheelspeed data from the factory ABS, which outputs to the ADU digidash via digital inputs, then the ADU shares with the ECU via canbus so I can take the ADU middleman out now which frees up four digital inputs on that, though god knows what I'll use them for.
Having everything laid out in front of me on the kitchen island was making this all feel a bit daunting. SCS have done a great job with the supplied wiring harness but it is not Lotus specific, and is intended to be generic. With most ABS units living in an engine bay, alongside an engine I think the branch lengths are not really ideal for a Lotus architecture.
That said, as soon as I started draping it over the car in the garage it was all feeling a lot more doable. I think I only need to extend one branch for the yaw sensor, but everything else will reach where I need it to go. If anything, I'm likely to have a load of excess wiring bunched up in a few places, so I need to think about how much that bothers me and if shortening certain bits is worthwhile.
Aforementioned draping
Installation gives me a few challenges to chew on, some I have solutions in flight but others are still awaiting inspiration.
1) Also applies to the tilton remote bias adjuster knob but I have very limited dash space in the 2-Eleven for mounting new switches and buttons. When strapped in, I only have two panels I can reach and they're already fairly occupied:
The doorcard driver panel:
The Centre lightswitch panel, you can see what I'm thinking here:
Plan is to get them both remade, with a slightly more condensed layout allowing for more buttons to be fitted. Centre panel will contain all of the light switches, and will relocate starter button here. Side panel will contain the TC knob, ABS Slip knob and Bias knob.
I then still need to find space for the ABS toggle switch and the ABS error light. The error light is somewhat redundant as my ADU will display the warnings received via canbus, but having it mounted somewhere as a failsafe alarm probably still makes sense.
2) Plumbing, not really a challenge as such but is something I need to get my head around. I'd tied myself in knots for ages on flexible braided hoses vs solid lines, but have decided for now to go flexible as it will give me different mounting options in the short term while I figure everything out. The flexible runs into the chassis hard lines will be very short.
3) Wheelspeed sensors, Lotus use GM bearing packs with integrated sensors and my old fashioned ones would not work with a Motorsport ABS install. Luckily Lotus switched to a fancy Bosch ESP/ABS system in later life - whilst keeping all other suspension components largely the same, so there's a plug and play option already available - and pretty cheap direct from SKF:
The wiring plug though is different to those supplied on the SCS wiring, so I need to make some adapters.
4) Mounting, obviously the pump needs a home. The OEM location by the OSF wheelarch could maybe be used, but there's a massive void in the 2-Eleven where the Elise/Exige HVAC stuff lives and I'd like to use that if possible. Moves the unit to the centreline of the car, lower down and makes for tidier wiring/plumbing routes. Still working on this.
5) Finally, electronics/data. As I said earlier I need to extend the yaw sensor wiring at least to mount the yaw sensor at the CoG of the car (somewhere under the handbrake). Then we have the canbus stuff, me being me started working on this weeks ago before I even had decided on buying a kit.
This is a mockup of an ABS diagnostics page I could have on the digidash,
The dual pressor sensors will give me a real-time reading of what the balance % is like between the front and rear circuits, which will help me when 'dialling in' the tilton balance bar. With the balance bar at 50:50, my real "at the disc" bias is actually 60F/40R due to the different calipers so I need to keep that in mind - but it's good to have figures to reference when trying to find the sweetspot.
The "slip switch" settings will also take some learning. I guess for someone as clubfooted as me in a car the finesse between the 9(?) settings is probably lost. But it should be reasonable to expect that I can find a 'dry' mode and a 'wet' mode. Backed by data I'd like to think I can substitute my lack of car dynamic appreciation to find an optimal setting for both the balance bar and the slip switch.
That brings us roughly up to speed. I'd really like to have the plumbing done before Christmas and maybe even fluid in and bled. I go away for two weeks on Boxing Day then I have some building work potentially kicking off when I get back, so being able to get the 2-Eleven out of the garage and into my trailer to hide for a bit would be ideal. I don't need fully functioning ABS for that, but having a bit of brake pedal would be nice.
That changed a month or two back when I saw a used Bosch M4 kit come up for same from a 2-Eleven race car. It was like it was meant to be, wiring was sure to be right for the car and it even included the later S3 Elise wheelspeed hubs that worked with Hall effect sensors. Oh, and it was a fraction of the cost of a new unit.
