So I have to be careful with the next bit… there were 2 issues - one was a split hose (again !) which took a while to find, but also the new Komotec map didn’t seem to be fuelling as expected. After investigation, some of the fuelling tables within the ECU were screwing up fuelling at certain revs that Komotec don’t touch. Their view was that the Charlie x ECU ‘hack’ used by the katana kit had caused this issue - nothing provable… but the view. My ECU was sent back to Lotus to be refreshed back to standard and then the komotec map reflashed. This had the desired effect and the flat spot was gone.
As mine is manual throttle, it does occasionally suffer from a ‘stalling issue’ where the throttle butterfly doesn’t close fast enough when moving slowly or coming to a junction. Mine isn’t too bad, but the car does have to run rich at lower revs to try to combat this. I do worry that this might affect the engine longer term, so thats why I am looking at the EMU Black at the moment, as this can be irradiated using the ECU that is much more configurable.
Pic of installation of charge cooler - its a Exige S intercooler with a water jacket around it and cooled by the front rad - it never gets more than warm
We had to modify the angle of the strut with a small bracket to stop the strut fouling the charge cooler - ‘looks like it grew there’ was the comment from the guy that fitted it…
What made you go for the SCS ? (might be in another thread ?) EMU on my list as H111 do it and its now part of the kits they do and of course Greg knows the engine very well
What power do you think your Katana had - similar to mine ?
Ahh - just checked my receipts (Jesus there’s a few) - no info on the injectors… so not sure - but the katana kits I guess were mostly the same… so I would imagine I had the ones you did. I do know they were changed when the 280s kit went on…
Very cool. You’ve basically gone through the same journey that I mentally went through for my Elise… except you actually had to put your hands in your pockets and pay for it all rather than just imagine it as I did
The bit by bit delivery of this thread is making it even more entertaining. Keep it up!
So at this point car was great - a couple of folks that drove it said it most likely had the approx 275hp that Hangar 111 said it had - definitely had something on top of cars with the 260 map from Lotus. the more prevalent cam change also made it have a bit of character…
Road trip in the summer of that year was ace - car was superb on mountain passes if a little low - the splitter took a bit of a pounding - although as we went from Italy into France - a rock thrown up by a lorry did this…
When we got back, next job was to repair the splitter (luckily my s1 owning mate who I road trip with is a bit handy like that ) so that was taken off of the car and repaired, and I booked into Back on Track to have the ride height raised…
Close to MOT time in 2015, fan blower started messing about - the heater resistor pack had started to fail… so clam off again, new heater box, regassed AC again - it works ok… just needs a top up every few years. I also around that time upgraded the head unit and added a small Kenwood sub behind the pax seat to make the sound a bit better for longer trips.
Summer 2016 - service time… car was still a bit too low at the front and was grounding too much from my perspective… so as well as replacing the toe links and adding an adjustable ARB, Back on Track re geo’d the car to their ‘fast road’ settings - a bit of understeer was back… but not much, and as I was now doing road trips and not track days, the compromise was fine for me…
Not long after this, my 2bular spat its last bits of packing out, so I decided to make a change to the back of the car - In all honesty, I always thought the exhaust on the Toyota cars looked a bit awkward - I like an exhaust (put it this way, I HATE false exhausts that Audis, Mercs et all now have) and like when the exhaust gives a bit of character to the back of the car… Hangar 111 had something that appealed - so I did this…
On the 2017 road trip - I noticed a rattling coming from the rear of the car… on investigation, one of the springs had snapped close to the base… so not enough to really affect the car too much, but enough to cause the rattle - so we caught that in time and I had those rear springs replaced and checked out Nitrons at the same time which were still fine… no leaks
