Lotus with a motorcycle engine?

[onlooker]

What's the dimension of the Lotus 340R's engine compartment? Could it fit a 2 motorcycle engines? For example: 2 R1 engines, or 2 Kawasaki ZX9 engines, or 2 Suzuki Hayabusa engines

[onlooker]

i really think the Lotus 340R can go faster in the straights and corners if we have alittle more HP in there. Since the 1.8 K series engine has a measly 190 HP, it can't push the car to higher speeds. My question was, what's the dimension of the Lotus 340R engine bay. If it could fit a dual motorcycle engine in there, it can go extremely fast. Even with the swap, it won't cost as much as car's producing twice as much as HP. Also, cars that produces more HP with this type of styling doesn't come cheap.

Either a twin R1 engine highly modified to 175 HP each which equals 350HP, plus a turbo charger per engine, making a twin turbo charger cranking out an additional 150-200 HP.

We can also lighten the 340R by replacing the rims, brakes, pads with carbon fiber.

A car weighing at 1350-1400 lbs with 500-600 HP/200-220 lb feet torque can be extremely fast. Anything with this type of specs can cost over a 100k.

[guysh]

Why not supercharge the current engine to about 270 BHP - it's already been done by TT.

Anyway with 600 BHP it would be completly undrivable - imagine an F1 car without all the electronic wizardry and and a lot less down force and you will be not far off, plus what sort gearbox, for this size of car is going to cope with 600 BHP, also I should think the engines would last much longer than about five minutes being tunned so heavily. If you really are interested in tunning a 340R I suggest you speak to Turbo Technics and also the owner of the exige they supercharged - take a look at exiges.com he is the site administrator, his conversion has cost about 15k I believe. But with the sort of horse power your talking about just about the entire car needs to be upgraded. The chap from Mclaren had a turbo charged elise built form him, car ended up producing 305 BHP (www.bbrgti.demon.co.uk/) - but cost with all the other bits 100k. It gets very expensive when the horsepower goes up.

[Sparks]

Onlooker,

Weren't you the guy asking about putting an F1 engine in an Ultima?

I think I see a trend emerging here......


Sparks

[samn]

The 340R is deffinatly quick enough, but I agree a bit more at the top end would be better, but I am not lots of extra HP is the answer (Although I could imagine driving one with say 220HP ).
I understand that the aerodynamics of the car means that at a certain speed it will hit what would be like an invisable brick wall any way.
I would suggest that anyone who has driven a standard 177HP 340R would not even consider the effects of a 600HP engine.

450 Chimp

[domster]

I must admit that onlooker has some fairly fanciful ideas, and their basis in reality can be pretty thin. I think 'carbon rims' are more likely to be found in Gran Turismo 3 than in the Demon Tweeks catalogue ;-)

However, I think a single turbocharged Hayabusa engine and gearbox unit (proudcing 340bhp) would certainly fit in a 340R. Probably a chain drive arrangement with an electric reverse gear. You would need to be very careful with cooling.

This is a possible project, but why someone would butcher a limited edition 340R is beyond me - would decimate the value.

I think tuning the K-series is more realistic if you want more power. But remember that more top end is unnecessary in a 340R anyway. Buy something closed cockpit for that.