There is a whole group of enthusiastic owners out there that are not spannermen - I am one of them. Once a few other bits are sorted on my car (a stock 177bhp Exige with 30k miles) then powerplant is next. What am I looking for??? Greater reliability, tractability and power (probably in that order).
I wish I did, but I don’t have the time, space and most importantly skill to do any of the work myself. So (and I am sure I am not alone here), I want to see/drive/pax in the various options, evaluate the relative costs and make the right decision before parting with hard-earned.
I believe you Simon, I am sure that the K can be made to be performant and reliable, but to convince people like me that the best way forwards is not to junk the K for a K20 has to involve:
i) Demonstrable results - in the form of cars out there campaigning and at trackdays in the hands of non-spanner wielding owners.
ii) Accurate costs for options and what they yield
iii) A reputable person/outfit willing to take on the work (as a turnkey) and stand-by the results.
I know the costs for Honda/Audi/Durex conversions. I have pax’d in Honda/Honda-SC cars, seen Audi cars on trackdays/sprints, spent an unhealthy percentage of my weekends at Britcar/MESC events ( blatant TSU Photography plug! ) watching Simon/Randy and Russ in Honda engined cars.
So Simon, for me to drive it coughing and spluttering in to you one day and have a smooth, bullet-proof 200bhp K ‘n’ days later, how much cash do I need and how long will it take?? Or maybe because I don’t want to get oily means that the KingK approach cannot apply to me???
BUT the K won’t break, if Rob Collard can’t break one in the heat of, BTCC racing, are you? And my engine are going to be hugely less stressed - much lighter piston, and rod and a much more sophisticated crank… plus dry sump.
Where is the comparison 70+ more horses , 40% less weight, a fraction of the stress and oh so much nicer a drive…
K rules OK
simon
So several times the cost of a stock K20A2. Thanks.
Engines will go pop, that’s a fact, whether it’s from some deficiency in the construction, materials, owner neglect or abuse. It’s a fact of life and we all accept it will happen at some point. I’m afraid your engine will be no different. Even if it’s as reliable as a K20 it will still break from time to time.
Getting a little confused now - are you basing your comparisons now on an 8.5k 270hp K vs. 270hp K20A2 (modded)? Or a stock K20A2 vs. a 200hp K?
The thing is I don�t think there is anyone out there, myself included who doesn�t want to see performance and reliability improvements from the K. Please stick to posting up information about the K that you know about from your extensive research instead of misinformation about engines you don�t know about.
FYI, my Honda is about to pass 20K miles since it was installed (already had ~4K miles on it) and the only things I have had to do is change the oil filter and clean the air filter. If you want to see how it is driven then I welcome you to come and sit in my passenger seat on my daily commute to work down the back roads so you can see how it hits max revs (8600rpm) in every gear, the whole way there. I class this as pretty blinding reliability and I can�t see there is anyone who could argue that? The great thing is that I�m not scared of using it now. In the two years I had the K for I did 10K miles in it and it cost me ~�3.5K to keep the engine running in the period, in the last year I have done 20K miles and spent a couple of hundred quid on oil and filters. Need I say more?
Back to the K-series, I�m sure you are right in saying there are many tuners who are building problems into the K and that is true across the board. All types of engines suffer this type of abuse. What you haven�t explained to us is why all the engines that are in standard Rover cars, built to Rovers tolerances, have a reputation for being unreliable?
All good and well. But you are only talking about bringing the engine up to the same level of reliability as a typical production engine. And I am cutting you a lot of slack in this regard since we haven’t seen one yet!
To summarise,
Honda - cheaper to replace if it does go bang - but has an excellent track record so far with track day user’s.
SuperK - Hopefully will be as reliable as the Honda, but will cost more to sort when it goes pop. Current reliability considered poor. But theoretically it may be possible to improve on this. At the very least eliminating HGF.
Power outputs similar. SuperK lighter, but driver and equipment level differences imho will make a bigger difference.
Crikey, these discussions are starting to become a bit more productive!
So far this year Simon and I have run with a bog standard production Honda with a baffled sump and oil cooler. We have had 100% engine reliability and so have been very reluctant to mod things. We breifly tried some development parts at the AMOC meeting st Snett but weren’t 100% happy so have since removed them. As you say, it is easy to start introducing problem when moving away from the manufacturers standard, proven setup. There is plenty of power that can be had from the Honda though and at some stage we will start extracting it but first we want to enjoy the reliability needed to setup a racing car.
a properly built K should never go, and for sure is quicker and a whole lot cheaper, if it does the liklyhood is that it’s going to be a hell of a lot cheaper to fix than 1 1/2 grand to put in a new honda.
