yea and any water will be thrown around and cause electric issues (especially a 15 year old lotus loom)
well we will see how I get on, if it causes any major issues then ill come up with another solution, at the moment im trying to minimize any pressure in the arches(next year ill be doing alot of mods to front and rear for arch venting)
finished off my front kevlar protection this afternoon, so thats ticked off the list
Also decided to make some stone protectors while I at it, looks pretty funky.
Made a cardboard template from looking at pictures online of other exiges
Yeah, id be looking to use liners in the rear also tbh.
Soon as you do a wet day the engine bay is going to get absolutely caked in crap and youll only wish you had put them in…
Agreed!
While I wait for my new rear uprights I knew I needed to sort out the safety aspect of my rear toe links, I had installed an S2 phoenix motorsport toe link kit with brace bar, thats great but the major issue with it was its designed for steel uprights, with the aluminum uprights being weaker they will twist at the toe link end, so you need a brace to put the toe link bolt in double shear and take some of the pressure off the upright.
So I managed to get a pair of used brackets cheap, rubbed them down to remove any surface corrosion and gave them a link of paint
Took a bit of tinking to get them on, got some 12.9 cap head bolts on order so used some normal hex head so I could get it back in the garage
Next i have been thinking about making some diffusers for my front splitter, these wont be seen from the outside and basically are in between the front clam and the wheel, they will help create a lower pressure area under the car.
Because I hadnt made these before I decided to make one out of paper first so I could work out what bends and angles to put into the aluminum , once they are made ill cut out the splitter, paint and bond them in
The shaded area is the horizontal section that gets bonded to the splitter
While I’m enjoying all the idea can’t help but think that what the car really needs are a couple of hard track sessions to assess where you are at and the go from there.
I agree, its booked in for mapping on the 19th and if that goes well im going to get it on track this month to work out some of the bugs
Just thought I would share this with everyone.
They left alot of tech info out of it which I thought was a shame, but still its nice to have a bit of footage of it moving from the outside
Well, that is a very cool vid Lee! Brings many pages of posts into perspective… I am sure many will also agree!
Like your style, I really hope your labour brings great results!
Envious of your talents really! Keep going mate! 
Well said Pete …
Agreed! Excellent vid. Car is looking very good now, Mr TurboToaster. Can’t wait to see how it goes on track.
Great stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing your results of your endeavours
Little update,
Went for a run up the cat and fiddle last weekend, ive now got the engine up to 7000rpm and 16psi and seems to go pretty well, I would like to rev it more to widen the powerband but since im running shorter rods I dont really want to rev it above 7000rpm for the moment.
All was going great until the way home as I went from third to fourth and got no gears, thought I had just missed a gear and went to put back in and couldnt select any gears! pulled over trying to get it to go in and ripped the cable out of the casing 
So after turning the engine off and pushing the cable back down the sleeve with my fingers I just managed to get 4th, and then had to drive home in that gear, so pulling off from stationary was fun with all the traffic lights, I suppose having the short ratio box helped in that moment.
Also the reason I couldnt select gear was the slave cylinder bracket had decided to pull one of the bolts out of the gearbox! so the cluthc wouldnt disengage, ive ordered new motorsport cables from yvo and a brace to see if that will help, if it doesnt then ill have to get the welder out and weld onto the slave mount so it can hook up to another bolt in the box
next thing was I wanted to try a smaller turbo on the car so I can work out which will give me more area under the graph with my current gear ratios.
Its much smaller than my current turbo, this new one is a T3 with a 27lb compressor wheel and a 0.48 rear housing, its not going to make much power but it should be nicer on the road than my big one which I will either run on track if the dyno agrees its faster or ill save it for the big spec engine im building where I know ill be able to rev it to 8000rpm and produce alot more exhaust gases lower in the rev range to help with spool.
60mm wheel vs 76mm wheel!!
Installed, was actually a nightmare and took me 6hrs to swap, I though it would only take 1hr max, but it turns out that smaller compressor and turbine housing caused alot of issues.
First it meant the wastegate bracket wouldnt bolt to the comp housing so I had to modify the bracket and the housing with the angle grinder and the drill.
