Track Preperation Part 1

General Meets + Track Day Reports
161

No no no, I certainly did not take your post as any kind of critisism. I simply wanted to state that I knew of several other cars using this electric water pump. If I were in your shoes and was thinking about going this way, I would like to know of other people who had done the same and what degree of success they had enjoyed.

Sean…

162

I know of a couple elises that use the setup I have with absolutly no problems, one a race car and one a road car. Neither has had any problems, so fingers crossed all will be well.

Re-reading my posts, I might have given the wrong impression… I definitively didn’t mean to criticize your great work
thanks again for this thread!

I don�t think you criticised negatively anything! It�s not a bad idea if you express your opinion and I am sure Sean won�t take it wrong.
I confident that even the 80 litres / minute is more than enough for the k-series. I can also see some BHP increase there!
Personally, i am going to go for probably the same kit, but I am thinking that I do not need the controller (as I am only going to use the car in the track). Is there any downsides doing so?

By the way, I was wondering if anybody knows about the parts needed for the steering rack and column in order to transform the Elise from a RHD (or LHD) car to a central seating position one. Is it a new rack that you need, or maybe just a longer intermediate column is enough?

163

Carlo

Did you see this page ??

info on water pump

164

seen the page, thanks.
that one is the small recirc pump (useful to prevent heat soak, but not much more).
Craig Davies sent me the right chart for EWP 80/110, though…
those pumps look pretty efficient, although the actual flow drops very quickly when some pressure is needed (and on a front cooled, mid engined car with two heat exchanger “some” pressure might be needed).
they sent the chart as .pdf so I cannot post it on here (and posting it IMHO will be OT from such an interesting thread), but if anybody is interested I may forward it.

165

Have had to work too bloody much lately, but I did get to spend some time on the car today. I fitted the new S2 Exige throttle cable and linkage system as detialed in a seperate thread in the S1 section.

Sean…

166

Starting to miss my car man.

Have been really busy lately and my nan has been in hospital, plus its been mega cold and I am a bit of a girl so hardly anything has been done for weeks man.

Looking forward to get back on it.

Plus Santa bought me a heater for my workshop, so hopefully I wont catch my death!!!

167

merry christmas and all the very best for 2006 Sean…

168

Cheers mate, you to!!

169

yeah merry xmas dude, well everyone really

cant wait to see this next year

though i know it’s gonna kill may bank…

170

OK so had a pretty good day on the car today. Its been a few weeks since I have really had a good day on the car. So this is how the engine bay was left.

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/headertankpiped.jpg[/image]

So the first thing I did this morning, now all of the pipe work was finished was to whip everything out of the bay, so I could do the final tidying up and put the heat reflective stuff on the bulkhead.

Didn�t take long to get everything out and after a good wipe over with thinners, I had the heat reflective stuff nicely on the bulkhead. I also covered the fuel tank compartment as well, as I guess every bit helps. Lol

Below is a pic of the covered bulkhead.

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/heatproofedbulkhead.jpg[/image]

I did take the fuel and water pumps out, to gain full access to the bulkhead, I guess I had started to put things back in when I took the pic.

Another thing I have decided to do is install a fuel level gauge. I know the hardened racers will probably class me as being highly homosexual for doing this, but I am going to still use the car on the road and I just want to easily know how much is in the tank.

The bag tank I have doesn�t come with a sender or a place to fit one, so a bit jiggery pokey was going to be required. A mate of mine has an ally tank in his car with an ATL sender and gauge, you can buy these from Demon Thieves, so I borrowed his sender to see if I could get it all to fit.

The sender has a diameter of 67mm and the two top plates on the tank simply don�t have that space available. The filler one is a definite no no, so I looked at modding the return / internal pumps end plate

Here it is as standard

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/fueltankpumps.jpg[/image]

There isn�t enough gap in the middle, so I removed the return fitting and drilled another hole for it close up to the pump wiring. I then could poke the rod of the sender through the original return hole and drill the mounting holes for the sender around it

The pic below shows the modded end plate with the sender mounting holes drilled. You can see the sender in the back of the pic back in my mates top plate. The blue fitting in the fore ground is the return fitting that now goes into the newly drilled hole by the electrical connectors

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/fuellevelsenderfitting.jpg[/image]

I need a copper washer to seal the return fitting and the bloody shop was shut (bar humbug) and my fuel tank sender was ordered today and should arrive tomorrow.

