2007 Lotus 2-Eleven
Discussion
Nyloc20 said:
Kyle, I’m having a sort out of all my Lotus stuff and found a launch leaflet for the 2-Eleven you can have if you haven’t got one. Are you at next Motorist or F&G meets?
Hi Mate, that would be grand thanks. I'd say the next F&G Meet is most likely, weather dependent - but I'll let you know either way.
Cheers!
Rare for me I got a free pass on Sunday morning, had nothing to fix - so went for a drive.
It's my first proper drive on the road for a long time in this car, no squinting at a laptop to check stuff or limping it to the petrol station with half of the body missing, etc etc. Just driving for the sake of driving.
The slight raise I've made to the rideheight has been significant, I can use the car on a fairly average road now without scraping around a lot. Speedbumps still an absolute no-go, but at least it's usable.
Though I never measured the suspension alignment prior to my rebuild, I can now say with some confidence that the car was previously running a very conservative and road biased geometry. The camber settings I'm now running are much closer to what I had on my Exige, and as 2-Eleven book figures are understandably track focussed this has had a negative implication on the road.
Nothing too bad, but it's hunting undulations and cambers a bit much, and it occasionally catches me off guard. The ride isn't so bad aside from that, but definitely on the stiff side of acceptable.
It's not something I plan on changing, it's predominantly a track car and I'm happy to know I've got the right setup for that, but I do have some headroom to play with the damping to see if I can make it a little more forgiving for any future road adventures.
Had a play in both driving modes, the fully unleashed 300bhp 'race mode' is a bit of a beast. It's intoxicating and I'm really enjoying having two modes to flick between, as I think it will delay the inevitable upgrade-itis when I can spend most of the time at 'OE' power levels with the odd spurt of full power whenever I'm feeling like the car should be faster... to scare me back into my box.
I had a little bit of a glitch with my dashboard, I noticed it at Blyton and completely forgot about it - but my "coolant high" alarm randomly flashed for a split second when I had just 84deg showing. I checked the logs afterwards and could see that my coolant temp value on my dash spiked to max value for a fraction of a second and then back down to 84 again.
The Coolant temp is wired into the ECU, and the data sent to the dash via canbus. I can see that the ECU value for coolant temp never spiked, so it's clearly just a dash glitch or maybe a CAN clash that I need to investigate, but easily engineered around in the meantime just by adding a 1sec delay on the coolant alarm.
Oh, my helmet intercom I think is fixed too. Or more should I say, I don't think it was ever broken. The earpiece positions in my 'guest helmet' were naff, and once the helmet was on they were actually pressed into your cheeks. I reorganised the helmet lining a bit, and got a much better setup.
It's my first proper drive on the road for a long time in this car, no squinting at a laptop to check stuff or limping it to the petrol station with half of the body missing, etc etc. Just driving for the sake of driving.
The slight raise I've made to the rideheight has been significant, I can use the car on a fairly average road now without scraping around a lot. Speedbumps still an absolute no-go, but at least it's usable.
Though I never measured the suspension alignment prior to my rebuild, I can now say with some confidence that the car was previously running a very conservative and road biased geometry. The camber settings I'm now running are much closer to what I had on my Exige, and as 2-Eleven book figures are understandably track focussed this has had a negative implication on the road.
Nothing too bad, but it's hunting undulations and cambers a bit much, and it occasionally catches me off guard. The ride isn't so bad aside from that, but definitely on the stiff side of acceptable.
It's not something I plan on changing, it's predominantly a track car and I'm happy to know I've got the right setup for that, but I do have some headroom to play with the damping to see if I can make it a little more forgiving for any future road adventures.
Had a play in both driving modes, the fully unleashed 300bhp 'race mode' is a bit of a beast. It's intoxicating and I'm really enjoying having two modes to flick between, as I think it will delay the inevitable upgrade-itis when I can spend most of the time at 'OE' power levels with the odd spurt of full power whenever I'm feeling like the car should be faster... to scare me back into my box.