I discussed a bit with the seller, but eventually bottled it. No problem with the seller at all, shared all the info I could possibly need and the unit was priced fairly but I spoke to a couple of Bosch specialists about the serviceability of these just in case I needed support with it down the line who all reported that these units could not be serviced at all, and if they die... they die.
Despite this M4 still being much cheaper than new, it was still a lot to spend on something with unknown history, so I bailed.
The way my brain works though, meant I'd now approved a spend for that amount... and in steps SCS Delta.
SCS are in the standalone ECU market and I believe have some ex-Lotus bods on the team, so they've always been on my radar for the PnP kits that they provide for Lotuses. They also happen to be one of the few to come out with their own Motorsport ABS unit and it's extremely close in price to the used M4 I was considering:
This is the GenII version, I think their GenI has been out for a couple of years now but the II has only just surfaced. I won't pretend to know all the details between the two but the main pump seems a lot more compact (and lighter) and the electronics are all built into it now, whereas GenI had a standalone ECU for it.
It's suspiciously close to the Bosch units both in physical appearance, the switchgear/accessories used but also the CAN stream uses an identical format and address schema.
This still wasn't a slam dunk, and I meant it when I said that I was still debating this as I was bolting the brake bias cage to the car, but I guess it was always inevitable.
This is exciting to me for two core reasons, one that I get to 'fix forward', maintain ABS and arguably improve the potential of the brakes even further, but second as this adds some nice data into my datalogging suite that I'm steadily building up.
The strategy on the ABS unit uses information from a supplied yaw sensor and also brake pressure sensor for both front and rear circuits (I think rear sensor is informational only), and all of this information can be spewed out over the canbus along with wheelspeed data from each corner.
I currently collect wheelspeed data from the factory ABS, which outputs to the ADU digidash via digital inputs, then the ADU shares with the ECU via canbus so I can take the ADU middleman out now which frees up four digital inputs on that, though god knows what I'll use them for.
Having everything laid out in front of me on the kitchen island was making this all feel a bit daunting. SCS have done a great job with the supplied wiring harness but it is not Lotus specific, and is intended to be generic. With most ABS units living in an engine bay, alongside an engine I think the branch lengths are not really ideal for a Lotus architecture.
That said, as soon as I started draping it over the car in the garage it was all feeling a lot more doable. I think I only need to extend one branch for the yaw sensor, but everything else will reach where I need it to go. If anything, I'm likely to have a load of excess wiring bunched up in a few places, so I need to think about how much that bothers me and if shortening certain bits is worthwhile.
Aforementioned draping
Installation gives me a few challenges to chew on, some I have solutions in flight but others are still awaiting inspiration.
1) Also applies to the tilton remote bias adjuster knob but I have very limited dash space in the 2-Eleven for mounting new switches and buttons. When strapped in, I only have two panels I can reach and they're already fairly occupied:
The doorcard driver panel:
The Centre lightswitch panel, you can see what I'm thinking here:
Plan is to get them both remade, with a slightly more condensed layout allowing for more buttons to be fitted. Centre panel will contain all of the light switches, and will relocate starter button here. Side panel will contain the TC knob, ABS Slip knob and Bias knob.
I then still need to find space for the ABS toggle switch and the ABS error light. The error light is somewhat redundant as my ADU will display the warnings received via canbus, but having it mounted somewhere as a failsafe alarm probably still makes sense.
2) Plumbing, not really a challenge as such but is something I need to get my head around. I'd tied myself in knots for ages on flexible braided hoses vs solid lines, but have decided for now to go flexible as it will give me different mounting options in the short term while I figure everything out. The flexible runs into the chassis hard lines will be very short.
3) Wheelspeed sensors, Lotus use GM bearing packs with integrated sensors and my old fashioned ones would not work with a Motorsport ABS install. Luckily Lotus switched to a fancy Bosch ESP/ABS system in later life - whilst keeping all other suspension components largely the same, so there's a plug and play option already available - and pretty cheap direct from SKF:
The wiring plug though is different to those supplied on the SCS wiring, so I need to make some adapters.
4) Mounting, obviously the pump needs a home. The OEM location by the OSF wheelarch could maybe be used, but there's a massive void in the 2-Eleven where the Elise/Exige HVAC stuff lives and I'd like to use that if possible. Moves the unit to the centreline of the car, lower down and makes for tidier wiring/plumbing routes. Still working on this.