Sorry, but I don’t buy that. A friend managed to throw a rod on his engine. It was basically a fluffed gear change and a massive over rev. Now… his engine was a reliable DVA engine with a nice 200hp. (Tolerances etc wouldn’t have saved it from 13,000 rpm!)
Cost to rebuild was…
1 block
4 liners
1 piston
1 rod
new set of rings
New crank (was badly scored)
2 new valves + head skimming from damage + relapping etc
new gaskets etc
He managed to pick up a free block/crank etc which helped. Now… with your super duper crank I can’t think you’d be looking at uder �1000 in parts alone, never mind the blueprinting / rebalancing / rebuilding that it would require…
If you send me the file I’ll have a look for you. On my PI I get loads of electrical noise causeing the tacho trace to jump around a fair bit, can give some worrying results but its easy to work out if they are spurious.
Std K20 possibly reasonably reliable in everyday/ occasional track day terms, I have my doubts given long conversations with Gavin, but for the sake of the argument will assume reasonably reliable - it will be proven whan and if there are 17,000 out there, hard used.
But you are stuck with your basic 200/220bhp, [how many horses do you have Randy?] and as soon as you want more you have to aviod all the botching that has affected the K so badly.
Is 17,000 the minimum test requirement for assessing the relaibility or otherwise of an engine.
Its been shown more than a few times that 240+ is avaliable without cracking the standard UK engine so why the need to “avoid the k series botch”?
OK…
But you are stuck with your basic 200/220bhp, [how many horses do you have Randy?] and as soon as you want more you have to aviod all the botching that has affected the K so badly.
Which is not bad for a standard production engine. That’s all most of us aspire to in an Elise - 200hp is the magic figure. But that’s just the starting point. With the K you have to spend money just to get to that point. That aftermarket tuning scene esp. in the States is just starting to get to grips with the K20, the B series as you know was/is a legend. Given the massive market in the States and from what I’ve seen there’s a lot more to come.
ITB’s
From Clockwisemotion as fitted to Johnboys engine and producing very nice gains on their own.
Head
Comment - This is Portflow’s K-series valve job and bowl work that nets a 22cfm gain! The stock head flows 296 @ .500" but after Tom works his magic, ports untouched - the cylinder head now flows 318cfm @ .500". This is a 7% gain without even touching the ports. We hope this translates well on the dyno. Theoretically, we could see a 20-30hp gain. We’ll see what happens.
Titanium rods
These Ti rods weigh 318g total and 222g rotational. They are rifle drilled for wristpin oiling and feature Cunningham’s own 296,000psi rod bolts. They are 5.572" center to center, so we’ll have a custom piston made with a shorter compression height to accomodate the longer rod. Without changing the stroke (86mm) - rod/stroke ratio is improved from 1.616 (stock) to 1.645 with the new rod length.
![http://www.clockwisemotion.co.uk/images/honda-k20-compact-itb-kit2.jpg[/image]](http://www.clockwisemotion.co.uk/images/honda-k20-compact-itb-kit2.jpg%5B/image%5D){kind=link}
![http://www.intrinsicperformance.com/images/crankshaft/IPS-82_5mm-crank-07.jpg[/image]](http://www.intrinsicperformance.com/images/crankshaft/IPS-82_5mm-crank-07.jpg%5B/image%5D){kind=link}
![http://www.intrinsicperformance.com/images/Portflow/IPS-PF-valvejob-bowl-01.jpg[/image]](http://www.intrinsicperformance.com/images/Portflow/IPS-PF-valvejob-bowl-01.jpg%5B/image%5D){kind=link}
![http://www.intrinsicperformance.com/images/JE/IPS-JE-90mm-006.jpg[/image]](http://www.intrinsicperformance.com/images/JE/IPS-JE-90mm-006.jpg%5B/image%5D){kind=link}
![http://www.intrinsicperformance.com/images/cunningham/IPS_Ti_rods01.jpg[/image]](http://www.intrinsicperformance.com/images/cunningham/IPS_Ti_rods01.jpg%5B/image%5D){kind=link}