I had a little bit of a glitch with my dashboard, I noticed it at Blyton and completely forgot about it - but my "coolant high" alarm randomly flashed for a split second when I had just 84deg showing. I checked the logs afterwards and could see that my coolant temp value on my dash spiked to max value for a fraction of a second and then back down to 84 again.
The Coolant temp is wired into the ECU, and the data sent to the dash via canbus. I can see that the ECU value for coolant temp never spiked, so it's clearly just a dash glitch or maybe a CAN clash that I need to investigate, but easily engineered around in the meantime just by adding a 1sec delay on the coolant alarm.
Oh, my helmet intercom I think is fixed too. Or more should I say, I don't think it was ever broken. The earpiece positions in my 'guest helmet' were naff, and once the helmet was on they were actually pressed into your cheeks. I reorganised the helmet lining a bit, and got a much better setup.
I pootled over to @seriouslylotus for the opening day of the newly refurbed workshop.
As usual with these things I got so distracted nattering away that I didn't actually take any photographs, so have to nick a couple of others to prove I was there.
Really impressive turnout, and the workshop is a really impressive facility now. Would be well worth travelling for if you need your Lotus tinkering on.
I've seen Dave's 3-Eleven at various trackdays, seen it kicking around the workshop, etc - but I've never really spent time looking at it. Properly. They are marvelous things, with some really trick details on them. As a later/runout one, this one has some nice carbon flourishes which I don't think the earlier ones got including inlays in the bodywork. Very nice bit of kit.
One day...
Nothing else to report really, I had a passenger with me to SL and back so we gave the intercom a workout and it worked a treat. My only complaint now is that I pick up a lot of wind noise from the passenger mic because the passenger headset is generally just bunged into a helmet not designed for it. Apparently I transmit very little wind noise because my mic is nicely nestled in a little recess for it.
Took the car back out on Easter Sunday to take the long way around for petrol.
She's now holed up patiently waiting for Donington in a weeks time.
As usual with these things I got so distracted nattering away that I didn't actually take any photographs, so have to nick a couple of others to prove I was there.
Really impressive turnout, and the workshop is a really impressive facility now. Would be well worth travelling for if you need your Lotus tinkering on.
I've seen Dave's 3-Eleven at various trackdays, seen it kicking around the workshop, etc - but I've never really spent time looking at it. Properly. They are marvelous things, with some really trick details on them. As a later/runout one, this one has some nice carbon flourishes which I don't think the earlier ones got including inlays in the bodywork. Very nice bit of kit.
One day...
Nothing else to report really, I had a passenger with me to SL and back so we gave the intercom a workout and it worked a treat. My only complaint now is that I pick up a lot of wind noise from the passenger mic because the passenger headset is generally just bunged into a helmet not designed for it. Apparently I transmit very little wind noise because my mic is nicely nestled in a little recess for it.
Took the car back out on Easter Sunday to take the long way around for petrol.
She's now holed up patiently waiting for Donington in a weeks time.
I've got a fair few booked this year:
Donington April
Anglesey May
Cadwell and Donington(Eve) June
Spa July
Hethel Sept
Oulton Oct
Silverstone Nov
Unfortunately (Fortunately??) I blew my load with Lotus on Track back in December when the calendar was released, and I haven't left myself much/any time to do some non-LOT days.
LOT is fantastic, but I have a few friends/family with non-Lotus who do the odd trackday so I'm a little annoyed with myself that I won't be able to join them.
Donington April
Anglesey May
Cadwell and Donington(Eve) June
Spa July
Hethel Sept
Oulton Oct
Silverstone Nov
Unfortunately (Fortunately??) I blew my load with Lotus on Track back in December when the calendar was released, and I haven't left myself much/any time to do some non-LOT days.