5) Finally, electronics/data. As I said earlier I need to extend the yaw sensor wiring at least to mount the yaw sensor at the CoG of the car (somewhere under the handbrake). Then we have the canbus stuff, me being me started working on this weeks ago before I even had decided on buying a kit.
This is a mockup of an ABS diagnostics page I could have on the digidash,
The dual pressor sensors will give me a real-time reading of what the balance % is like between the front and rear circuits, which will help me when 'dialling in' the tilton balance bar. With the balance bar at 50:50, my real "at the disc" bias is actually 60F/40R due to the different calipers so I need to keep that in mind - but it's good to have figures to reference when trying to find the sweetspot.
The "slip switch" settings will also take some learning. I guess for someone as clubfooted as me in a car the finesse between the 9(?) settings is probably lost. But it should be reasonable to expect that I can find a 'dry' mode and a 'wet' mode. Backed by data I'd like to think I can substitute my lack of car dynamic appreciation to find an optimal setting for both the balance bar and the slip switch.
That brings us roughly up to speed. I'd really like to have the plumbing done before Christmas and maybe even fluid in and bled. I go away for two weeks on Boxing Day then I have some building work potentially kicking off when I get back, so being able to get the 2-Eleven out of the garage and into my trailer to hide for a bit would be ideal. I don't need fully functioning ABS for that, but having a bit of brake pedal would be nice.
Oh, and before buying the SCS I did get to speak to a chap who's using a kit on his Atom. The feedback was very, very good - and this is from somebody that has experience of the Bosch kits too.
I think it's fair to say the SCS stuff is probably a generation or two behind what Bosch/Continental are doing with their market leading kits - but if it frees up the limitations of the OE system with my new braking setup, whilst adding components to the strategy that help performance driving vs "just being safe" then it's a good place for me to be.
It's also worth noting that all MS ABS kits tell you at every opportunity that they are not for road use due to liability. I did speak to my insurance about this, and the path of least resistance would appear to be to declare my car as having the ABS removed - and only ever drive it on the road with the system isolated. I'd probably have real thoughts and concerns about this if it was a road car, but I'm literally only ever loading it on/off a trailer nowadays so it bothers me a lot less. Still worth calling out though to anybody considering this.
I think it's fair to say the SCS stuff is probably a generation or two behind what Bosch/Continental are doing with their market leading kits - but if it frees up the limitations of the OE system with my new braking setup, whilst adding components to the strategy that help performance driving vs "just being safe" then it's a good place for me to be.
It's also worth noting that all MS ABS kits tell you at every opportunity that they are not for road use due to liability. I did speak to my insurance about this, and the path of least resistance would appear to be to declare my car as having the ABS removed - and only ever drive it on the road with the system isolated. I'd probably have real thoughts and concerns about this if it was a road car, but I'm literally only ever loading it on/off a trailer nowadays so it bothers me a lot less. Still worth calling out though to anybody considering this.
FTW said:
Thank you for the detailed post. I've seen the SCS ABS system advertised and thought it was good value (mainly by virtue of the Bosch system being so expensive!).
Do you have access to the calibration parameters of the system?
Can you set the system up for tyre types such as slicks, wets and road tyres or are you limited to the 1-9 settings?
Good luck with the install.
Thank you, it's my pleasure!Do you have access to the calibration parameters of the system?
Can you set the system up for tyre types such as slicks, wets and road tyres or are you limited to the 1-9 settings?
Good luck with the install.
You do get access to certain calibration parameters yes, but it does require a separate laptop to CANBUS interface. I already have one as a part of my ECUMaster ecosystem.
SCS can, and do configure the system with all your settings via a form they ask you to fill in at time of purchase. This is what effectively tunes the ABS strategy to your car. It includes:
Wheelbase
Wheel track
Race trim weight
Weight of each wheel/tyre
Circumference of each wheel/tyre
Probably some other things I forgot about
I can change all of those, so using your example of changing cal to run slicks or wets, I imagine you'd need to switch the circumference of the wheels and then pick the 1-9 slip level appropriate for those grip levels.
I know in GT3 race cars and stuff like that they have a switch to flip when wets are fitted, and I think all that really does is alter the circumference of the tyres and maybe set a pre-defined slip level on their 1-9 or 1-12 knob depending on what kit is being used.
