Does anyone here know if the standard Exige gearbox if fitted with a Limited Slip Differential?
No it is not.
But it really should be…I’ve just had one fitted to my Elise (Sport 190++) and its transformed the handling. Acceleration out of corners is much better, but it didnlt give it the understeer I’d been warned it would. Traction is amazing in the wet too. No more short shifting. It also helps control the car better during oversteer/lift off.I have the Rover torsen unit. Quaife also do one - also a Torsen design I think.SteveB
There was some negative press on LSDs for the Exige (if anybody can remember, try a search).I can see that it may be useful in the wet when the sticky tyres let go.
Lotus said that an LSD will ruin the purity of the handling and cause initial understeer.They had it on the Esprit sport 300 at first, but removed it after they found it was no benefit.(Of course, they then fitted it to the S2 Elise 190, so go figure…)Mark[This message has been edited by BT52 (edited 28 August 2002).]
Maybe it would ruin the handling of a standard car, but one with 180+bhp will definitely benefit.I suspect its more the case that Lotus couldn’t get Rover to supply a gearbox with the LSD fitted, and the costs involved in Lotus buying them and fitting it to the box on the production line made it prohibative.You can’t always beleive what they tell us. For example the markting blurb goes on about the gearbox fitted to the S2 111S. Basically its a load of bolls. The reason they have the weird gearbox ratios in that car is cause that’s all that Rover would sell them with the VVC engine…Mark, have a drive of mine when I’m next over your neck of the woods - if you’re not pied up on a train - like last time !SteveB
Steve - be careful which Mark you are talking about. At least one of us could have you for slander :-)BTW if you are planning on running the rims on Toyos and not the wets, can I have the wets back? Or an easier thing to to might be to have my other set of MS wheels with slicks on - could save both of is swapping over tyres at some point…Cheers
Slander - me - that was some hacker!!!I’ve got two sets of MotorSport rims. Once I’d seen how good the car looked with them on I got another set without any tyres on.I need to keep the wets for Hillclimbs next year.SteveB