LOT is fantastic, but I have a few friends/family with non-Lotus who do the odd trackday so I'm a little annoyed with myself that I won't be able to join them.
Fonzey said:
I've got a fair few booked this year:
Donington April
Anglesey May
Cadwell and Donington(Eve) June
Spa July
Hethel Sept
Oulton Oct
Silverstone Nov
Unfortunately (Fortunately??) I blew my load with Lotus on Track back in December when the calendar was released, and I haven't left myself much/any time to do some non-LOT days.
LOT is fantastic, but I have a few friends/family with non-Lotus who do the odd trackday so I'm a little annoyed with myself that I won't be able to join them.
Ah nice! Very organised! I have my first LOT day next week at hethel, looking forward to it.Donington April
Anglesey May
Cadwell and Donington(Eve) June
Spa July
Hethel Sept
Oulton Oct
Silverstone Nov
Unfortunately (Fortunately??) I blew my load with Lotus on Track back in December when the calendar was released, and I haven't left myself much/any time to do some non-LOT days.
LOT is fantastic, but I have a few friends/family with non-Lotus who do the odd trackday so I'm a little annoyed with myself that I won't be able to join them.
Donington Update
I had a family trip away booked in the days leading up to Donny, so the car was parked up in the trailer ready to go a week ahead of time.
Whilst away, the postman dropped me off a present from Reverie.
It's something I've wanted on the car since day one. Although the 2-Eleven is not at Radical levels of engineered downforce, you can see that Lotus made have an attempt to generate a bit of downforce with it, with all of the body panels being custom for the car... with the exception of the rear wing fitted to the 'road' spec cars.
The road wing is, as far as I know just leftovers from the Exige S1 production line. Does a job, but by all accounts it's a fair bit draggy at the angle the car was delivered with in order to balance out the aero a bit.
The GT4 race cars came with something much more purposeful, a proper ironing board job. There are a couple of companies reproducing them to the same (or at least very similar) specs, and there's a fair bit of CFD info on them too for proper geeking out. I spoke to Reverie at the start of the year, and after deliberating on the dimensions a bit I opted for this. It's a 300mmx1400mm wing, in "low drag" configuration.
With it sat in my garage the day before Donny, I couldn't resist squeezing into the back of the trailer and bolting it on.
On it's flattest setting, in theory it should add a little bit of downforce but generate less drag than the previous 'road' wing on it's factory middle setting.
To be clear, this was 98% a styling modification. I'm nowhere near tuned into this car enough to start chasing downforce on what is at the end of the day, a pretty agricultural setup from Lotus. But if I can gain a little bit of top speed on the big GP circuits by shedding a bit of drag, then that would be a nice benefit.
From what I could see poking out of the back of the trailer, I loved it... but I'd have to wait till' the next day to see it properly.
It felt bloody nice to be hitching up the trailer in daylight, I'm not sure how I tolerate Winter...
Trip over was uneventful, and arrived just in time to get signed on and unloaded with some minutes to spare to tighten up the fasteners on the wing(!) before going out for sighting laps.
It was a sessioned day shared with MSVT, so we had 20mins of Lotus on Track, 20mins of MSVT cars and 20mins of MSVT bikes rotating throughout the day. I'd not done a full sessioned day before, it was 'ok' - I wouldn't avoid a trackday in future just because it was sessioned, but if all other factors are equal I do prefer OPL.
If anything the day felt a bit rushed, you came in - had a chat, ran to the bog and then before you knew it, it was time to queue up again to go out. Not only that, but the track was then busier as everyone was out at once, every time. Made it very hard to get a clean lap in but it was still a lot of fun, I probably ended up with more track time than I would have done left to my own schedule on OPL.
My only mechanical failure came on the sighting laps. Yes, I forgot to take my plate off again... yes, it fell off. That's the third rear plate this car has claimed.
Luckily it didn't hit anyone...
I saw my second 3-Eleven in as many weeks too, would be rude not to get a few photos of the two generations lined up.