Much of the strategy stuff is a black box, but I am intrigued to learn more about it.
RDMcG said:
Brilliant thread - great to see a track car well used and to see the maintenance and improvements over time. This is what PH is for in my view.
Generous feedback! Thank you.I've spent time this week getting the mechanical components of the install done. I hoped to have fluid in the system and partially bled before Christmas, but that's fallen at the final hurdle today.
The main jobs for mechanical bits are:
- Mounting
- Plumbing
- Hubs/wheel speed sensors.
Hub's as previously mentioned are from later Lotus cars, and come with the Bosch friendly 2-wire Hall Effect sensors.
I then needed to adapt the plug to connect to the SCS harness, luckily GM sell somepatch harnesses for this which I could use half of, then chop the end and re-terminate the other end.
Rear hubs slightly more complex than the fronts as the driveshaft is in the way. Still not a big job though, and soon got it swapped over.
This then allowed me to finally refit the 308mm discs to the rear which sort of set me off on this journey. 288's back in the spare pile, 308's back on.
Mounted the new plug adapters:
In terms of mounting the unit, I wanted to have it down in the HVAC cavity. Tidies everything up a bit, hides some mess and moves the weight a bit lower and central in the car.
There's a plethora of rivnuts to use, of course none lined up - so added a few more.
Opted to use rubber isolation mounts as apparently the pump can get a bit rowdy.
There was a bit of ambiguity in the SCS manual about orientation of the pump. Older GenI manual stipulated that the outlet ports must face upwards, which matched the Bosch guidance too. The GenII one had no such instructions, so I queried with SCS who quickly confirmed I could mount it this way, I may just want to rotate it upwards when initially bleeding it to get any air through it cleanly.
That only left plumbing. I'd be retaining the factory hard lines to the rear of the car, so only needed to run about 30cm per corner from the ABS pump, then 2x30cm from the pedalbox via T Pieces for the pressure sensors.
The Master Cylinder fittings would be banjo type, for clam clearance. The rest would be plain old 10mm brake fittings. Easy, right?
I ordered some custom length pipes with the appropriate ends on them which arrived today:
I then spotted something which has halted progress, and has me quite confused. All of the 10mm fittings supplied have an inverted flare at the end, and a different outer flare seat angle compared to the other M10 fittings I have lying around, such as this old Goodridge brake line for instance:
I was supplied with these:
The outer angle also looks quite different:
This has me stumped. When ordering the lines I only had the option of m10 male, vs M10 female. The flare type is never specified, and as a result I assumed that M10 brake fittings represented a standard.
Obviously I'm wrong, and potentially have wasted a load of cash. The vendor insist that they are interchangeable, but I remain unconvinced. The angles are totally different. Maybe they will "work", but I'm fairly sure they aren't right.
At this point I'm really seeking advice/opinions. I think I'll probably invest in some decent hard line kit and just commit to that once I return from my jollies.
I will at least need/benefit from flexible hoses connecting the pedalbox to the pressure sensors though as it gives me more options for clearance and routing - so when I order new hoses, I need to learn what I did wrong - and make sure that I order correct next time.
If anyone can:
- Identify the inverted flare fittings I was sent, and explain what they're used for and why they're different to every other fitting I have
- Confirm without doubt that they are interchangeable as per the vendor comments. I'll need some convincing...
That would be massively appreciated. It's hard to go back to vendor and say "you send me the wrong thing", because all I did is click the option for M10 brake fitting, and technically they are M10... but there was no alternatives to choose from to represent the differing flares.
Advice appreciated!
rdodger said:
I'm not sure where you got the flexi's from but HEL also supply similar ends with an internal flare like yours. I also questioned it and was told it makes them universal.
Either way I was just doing 4 corners so fitted them and they sealed just fine
I didn't check the flare angle so can't comment on that.
Interesting, thanks for that. Either way I was just doing 4 corners so fitted them and they sealed just fine
I didn't check the flare angle so can't comment on that.
I'm still not convinced based on how 'off' the flare seat angle is, but really a bit stuck now. I'm going to need a lot of convincing I think to use these lines!
2024 Update!
I vanished off on holiday for a couple of weeks from boxing day so progress was somewhat halted, but I did have some things trickling along in the background.