Next up the oil drain wouldnt fit onto the core because the core had been moved over about 20mm by the rear housing and it was also touching the front housing, so had to grind it smaller to clear, once I managed to get that on I couldnt tighten the bolts between the turbo and manifold because the oil drain was in the way, so in the end I had to pull the turbo, manifold and oil drain out, assemble it all together off the car and then bolt everything back on, which then because the oil drain wasnt in the same position as before meant I couldnt get it back onto the sump properly, hence more swearing(at this point its 1130pm) so eventually I get it back on after alot of shouting. Only to next find because my rear housing is now moved the downpipe is in the wrong place, so got the drill out and made new holes for the exhaust bracket.
Eventually got it all on and started it up about 6pm today after a final hour on it after work
Looks so small, I think it will probably max out at 250bhp which I suppose for the road wont be to bad
Just got to put the cables on now and then we are off to the dyno
Well its been a fun couple of days this week as I decided it time to get the car on the dyno, make sure my mapping isnt shocking and also get an idea where I am power wise so that I can see where I need to improve.
Ok on Wednesday night I went out to do some more mapping, got my 16psi map pretty much spot on but when I turned the boost up I realised it went completely off the map, after closer inspection it turned out I only had a 2 bar map sensor!
Looked online an a 3bar one is £70, being super tight that i am, I reasoned that well, im not going to be running 30psi of boost for a long time, at best i maybe would get up to 22psi, so how much is a 2.5bar one…closer look and they are £25 brand new…much better, got one sent out to arrive with me thursday night.
So after asking what changes to make to calibrate it, im told it reads 10-250kpa at 4.5v, the emerald asks me what does it read at 5v and what to do with the voltage offset.
Started the car and my map was complete garbage, everything was wrong from idle, cruise, acceleration, ended up messin with the kpa and voltage setting to get off my driveway, plumbed in a boost gauge and went for a ride to try and adjust it so that it was reading close to what the boost gauge. After 10mins I had it close enough to make me happy.
And needing to be back in 30mins I had to pretty much map my car doing a few pulls watching the wideband and making changes accordingly. Its an old emerald ecu so i dont have any adaptive learning etc, got to do it all by eye.
So its D day, dyno time, will it blow up, will it over heat, will I make low power…so many questions in my mind as I set off to face my doom!!
I turn up earlier before it opens so I can let it all cool down to give it a fighting chance, really nice guys at Blink Motorsport, second time ive been there now and they are really helpful, offer impartial advice and generally helped and gave me ideas to think about.
Next it was time to bolt it up to the hub pack, never seen this before so it was an interesting to watch how it all goes together.
Looks quite cool I thought.
So next its time to run it up and do some system checks.
Even only up to 3000rpm when its been loaded there is alot of pressure coming out of the catch tank, to the point it looks like we have boiled a kettle, im thinking to myself that its a bit of a worry and is the engine breathing very hard so are the rings knackered, throwing alot of boost at it might not have been the best option.
We noticed that we could keep the temps down and it was getting hot, suddenly it overheated and through about a litre and a half of water out of the headertank all over the floor.
The Radiator is cold so somethings going on, turn everything off and let it all cool down, top it up with water and try again.
Turns out there was a massive air bubble in the system which was moved when we jacked the car up to put it on the hub dyno.
So this time its much better, water temps are stable, air temps are a little higher than I would like but generally I was expecting that.
after doing some more held runs up to 4000rpm it looks like its getting a bit to warm though so we decide to switch to pulls straight through.
Set the ramp angle to 10seconds like you would do for alot of vehicles, and probably brought the turbo in boost similar to the higher gears in real life.
First pull at we hit 282ftlbs with the torque at the hubs still climbing and then the clutch slips…not a good sign!!
So the ramp angle is turned to 6 seconds to try and take the pressure off the clutch.
Ive gone very conservative on the ignition timing on the road as I didnt have any det cans, so 13 degrees at 16-18psi should be ample.
So first pull made 233/233, we kept adding a bit more timing up to 17 degrees and came out with 248/247 all at the hubs in the end.
This is at 18psi peak dropping to 16psi…I was tempted to turn the boost up some more but in the end I thought its best I run it as it is for the moment and see what the car is like on track, after that ill put a bigger compressor wheel on and aim for 300bhp-320bhp
Still dont know where the limit of these pistons and rods are, I was going to limit myself power wise to 250bhp at the flywheel but its holding together I may aswell do a bit of science for everyone else.
Here is the final graph.