Great bit of kit, and seriously fast too. Absolutely vanished after a fleeting moment of sharing some track with each other.
It was to be another social day with a couple of passengers, love sharing this car with others - as it's a bit of a sensory overload and so hard to explain in words.
The car was feeling fantastic on the track, expected to feel a bit mugged by the more powerful V6 cars at Donny, particularly dragging up the hill but the 2-Eleven held it's own and was able to just about say in touch with all but the fastest of the 6 cylinder cars.
I'm still trying to figure out Craners'. It's the sort of corner where 90mph can feel utterely terrifying and 100mph can feel safe as houses just due to a slight deviation of approach angle. The way the camber falls away from you on turn-in just does not come across in videos or photos at all, but it's really unsettling if you catch it wrong. I know I have loads of time to gain through here, especially when I do finally get it 'right' and realise I'm then barelling into the old hairpin 10mph faster than normal, which leads to me over slowing and losing more time than I gained from being brave in Craners! I'll get there eventually.
Elsewhere on the track I felt I was pushing the car a bit more, trailbraking into Redgate was getting better and better as the day went on. Coppice was a lot of fun too, found later in the day that I could just leave it in fourth, brake hard and turn in -and as soon as I was pointing at the apex I could floor it in fourth all the way around the corner and be at the thick end of 100mph whilst still in the corner... crazy stuff, and really paid dividends down the back straight where I was almost 10mph up on my last visit there in my Exige.
Brakes as ever, astonishing. Nothing really to add, I'm slowly creeping up to their limits on trackdays now and not leaving quite so much on the table - but still occasionally have a lapse in concentration and brake far too soon, leading to a snails pace through the corner.
Had a slight hiccup on the session before lunch, and went out without enough fuel in the car so had to cut that one short. Seemed like a very fuel heavy circuit so it caught me out a bit.
Got gassed up over lunch, and the sun came out for the afternoon. Even did a session without a fleece on, lovely stuff.
I checked the oil at some point, nothing to report. But another excuse to post a wing photo.
The day quickly drew in on us, and finished the last session with a dead GoPro. Wouldn't be a trackday update without complaining about GoPros.
I did get some footage from the penultimate session, which turned out to be one of the quieter ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUoeLh2W6gE
It's a shame I didn't get the last one though, as we were the last car (I think?) to go out, so was a great session of weaving through the traffic trying to chase as many cars down as possible.
Really happy with everything, never felt like I needed to make any change to the car all day - it was just working.
Anglesey up next in a couple of weeks, so will probably just clean it, fuel it and roll it back into the trailer. Happy days.
For fun a little comparison to my Exige, I had to cut the log short on the back straight as Exige was on the GP layout and this was the national layout, but still pretty indicative of the differences.
(Green is 2-Eleven)
Have to defend the Exige a little bit, it's not as bad as it looks - I'd only done a short evening of sessions on a very hot day, so didn't really get my teeth into the circuit until this week.
I had a family trip away booked in the days leading up to Donny, so the car was parked up in the trailer ready to go a week ahead of time.
Whilst away, the postman dropped me off a present from Reverie.
It's something I've wanted on the car since day one. Although the 2-Eleven is not at Radical levels of engineered downforce, you can see that Lotus made have an attempt to generate a bit of downforce with it, with all of the body panels being custom for the car... with the exception of the rear wing fitted to the 'road' spec cars.
The road wing is, as far as I know just leftovers from the Exige S1 production line. Does a job, but by all accounts it's a fair bit draggy at the angle the car was delivered with in order to balance out the aero a bit.
The GT4 race cars came with something much more purposeful, a proper ironing board job. There are a couple of companies reproducing them to the same (or at least very similar) specs, and there's a fair bit of CFD info on them too for proper geeking out. I spoke to Reverie at the start of the year, and after deliberating on the dimensions a bit I opted for this. It's a 300mmx1400mm wing, in "low drag" configuration.