As previously stated I needed to free up some switchgear space for the new controls I'd be gaining. Though the 2-Eleven is swamped with drillable dash, I didn't want to start drilling holes in it, and finding places reachable with the harnesses on is quite tough.
Lotus provided me with two switch panels:
Doorcard:
Dash (old pic):
Having the fog light separate from the side and dipped lights always seemed odd, but in hindsight I believe the fog light switch is actually the rain light for the race cars, so that makes more sense.
Plan was to rejig these two panels a bit, make room for more switches and knobs and minimise cabin disruption. I could have just started drilling holes and forcing switches in but the spacing would be all to cock, so I used it as an opportunity to learn my way around CAD a bit.
Laughable complexity I know, but these still took me hours!
Plan is to move all switches to the centre panel, and this frees up the doorcard panel for my three adjustment knobs: TC, ABS and Brake Bias.
The four small switches on the centre panel would be: side lights, dipped beam, fog lights, map switch. The large ones on either side would be the hazard lights (original location) and then the starter button, moved from the doorcard.
I added an extra cut-out in the centre panel for my data logger USB stick, as it was previously hidden away and a bit difficult to access and see at a glance if a stick was in or not.
With these drawn up, I had to decide then how to get them made. I did consider a 3D Printer, I've wanted one for ages and this seemed like an opportunity to get one in - but to be honest some large Ferrari bills made me reconsider my budget
Next option was laser cutting. There are a few firms online that will let you upload a CAD file and get an immediate quote on the website. Some over in China are very cheap with very long lead times, so I used a UK one with still a moderate lead time but something that could be trucking along whilst I was on hols.
I had options to choose a finish, and clear anodising was one such option but that raised a flag for a bespoke quote - and so couldn't proceed on the website. With that in mind (as I was doing this in the hours before departing), I just picked a raw finish on aluminium.
Sure enough, they delivered as promised and I had a nervous few days waiting to see if I'd messed my measurements up and had a 6 foot switch panel waiting for me at home.
They only bloody fit, don't they!
The laser cut finishing is loads better than the Lotus punched out parts. I got two of each made (because adding these only added literal pennies to the order) so my plan is to paint a pair using the Lotus "almost chassis colour" paint, then look at sending the other two off for anodising somewhere when I can be bothered.
I still need to add decals/labels etc once they're finished.
Did a bit of work to extend the wiring for the starter button, but very little was needed to shuffle everything else around.
I'm dead chuffed with this result, it's allowed me to sympathetically add what I need BUT there was still a couple more things I needed to find room for.
The ABS unit has a warning light and an on/off toggle switch. The warning light I'd originally planned to just coil up and hide somewhere, because any ABS warnings/errors will display on my dash via canbus. After two weeks of overthinking this on holiday I decided I'd rather have the idiot light displayed somewhere. CAN messages rely on the ABS ECU being healthy, so if there's a fatal error with the system I'd really like to know about it so it can simply be toggled off.
Though I really don't want to drill any aluminium, cheap plastic shroud panels are fair game because they're somewhat readily available.
Toggle switch and MIL light added to the steering shroud:
Yes it's the biggest warning light you've ever seen, might swap it out for something a bit more discreet... but it will do for now, will be visible whilst driving and the switch in about the only spare place on the car where I could reach it whilst driving!
I vanished off on holiday for a couple of weeks from boxing day so progress was somewhat halted, but I did have some things trickling along in the background.
As previously stated I needed to free up some switchgear space for the new controls I'd be gaining. Though the 2-Eleven is swamped with drillable dash, I didn't want to start drilling holes in it, and finding places reachable with the harnesses on is quite tough.
Lotus provided me with two switch panels:
Doorcard:
Dash (old pic):
Having the fog light separate from the side and dipped lights always seemed odd, but in hindsight I believe the fog light switch is actually the rain light for the race cars, so that makes more sense.
Plan was to rejig these two panels a bit, make room for more switches and knobs and minimise cabin disruption. I could have just started drilling holes and forcing switches in but the spacing would be all to cock, so I used it as an opportunity to learn my way around CAD a bit.
Laughable complexity I know, but these still took me hours!
Plan is to move all switches to the centre panel, and this frees up the doorcard panel for my three adjustment knobs: TC, ABS and Brake Bias.
