Lotus Elan Central

by **Philbo** » Thu 13.01.2005, 11:42

Hi All You may remember about 3 years ago I started the project to upgrade my Elan...the invoice for my turbo work is from 2nd October 2002! Unfortunately I was strung a line about the Unichip working (it doesn't) and by the time I gave up on them the Haltech E6GM was out of production... Then work and family interfered and the poor old Elan has been left as an unfinished project to date, waiting for an ECU to come along... Organisation of the Quaife deal and the final delivery of it and the availability of the new Haltech E6GMX means that I've finally been spurred into action to get this project back on the road. On 24th Jan my car is off to the shop to have the following fitted: AASCO flywheel Stronger clutch Quaife ATB diff "Turbocharger" intercooler GM 3-bar MAP sensor Haltech E6GMX Bigger injectors - 400cc/min or maybe 550's, depending Then it's off for a rear brake refresh, new cambelt and MOT. Finally should be on the road again, hopefully before Donny. The end result of this will be upwards of 260bhp and hopefully something that goes and handles (with the suspension mods) somewhat better on track than it used to. More info in Feb, all things being equal.

by **Sy V** » Thu 13.01.2005, 12:22

Philbo Your need is greater than mine...would you like my Haltech E6GM mate?

by **Sy V** » Thu 13.01.2005, 14:52

OK Dave, but I agreed to give Phil first refual some time ago. :)

by **Philbo** » Thu 13.01.2005, 15:19

[quote author=Sy link=board=project;num=1105612957;start=0#1 date=01/13/05 at 03:22:05]Philbo Your need is greater than mine...would you like my Haltech E6GM mate?[/quote] Hi Sy Wow, thanks for the offer mate but I have an E6GMX winging it's way to me from Australia as I type. Everything else is in my garage (I've had the clutch and flywheel for the best part of a year now) so it's all just a question of getting it all attached to the car :D Then it's ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D all the way home! Phil

by **Philbo** » Thu 13.01.2005, 15:24

For those interested, I got my Haltech E6GMX from TweakIt in Australia, www.tweakit.net, cost was $1139 AUD which is about £500.

by **Nige** » Thu 13.01.2005, 17:19

Philbo, Welcome back. Pleased to hear your project is back on course and I wish you success, I'm sure I'm not the only one around here who was motivated by what you were doing and used your staged write ups as a very clear steer on where to go. Things may have moved on a little with the Alans mountain chips rather than BBR conversions or home brewed MBC/FCD setups as the option of choice for those of us with stock Turbos. I too have a Quaife ATB, AASCO flywheel and stronger clutch to fit, all down to your lead. Hope to see you at Donny. Nige

by **Philbo** » Thu 13.01.2005, 17:47

[quote author=Dave M. link=board=project;num=1105612957;start=0#6 date=01/13/05 at 07:36:03][s]What's the diff between the E6GM and "X"?[/s] Scratch that... Improved features from previous model: Password protection of ECU maps Surface mount components New injector drivers. (no need for two ECU variants) New Halwin Windows software On Board Barometric pressure sensor 2 Spare PWM outputs All Digital inputs and outputs are now configurable. Dual mapping feature New Red Anodized box[/quote] Indeed. Basically it's the same part, with Windows not DOS software. The new barometric pressure sensor *might* be useful, depending if the mapper wants to make use of it.

by **Philbo** » Thu 13.01.2005, 17:50

[quote author=elanman link=board=project;num=1105612957;start=0#7 date=01/13/05 at 08:19:53]Philbo, Welcome back. Pleased to hear your project is back on course and I wish you success, I'm sure I'm not the only one around here who was motivated by what you were doing and used your staged write ups as a very clear steer on where to go. Things may have moved on a little with the Alans mountain chips rather than BBR conversions or home brewed MBC/FCD setups as the option of choice for those of us with stock Turbos. I too have a Quaife ATB, AASCO flywheel and stronger clutch to fit, all down to your lead. Hope to see you at Donny. Nige [/quote] Yup, things have certainly moved on since I started the writeups. I'd say anyone with an Everest chip and a brake upgrade has probably done all that needs to be done to the car to get the most from it, performance-wise. I hope to have a significantly beefier low and mid range performance than the standard parts can manage, but time will only tell whether the extra performance will have been worth all the extra money. Still, I suppose if I had an Everest chip, I'd still have wanted a Quaife and probably a stronger clutch, and then I'd put in a new flywheel at the same time, and then my shocks needed replacing anyway and....project creep!

by **Nige** » Thu 13.01.2005, 18:17

Project creep, tell me about it!

I'm doing almost exactly as you describe, but there is always that little bit more. ;D Nige

by **Philbo** » Mon 24.01.2005, 14:26

Well, the Elan's in the shop for the tranny work. The Haltech's not here yet, but I'll chase it up and see how long it's going to take. Not needed just yet anyway - got to have the new clutch in place before we can do power runs for the mapping. Have decided that when all this work is done it's off somewhere to have a full underbody cleanup, new cambelt and all bodywork polished up. The poor old thing looks more than a bit tatty...

by **Philbo** » Fri 04.03.2005, 16:54

Front suspension and anti-rollbar droplinks are rotting, so we're having to wait for those to be replaced before progressing with the ECU fitment and map. Clutch, Quaife, flywheel and intercooler all installed. Car will be mapped first with wastegate open to emulate a N/A car, then the boost maps will be introduced. Boost may end up being measured by something a bit more direct than the 3-bar MAP sensor, I left it to their discretion to do the "best" job. Coming along...

by **Houdini** » Sat 05.03.2005, 05:00

Philbo, We're both on the same track almost. My Quaife, Clutch Specialties Aluminum Flywheel, and Clutch Specialties stage 2 clutch are installed along with my charge cooler. I'll be starting on the turbo, Haltech, and new Aluminum radiator in the next couple of weeks. Maries roll bar should be here soon and then it's suspension and brake time. Good luck and keep us up to date.

by **Philbo** » Tue 10.01.2006, 17:53

Well, time and family have impinged on this project in recent years but it's back on track now, so to speak.