With it sat in my garage the day before Donny, I couldn't resist squeezing into the back of the trailer and bolting it on.
On it's flattest setting, in theory it should add a little bit of downforce but generate less drag than the previous 'road' wing on it's factory middle setting.
To be clear, this was 98% a styling modification. I'm nowhere near tuned into this car enough to start chasing downforce on what is at the end of the day, a pretty agricultural setup from Lotus. But if I can gain a little bit of top speed on the big GP circuits by shedding a bit of drag, then that would be a nice benefit.
From what I could see poking out of the back of the trailer, I loved it... but I'd have to wait till' the next day to see it properly.
It felt bloody nice to be hitching up the trailer in daylight, I'm not sure how I tolerate Winter...
Trip over was uneventful, and arrived just in time to get signed on and unloaded with some minutes to spare to tighten up the fasteners on the wing(!) before going out for sighting laps.
It was a sessioned day shared with MSVT, so we had 20mins of Lotus on Track, 20mins of MSVT cars and 20mins of MSVT bikes rotating throughout the day. I'd not done a full sessioned day before, it was 'ok' - I wouldn't avoid a trackday in future just because it was sessioned, but if all other factors are equal I do prefer OPL.
If anything the day felt a bit rushed, you came in - had a chat, ran to the bog and then before you knew it, it was time to queue up again to go out. Not only that, but the track was then busier as everyone was out at once, every time. Made it very hard to get a clean lap in but it was still a lot of fun, I probably ended up with more track time than I would have done left to my own schedule on OPL.
My only mechanical failure came on the sighting laps. Yes, I forgot to take my plate off again... yes, it fell off. That's the third rear plate this car has claimed.
Luckily it didn't hit anyone...
I saw my second 3-Eleven in as many weeks too, would be rude not to get a few photos of the two generations lined up.
Great bit of kit, and seriously fast too. Absolutely vanished after a fleeting moment of sharing some track with each other.
It was to be another social day with a couple of passengers, love sharing this car with others - as it's a bit of a sensory overload and so hard to explain in words.
The car was feeling fantastic on the track, expected to feel a bit mugged by the more powerful V6 cars at Donny, particularly dragging up the hill but the 2-Eleven held it's own and was able to just about say in touch with all but the fastest of the 6 cylinder cars.
I'm still trying to figure out Craners'. It's the sort of corner where 90mph can feel utterely terrifying and 100mph can feel safe as houses just due to a slight deviation of approach angle. The way the camber falls away from you on turn-in just does not come across in videos or photos at all, but it's really unsettling if you catch it wrong. I know I have loads of time to gain through here, especially when I do finally get it 'right' and realise I'm then barelling into the old hairpin 10mph faster than normal, which leads to me over slowing and losing more time than I gained from being brave in Craners! I'll get there eventually.
Elsewhere on the track I felt I was pushing the car a bit more, trailbraking into Redgate was getting better and better as the day went on. Coppice was a lot of fun too, found later in the day that I could just leave it in fourth, brake hard and turn in -and as soon as I was pointing at the apex I could floor it in fourth all the way around the corner and be at the thick end of 100mph whilst still in the corner... crazy stuff, and really paid dividends down the back straight where I was almost 10mph up on my last visit there in my Exige.
Brakes as ever, astonishing. Nothing really to add, I'm slowly creeping up to their limits on trackdays now and not leaving quite so much on the table - but still occasionally have a lapse in concentration and brake far too soon, leading to a snails pace through the corner.
Had a slight hiccup on the session before lunch, and went out without enough fuel in the car so had to cut that one short. Seemed like a very fuel heavy circuit so it caught me out a bit.
Got gassed up over lunch, and the sun came out for the afternoon. Even did a session without a fleece on, lovely stuff.
I checked the oil at some point, nothing to report. But another excuse to post a wing photo.