I also sorted my original water pump out, by taking it off and removing the blades as I now have the electric one. The blades are actually only pressed on, so a bit of dremel action got it off.

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/origwaterpumpmodded.jpg[/image]

Gave the water pump housing on the engine a bit of a clean as well.

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/waterpumpengine.jpg[/image]

So with the engine bay all finished and the original water pump refitted and the cam belt back on, I started to get the engine back in once and for all. Everything went in OK and all of my pre made hoses and pipes all fitted straight on. Had to hunt about a bit for jubilee clips, but found enough in the end.

So engine in, pipes and hoses on, new drive shafts fitted.

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/engineinfinal3.jpg[/image]

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/engineinfinal2.jpg[/image]

All in all a good day.

172

SeanB,

Congrats on everything again so far

Looking at the shape of the fuel tank, especially length to height ratio, can you expect to get any kind of accurracy from a fuel gauge?

You could fit the tank 'tother way up though i suppose

Tim.

173

All very nice Sean! (although a bit of ‘Back to Black’ on the belt cover wouldn’t go a miss! )

Also, to help sae your homo status, perhaps a better excuse would have been something about going 24hr racing in it?!

Ian

174

The Davies Craig pump has been considered a little controversial. Not so much for what they do, but for the performance claims. I remember a few years ago an Aussie web based magazine did some tests on them. Apparently they were threatened with legal action and never published the results. Link here. I can only assume the results were not consistent with their press release here.

Anyway good to see progress has resumed, pity you’re not down under I think the climate here right now would spur you on a little more

175

one of the local racers here used the davies craigs a couple of years ago in his motorsport elise but abandoned them after repeated failures. i understand that they may have been upgraded since then, but may be worth checking into

176

Yeah I am hearing a few horror stories about the Davis Craig pump. But I also know two guys who have used them with no problems, so I guess I will find out pretty soon how it all goes. If the worst comes to the worst, I can take the pump out, replace it with a 90 degree piece of pipe and simply put a standard pump back on the car. I have done a bit more research and there are a few other companies offering automotive electric coolant pumps, so it seems there are a few options if the Davies Craig pump doesn’t work out.

177

Hi Sean!

Been really interesting following this thread and the work your doing to the Exige!

Must have took you twice as long to do the work with taking all those photo’s! Makes it a good read though!

Just wondering what you would consider Is the biggest improvement you made to the car?

Plus, you intend to race the car in the Mid Engined series, just had a quick look at the regs and it seems there are two classes - completly standard road cars, and out and out racers. I presume you’re entering as the latter?

Cheers

Dave

178

Cheers Dave.

The work is taking a long time, what with working and a few other issues and stuff that have been going on. Plus the fact its bloody freezing!!

The work I am doing now hasn’t really included many new performance parts. The engine is still the same, as is the box and the suspension. All of this work is tu get the car ready to race and to loose a bit of weight and try and build in more reliability and make the car easier and quicker to work on.

Out of all the mods I have done to the car though, the one that gave the single biggest improvement, was the gearbox. It runs a Quaife 6 speed sequential with a power paddleshift system, to allow for quicker, full throttle gear changes. The 1st gear is very long (about 65mph) and falt out in 6th is about 145mph, so the gears are very close and it makes the car electric to drive.

Other mods I have really rated, is the uprated suspension and the brakes I have on the car. Both of these make the car drive so well and inspire confidence, I have pushed the car so stupidly hard at track days and it has never really bitten me back.

As far as the regs go for the midengined, yeah I am going to be entering the motorsport class. There isn’t much left that could be classed as “production” on my car.

179

sean, what brakes are you running???

180

I run the Lotus Motorsport setup mate. Basically 295mm AP disks all round. I run the two pot standard front callipers on the back and a set of 4 pot AP callipers on the front.

I also run Performance Friction, Carbon Metallic brake pads all round. There a pretty agressive compound, but they certainly stop the car!!

Sean…