The Haltech is now in the car and working well. It's being mapped by Mark Adams, who has an excellent reputation. At the moment we're just working on the fuelling and getting a map working without boost, reversing all of the BBR crap that went in the car 10 years ago, ensuring good clean signals to the ECU and so on. Bigger injectors are in, currently "greens" which are around the 440cfm mark, however the pattern of durations when mapping with the wideband suggest that these are going to run out of steam before we get to the target 1.2bar boost, so we may end up with "greys" that are normally used for monster Cosworth engines. The bad news there is that they may flow too much at short durations giving a lumpy idle with possible MOT emmissions issues. We'll see if those can be overcome.

At the moment, timing is mega conservative and feels very retarded. We'll fiddle with the timing when the fuelling is sorted and we've got some boost dialled in. At the moment, it's producing 198bhp flywheel on less than 0.5bar boost. When running at 1.2bar with decent timing 280bhp should be easily achievable with 300bhp on the cards.

However, this project was never about maximum horsepower. I wanted a much more flexible power delivery, and I sure am going to get that! We've changed the secondary throttles so that they open up at around 3000rpm (subject to final testing) rather than the standard 4500. This is extremely promising for the midrange response and initial feeling is that the midrange is much more meaty.

The next mapping session is due for the end of this month so hopefully we'll get closer to a final map then.

by **Nige** » Tue 10.01.2006, 18:08

Good to see you back again and with news of your Elan, very interested in what you are doing and achieve (for future reference maybe). What has put me off the idea of having the turbo modded so far is the mapping difficulty but once agin you seem to be blazing a trail for the rest of us to follow. Good luck and keep us posted.

by **Philbo** » Tue 10.01.2006, 19:36

Nige wrote:Good to see you back again and with news of your Elan, very interested in what you are doing and achieve (for future reference maybe). What has put me off the idea of having the turbo modded so far is the mapping difficulty but ance agin you seem to be blazing a trail for the rest of us to follow. Good luck and keep us posted.

Cheers Nige. Good to be back and to finally be getting somewhere with this damn ECU situation! I think finally we're getting somewhere with it. To my mind this breaks down the upgrade market into two fairly simple camps: ESM chip with standard turbo and a new exhaust in the first camp, and the second requires a new turbo, new injectors, Haltech ECU, new clutch, new intercooler and Quaife. From the car in it's current state, I can say that having a much better midrange response than the standard car - even with an ESM chip - is very achievable. Quite how much I'll find out soon...

Also my attention has been drawn to the Top End Performance web page where they seem to be offering some new upgrades...I thought they had stopped offering Elan parts. See http://www.racetep.com/lotus.html

by **F1 LOTUS** » Tue 10.01.2006, 21:43

Good to see you're back in the saddle with this interesting project

If the monster injectors give emmissions / idle problems have you looked into using 8 stock injectors? Mechanically this is probably fairly easy to create but I haven't the foggiest if controlling them would be complicated

Looking forward to your next installment

by **Philbo** » Tue 10.01.2006, 22:06

Brian_MDB wrote:Good to see you're back in the saddle with this interesting project
If the monster injectors give emmissions / idle problems have you looked into using 8 stock injectors? Mechanically this is probably fairly easy to create but I haven't the foggiest if controlling them would be complicated
Looking forward to your next installment

Hi Brian,

Haven't really thought about using 8 stock injectors but there's the obvious fabrication issues of creating new installation points for them, deciding where in the airflow they'd go, crossover points and so on. I've seen an 8 injector system on an old Vauxhall VX lump in a racing Westfield prepared by SBD and the mapping on that was a mammoth job I was told. I'm pretty sure the Haltech can't handle 8 drivers so if it was going to stay it would have to fire the pair per port simultaneously, which begs the question is a single large one able to pulse less than 2 smaller ones? I sure don't know the answer to that.

The bigger injectors ("greys") are normally used on big power 500bhp engines, so I have a certain disbelief that the greens that are normally good enough for 400bhp+ are going to run out of flow on my <300bhp setup. However the Haltech is unusual when being mapped as it directs the map along the diagonal of the axes rather than the horizontal by load, so we can currently see the durations and extrapolate what duration we'd need at 1.0+bar and it's looking marginal for the greens.

It's still very much a work in progress though so we'll see what happens. It's quite interesting how many artifical restrictions there are in the stock system that stop the power getting out of hand at lower rpm. Hopefully we're on the way to getting rid of those.

It's very possible that my exhaust system (particularly near the head, where it's all standard) is going to prove some sort of restriction. I might have to think about getting a whole new system but where does it all end

by **F1 LOTUS** » Wed 11.01.2006, 02:33

Philbo wrote:
Brian_MDB wrote:Good to see you're back in the saddle with this interesting project
If the monster injectors give emmissions / idle problems have you looked into using 8 stock injectors? Mechanically this is probably fairly easy to create but I haven't the foggiest if controlling them would be complicated
Looking forward to your next installment

... it would have to fire the pair per port simultaneously, which begs the question is a single large one able to pulse less than 2 smaller ones?

It's quite interesting how many artifical restrictions there are in the stock system that stop the power getting out of hand at lower rpm. Hopefully we're on the way to getting rid of those.

Simultaneous firing would obviously be a far simpler way to go, be nice to link them with the secondaries opening though?

It would be interesting to know what artifical restrictions you've found that hold the stock motor back?...

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