The day quickly drew in on us, and finished the last session with a dead GoPro. Wouldn't be a trackday update without complaining about GoPros.
I did get some footage from the penultimate session, which turned out to be one of the quieter ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUoeLh2W6gE
It's a shame I didn't get the last one though, as we were the last car (I think?) to go out, so was a great session of weaving through the traffic trying to chase as many cars down as possible.
Really happy with everything, never felt like I needed to make any change to the car all day - it was just working.
Anglesey up next in a couple of weeks, so will probably just clean it, fuel it and roll it back into the trailer. Happy days.
For fun a little comparison to my Exige, I had to cut the log short on the back straight as Exige was on the GP layout and this was the national layout, but still pretty indicative of the differences.
(Green is 2-Eleven)
Have to defend the Exige a little bit, it's not as bad as it looks - I'd only done a short evening of sessions on a very hot day, so didn't really get my teeth into the circuit until this week.
It was a great day, and really nice to meet you and see the car.
I started going through my footage last night, and I've definitely got some of you on track. I'll probably upload most of the LoT sessions to Youtube for anyone interested.
I'm sure I've got some if you and the 3-11 together in front of me.
I started going through my footage last night, and I've definitely got some of you on track. I'll probably upload most of the LoT sessions to Youtube for anyone interested.
I'm sure I've got some if you and the 3-11 together in front of me.
Paul_M3 said:
It was a great day, and really nice to meet you and see the car.
I started going through my footage last night, and I've definitely got some of you on track. I'll probably upload most of the LoT sessions to Youtube for anyone interested.
I'm sure I've got some if you and the 3-11 together in front of me.
Likewise, seen one of your videos already. Said it before, but love your camera/mic positioning. I started going through my footage last night, and I've definitely got some of you on track. I'll probably upload most of the LoT sessions to Youtube for anyone interested.
I'm sure I've got some if you and the 3-11 together in front of me.
Scoobydrew95 said:
Fantastic choice of wang. Another great update - very cool to see this being used in anger on a regular basis.
Thank you! I love itsnotrag said:
Great footage that.
I presume the car is cornerweighted based on Driver only - how do you find it with a pax?
In my lowly ~130hp S2 on its soft suspension and tyres, another bloke sat next to you is VERY noticeable in terms of mass and performance!
Yes it's corner balanced for solo occupant but I haven't actually driven it on track yet this year without a passenger! It certainly doesn't drive badly 2 up, but there's a definite performance loss. Obviously the lighter you go, the more punishing a passenger becomes.. I presume the car is cornerweighted based on Driver only - how do you find it with a pax?
In my lowly ~130hp S2 on its soft suspension and tyres, another bloke sat next to you is VERY noticeable in terms of mass and performance!
On the laps I did solo last year, everything just feels sharper and more on its toes. Acceleration more fierce, turn in is more aggressive, and braking is even more mental than it is with a passenger. Arbitrarily I'd say a passenger is worth a couple of seconds at most tracks.
MTW said:
Amazing how much difference a more purposeful wing looks! It’s only after seeing the new one that you notice the normal one is a bit piddly. Looks fantastic
Yep I kept glancing the car and forgetting it was mine! It's very different, but looks very right to my eye. I love it.I've now uploaded a few laps from our 10am session.
The video at this point onwards has some footage of you and James in his 3-11 together on track.
https://youtu.be/RZngz9exZfo?t=448
The video at this point onwards has some footage of you and James in his 3-11 together on track.
https://youtu.be/RZngz9exZfo?t=448
Paul_M3 said:
I've now uploaded a few laps from our 10am session.
The video at this point onwards has some footage of you and James in his 3-11 together on track.
https://youtu.be/RZngz9exZfo?t=448
Awesome, I'll try to cling on a little longer for more screen time next time The video at this point onwards has some footage of you and James in his 3-11 together on track.
https://youtu.be/RZngz9exZfo?t=448
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