The four small switches on the centre panel would be: side lights, dipped beam, fog lights, map switch. The large ones on either side would be the hazard lights (original location) and then the starter button, moved from the doorcard.
I added an extra cut-out in the centre panel for my data logger USB stick, as it was previously hidden away and a bit difficult to access and see at a glance if a stick was in or not.
With these drawn up, I had to decide then how to get them made. I did consider a 3D Printer, I've wanted one for ages and this seemed like an opportunity to get one in - but to be honest some large Ferrari bills made me reconsider my budget
Next option was laser cutting. There are a few firms online that will let you upload a CAD file and get an immediate quote on the website. Some over in China are very cheap with very long lead times, so I used a UK one with still a moderate lead time but something that could be trucking along whilst I was on hols.
I had options to choose a finish, and clear anodising was one such option but that raised a flag for a bespoke quote - and so couldn't proceed on the website. With that in mind (as I was doing this in the hours before departing), I just picked a raw finish on aluminium.
Sure enough, they delivered as promised and I had a nervous few days waiting to see if I'd messed my measurements up and had a 6 foot switch panel waiting for me at home.
They only bloody fit, don't they!
The laser cut finishing is loads better than the Lotus punched out parts. I got two of each made (because adding these only added literal pennies to the order) so my plan is to paint a pair using the Lotus "almost chassis colour" paint, then look at sending the other two off for anodising somewhere when I can be bothered.
I still need to add decals/labels etc once they're finished.
Did a bit of work to extend the wiring for the starter button, but very little was needed to shuffle everything else around.
I'm dead chuffed with this result, it's allowed me to sympathetically add what I need BUT there was still a couple more things I needed to find room for.
The ABS unit has a warning light and an on/off toggle switch. The warning light I'd originally planned to just coil up and hide somewhere, because any ABS warnings/errors will display on my dash via canbus. After two weeks of overthinking this on holiday I decided I'd rather have the idiot light displayed somewhere. CAN messages rely on the ABS ECU being healthy, so if there's a fatal error with the system I'd really like to know about it so it can simply be toggled off.
Though I really don't want to drill any aluminium, cheap plastic shroud panels are fair game because they're somewhat readily available.
Toggle switch and MIL light added to the steering shroud:
Yes it's the biggest warning light you've ever seen, might swap it out for something a bit more discreet... but it will do for now, will be visible whilst driving and the switch in about the only spare place on the car where I could reach it whilst driving!
Whilst the laser cutters were beavering away, I had two weeks to continue overthinking my brake line situation.
I'd heard from a few people, many car builders/DIY'ers, some people who worked in the brake plumbing trade and the general message I got would be that the HEL "universal" flare seats would be 'fine', but because the seat angles are different to the receiving fitting - they would essentially be cutting their own seat. I really didn't fancy that in my quite expensive ABS unit to be honest.
After much deliberation, I decided to go back to my plan A which was to invest in some half decent flaring kit - and just make some hard lines up.
It does mean I've got a bunch of unused braided hose sat going to waste now, but hey ho. I'll lob it on eBay, maybe someone can make use of it.
I bought a pipe cutter, pipe bender and flare tool along with enough M10 fittings for the job, and about 7.5m of kunifer(cunifer?) pipe.
Spent a couple of hours just mucking about playing with the tools and seeing how the flares looked.
Got some wrong:
Then read the manual and got some right:
I'd had to bodge some "tactical flares" in the past to rescue a clutch line on a non-Lotus if I remember right. It was using whatever tool the local Halfords had, and it was a right mess. Took ages to get a half convincing flare, but this tool once used properly was absolutely bang on. At time of writing I don't actually know if any of my flares will seal, but they all passed the visual checks and none gave me that "uncertain feeling" when making them.
I did a few things through my practising to improve the flares including:
- Properly deburring the end of the pipe after cutting it
- chamfering both the inside and outside of the end after deburring
- annealing the end with a blowtorch, then immediately dousing in water
- greasing the tool, excessively
With these steps, I got to work on mapping out my pipe runs.
I picked some generic arts and crafty hand bendable wire up which was great for getting rough lengths and angles right:
Bender was dead easy to use, so over a couple of short sessions I got the pipes banged out:
Also bought this gizmo to help straighten the pipe off the coil, to remove that "home made" look to the pipes a bit.