On the road it makes full boost at 3700rpm rather than 4500rpm, its just on the dyno it made the clutch slip coming in that early so I think its got more torque than the graph shows
You can see it uses boost to make its torque, but then drops off, so the plan is going to be to put a slightly bigger compressor wheel on there and maybe open the head up a bit to the torque from dropping off which should also help overall power.
Not bad for a setup that cost less than £1k
If i get the weight to 680kg and the power to 320bhp then i will be happy
I can’t wait to see how you get on in competition 
ok so rad turned up today, so spent an hour stripping the car, ive had the clam on an off so many time since ive built it that i can have the clam off in 10mins and the rest was getting the old chargecooler rad and engine rad out, I few rusty bolts needs talking to with an angle grinder!
Now my old chargecooler rad was 300mm x 300mm in size, this new one is 465mm x 220mm so about 10% more surface area but importantly nice unrestrictive inlet/outlets so this will be my test to see if increasing the flow through the system lowers my inlet temps.
Couldnt fit the chargecooler rad with the fan in stock position so Im attaching it to the chargecooler rad which should blow through both to keep my engine temps cool, since I dont spend alot of time in traffic its going to be for those times when I come into the pit lane, pro alloy do something similar but with twin fans.
What I will do is if the chargecooler rad isnt big enough I will find another engine rad from another car suitable, running another elise rad would be good but ideally would want a twin pass so I can keep my coolant lines on the passenger side to offset the driver weight, this rad only cost £18 brand new so if the experiment fails its not cost me a fortune
Well i look at it, the more money I save on building it(but including all the aspects I want) then the more money I will have to be able to get it on track and enjoy it, I know things could be done 10 times better if the budget was doubled, but sometimes you just have to work with what you have or what you can make, anyway we will see how I fair after my first trackday when ill get to really lean on it as running it hard on some A roads just isnt the same.
well that was a horrible experience for the evening, I dont have a lift so had to do this under a jack that was only lifted the car up about 40cm so it was nearly on my chest the whole time.
Firstly having to remove the old 12mm ID chargecooler lines out, that just took some pulling and messing around for 10mins per side.
Then i hole sawed the passenger side to 38mm x 76mm so I could put both pipes through the chassis.
this is when it got really difficult, getting these 25mm ID lines through the chassis took me 2hrs, I had to take off the side skirt, and the chassis panel under the fuel tank, only then to find I had a big plastic/foam construction bonded inside the sill, so alot of screaming, crying and general wimpering was involved in trying to pull all that out.
Finally managed to get one line through and then the second line took about 20 attempts as it kept getting stuck halfway down, or folding around on itself so each time I thought it had gone in the correct amount only to climb underneath to find it nowhere to be seen, that caused alot of head scratching!
But eventually got both lines through.
Just now need to get some jubilee clips to tie all the front together and then go to the back to wire in a pump and connect it up to my chargecooler.
I hope all this extra work was worth it when we review the inlet temps
Currently my setup will be
cinquento rad with 32mm inlet/outlet - 32mm to 25mm reducer elbow - 25mm pipe - chargecooler 25mm inlet/outlet - 2500l/hr pump with 27mm inlet/outlet - 25mm pipe
Im hoping the 32mm inlets on the rad will help offset the restriction of the core slightly, we will see
front end all plumbed in, was going to fit the pump at the back but decided to put it here because it keeps the weight on the front passenger side and also its the lowest point in the system so shouldnt get air locks in there, used a piece of carbon angle to make a bracket to hold it in place
Already mocked up the back of the car, just need to cut the pipes in the morning and connect it all back together and fill it up, fingers crossed
decided that to make best use of my splitter I would make some proper end fences to keep as much high pressure air as possible on top, so its similar to what Peugeot did with there pikes peak car, ive also added one of the canards back into to also keep the end fences from simply bending over at speed.
Tomorrow ill be adding some canards onto the end fences to again try and create a little more downforce.
Havent quite decided the shape or angle of them so thats a job to think about tonight.
Also picked up a new vice today so I will start making some front diffusers this week
made a pair of canards today, still not 100% about them, but 45 degree angle will produce the maximum downforce but then it will produce alot of drag, so not sure yet whether the small amount of downforce will justify the drag.
Not wishing to repeat myself, but stop fiddling and get it on track. See what works and redesign anything that doesn’t. All you are doing is modding stuff that should work, with more stuff that should work.
Go find out.