I’m not an Exige owner (although I would love one), but I would like some advice none-the-less. I’m currently building a classic mini, putting a non-standard engine up front, and the radiator will be moved to the boot for weight distribution and space reasons. I thought, given the Elise/Exige’s weight, and general layout, this forum would be the perfect place to get advice.
Anyway, on with the questions (and I’m an admin on my mini forum, so have done my searches first! ). The roof scoop, is there anything to stop debris, like leaves, etc from getting into the roof scoop and blocking it? The same for rain? When parked up can puddles form inside? I’m guessing with the Exige the roof scoop just opens up over the engine and doesn’t actually funnel the air in anyway?
Protech vs. Nitrons, does anyone have experience of both, I heard the Protech coil overs are an old Nitron design, and I have a set turning up soon, but wondered whether its worthwhile upgrading to Nitrons at a later date.
And I thought I’d mention this; my local car showroom in town currently has a Exige on show (not for sale though). Its a Limited Edition Le Mans Exige. Wide bodykit, full carbon fibre body, in board shocks, mahoosive roof scoop, very low and very wide. Looked rather special. The showroom owner said the owner of the car would probably listen to offers in the region of �250,000.
I’m afriad the roof scoof on an S2 Exige is blocked, its just for show. On the Exige S it is open and it has a large smooth plastic duct which guides air onto the front of the charge cooler - the charge cooler which does bugger all. The latest Cup and GT3 ars have the scoop moved forward to the top edge of the windscrren to catch more airflow. Even then though this airflow is only used for intercooling duties, the intercooler rejects about 1/3 of what the engine cooling radiators do. If you try to run on track with a radiator ducted like this you’ll overheat for sure.
The side scoops on an Exige offer more airflow, Bernard from Auto Teknix found that the S2 Elise intercooler works very well in the side ducts. I’m guessing Lotus dont use that in production because the AC is in the RHS and airbox in the left, also component surface temps in hot climates would be excessive if you didn’t have enough cold cooling air. (MGFs running in hot climates can melt lambda sensors and they’re ceramic)
Porsche tried to get the Carrera GT to work like this but failed, Prodrive showed the P2 concept with a similar system
You can give it a try, you’ll need bloody big scoops on the side of the car and a very smooth low loss duct out of the back with some large free flowing fans - there just isnt the ram air pressure that you get on the front of the car.
Now that is something I recognise! Thats the Z Cars kit, no? I’m part of admin on The Mini Forum (www.theminiforum.co.uk) and we actually host the official forum for their mini kits. We’ve had quite a few very interesting project of their customers, including the green Mini Minus and Mini Pickup that were built a year or two ago.
I’m puttin a 1.6 Honda Vtec in the front (so again, very similar to the Exige engine in terms of size and power - and therefore cooling requirements), its quite a common conversion now. I had thought about doing a roof scoop more alike the race Exiges, that comes to the top of the windscreen, but on a mini there is the roof gutter, which I think will cause turbulence in front of the scoop and ruin air flow.
I’m trying to stay away from side scoops, they won’t really be in keeping with the car. My plans were to have a heavily vented bootlid, and thought the depression in air pressure behind the car would pull the air through the rad and out the back of the car. I’d also hoped that I’d also gain a bit of cooling from the airflow over the cooling pipes that will run the length of the car underneath (although I doubt this will be much). I had thought of plans to make an additional scoop to take airflow from underneath the car, and have recently thought that I don’t really need a bootfloor anyway. My main concern was sitting in traffic on a hot day when there isn’t any airflow, but hoped a couple of very efficient fans would be sufficient.
By the way, the Exige/Elise in the car showroom, after looking at pics of the GT1 it is very very similar, just with a slightly different roof scoop really.
I dont know if it would work but ive seen it where giant naca (?) duct from the rear side windows, so nothing actually protrudes out, if that makes sense. Its not necessarily the best looking option though.
![http://www.mick.attree.dsl.pipex.com/images/mini/R1%20Engine.JPG[/image]](http://www.mick.attree.dsl.pipex.com/images/mini/R1%20Engine.JPG%5B/image%5D){kind=link}