WIP:
Doing the inlet pipes beneath the unit were easier in the kitchen, using some card to mock out the position of the t-pieces I'd be using for pressure sensors:
The inlets would then be the only place where I'd use the questionable braided hoses. The outlet from the master cylinders is a banjo fitting, so this doesn't use the M10 universal seat that I'm nervous about.
At the other end, the universal seat screws into a cheap t-piece- so I'm less concerned about it "cutting its own seat".
If these leak at first pressure up, then I'll of course use something else, but we'll see.
I'm pretty happy with how it's all worked out. I've since added a couple of chassis clips just to suspend any pipework that may have vibrated into contact with something.
The only thing now stopping me from sticking some fluid in are my banjo bolts for the MCs. the 20mm bolts I picked up appear to be 1mm too long... so got some slightly shorter ones on order, then I can nip those up, stick some fluid in and then do a preliminary bleed to see if I squirt DOT4 all over the place...
I'd heard from a few people, many car builders/DIY'ers, some people who worked in the brake plumbing trade and the general message I got would be that the HEL "universal" flare seats would be 'fine', but because the seat angles are different to the receiving fitting - they would essentially be cutting their own seat. I really didn't fancy that in my quite expensive ABS unit to be honest.
After much deliberation, I decided to go back to my plan A which was to invest in some half decent flaring kit - and just make some hard lines up.
It does mean I've got a bunch of unused braided hose sat going to waste now, but hey ho. I'll lob it on eBay, maybe someone can make use of it.
I bought a pipe cutter, pipe bender and flare tool along with enough M10 fittings for the job, and about 7.5m of kunifer(cunifer?) pipe.
Spent a couple of hours just mucking about playing with the tools and seeing how the flares looked.
Got some wrong:
Then read the manual and got some right:
I'd had to bodge some "tactical flares" in the past to rescue a clutch line on a non-Lotus if I remember right. It was using whatever tool the local Halfords had, and it was a right mess. Took ages to get a half convincing flare, but this tool once used properly was absolutely bang on. At time of writing I don't actually know if any of my flares will seal, but they all passed the visual checks and none gave me that "uncertain feeling" when making them.
I did a few things through my practising to improve the flares including:
- Properly deburring the end of the pipe after cutting it
- chamfering both the inside and outside of the end after deburring
- annealing the end with a blowtorch, then immediately dousing in water
- greasing the tool, excessively
With these steps, I got to work on mapping out my pipe runs.
I picked some generic arts and crafty hand bendable wire up which was great for getting rough lengths and angles right:
Bender was dead easy to use, so over a couple of short sessions I got the pipes banged out:
Also bought this gizmo to help straighten the pipe off the coil, to remove that "home made" look to the pipes a bit.
WIP:
Doing the inlet pipes beneath the unit were easier in the kitchen, using some card to mock out the position of the t-pieces I'd be using for pressure sensors:
The inlets would then be the only place where I'd use the questionable braided hoses. The outlet from the master cylinders is a banjo fitting, so this doesn't use the M10 universal seat that I'm nervous about.
At the other end, the universal seat screws into a cheap t-piece- so I'm less concerned about it "cutting its own seat".
If these leak at first pressure up, then I'll of course use something else, but we'll see.
I'm pretty happy with how it's all worked out. I've since added a couple of chassis clips just to suspend any pipework that may have vibrated into contact with something.
The only thing now stopping me from sticking some fluid in are my banjo bolts for the MCs. the 20mm bolts I picked up appear to be 1mm too long... so got some slightly shorter ones on order, then I can nip those up, stick some fluid in and then do a preliminary bleed to see if I squirt DOT4 all over the place...
Yazza54 said:
Good work 
If you ever want anything 3D printed let me know
I have a bambulab P1P with all the necessary upgrades to print nylon/carbon filaments as well as the usual stuff like ABS/ASA, TPU and PLA.
Thank you! I have a couple of kind offers for 3D Printing but it sort of feels like cheating. I feel like if I'm going to do it, I need to go all in and do it... which very much goes against the point of 3D printing I suppose. Being able to draw up your own designs and use a local/convenient printer would make more sense!If you ever want anything 3D printed let me know
I have a bambulab P1P with all the necessary upgrades to print nylon/carbon filaments as well as the usual stuff like ABS/ASA, TPU and PLA.
Had a couple of weeks of plenty of activity with the car, but no post updates because I couldn't see any one job through to completion for one reason or another!
Finally hit a couple of milestones today though, so update time.
With the plumbing done I was keen to get some fluid into the system and do a basic bleed, checking for obvious leaks. A "proper" bleed would involve powering up the ABS and running its bleed cycle which I wasn't ready for yet, but I figured I could at least get some pedal feel and identify any obvious plumbing problems.
I ran a litre of ATE stuff through, twice. This got me on top of most of the air bubbles and achieved me a pretty convincing pedal. In fact the pedal felt awesome, very solid - nice progressive 'give' as I increased foot force and really nice pedal height too for rev matching.
I stomped on the pedal a fair few times, made some brum brum noises and played pretend cars for a bit. Once convinced I'd done a fair few "laps", I clambered out and eagerly inspected all of my new pipes and unions. Happy to report everything was dry as a bone. Will still be something I closely monitoring, but all I can ask is that it passes the first test!
The next big milestone would be to get power to the ABS unit, and see if I could talk to it with the laptop. I had a couple of wiring bits on order, pins, plugs etc to allow me to make a few final modifications to the SCS harness. In the meantime I got on with the switch panels by giving them a lick of paint.
Up next were some decals for them. I picked up a generic sticker sheet from eBay to keep me going. May get something nicer made up in future.
They had no 'map switch' button, so turbo it is!
SCS provided the ABS slip decal, and I got a TC one from Lotus for pennies.
Really happy with this 'sub project' now that it's wrapped up. Achieved what I needed, still looks about as OEM as I can get away with and wouldn't be too difficult to revert if anyone was mad enough to undo all this...
Once my pins and bits arrived, I made a few wiring modifications - just shortening and extending on the SCS harness but also making up a canbus piggyback so I could daisychain the ABS in with the rest of my kit:
Then it was time to get the "interior" out for running the power.
Battery box can just about be removed with the seats in, but it's a pain and I wanted easy access to the transmission tunnel(ish) anyway for running the wiring.
All I had left to run was:
Battery feed to ABS
Switched Ignition feed to ABS
Yaw Sensor harness, which I'd extended in order to get it smack central under the gear lever:
I took ignition live from the reverse light fuse in the battery box, lobbed the battery lead onto the battery terminal and then eagerly powered the car up.
Nowt. Nada
ABS didn't make any noise (should it do?!), ABS MIL light didn't light up and the dashboard didn't fire up to life with any of the information I'd setup that it should be getting from canbus. Hmm.
I did all the idiot checks, and sure enough found an idiot issue. The MIL light wasn't plugged in, I must have dislodged it when putting the steering column back together.
With that now lit up, I had confidence the ABS unit was getting power - but still nothing on the dash.
Next step was to grab the laptop, connect my USB2CAN adapter and get the SCS client talking to ABS. That was also a big fail, software just wouldn't detect it. Hmmm...
ECUMaster make a canbus "sniffer" type application. You don't set it up to listen for anything, you just connect it and it spews everything it sees onto an interface. I fired this up, and sure enough could see the CAN message IDs that corresponded to the wheelspeeds from ABS - but nothing else. No brake pressure, no slip switch position, no fault codes. Oh, the MIL was on all the time too so it did suggest a fault somewhere on the ABS.
I slept on it, a couple of times I think - then eventually after reinstalling the SCS software a few times I found a warning message suggesting that the client ONLY recognised the proprietary SCS USB2CAN adapter, not third party ones like mine.
Eh well. In for a penny n' all that.
It arrived quickly, but excited to try it I then found the battery was completely dead. All logical thinking suggested that I'd simply abused it too much having the car live whilst trying to figure out the canbus stuff. All the while with the chargecooler pump trickling away... but despite this, I couldn't shake off the fear that I'd cocked up some wiring, or the ABS unit was fault - or something and it was causing a draw. The 2-Eleven has absolutely no draw when it's off, no alarm and no immobiliser - so this was concerning.
Anyway, I grabbed a lifepo4 charger (needed one anyway) and luckily the battery came back to life without any drama.
I hooked up the new USB adapter and got immediate success. Laptop client connected, and we had data!
(most of this is placeholder data that SCS put in for me. Will put proper figures in when I have them).
Edited by Fonzey on Friday 26th January 23:34
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