Discussion
just been out in the sun (trying to get the water out of the old exhaust) when i saw a brand spanking new evo....i thought i'd give it a little chase, but he left me standing...what the??
i admit i'm not an expert driver and am reluctant to let the car hit 7-8,000 revs but still, it shat on me.
so what can i do for more power? not interested in dvapower and turbo technics etc. i have an induction kit, throttle body and exhaust, and would like to stick to such "add-on" mods. i was thinkin of the super big bore manifold at eliseparts...what do you lot think i should do (what would you do?)
i admit i'm not an expert driver and am reluctant to let the car hit 7-8,000 revs but still, it shat on me.
so what can i do for more power? not interested in dvapower and turbo technics etc. i have an induction kit, throttle body and exhaust, and would like to stick to such "add-on" mods. i was thinkin of the super big bore manifold at eliseparts...what do you lot think i should do (what would you do?)
The fact that you're talking about power improvements and not handling leads me to think that maybe he was pulling away from you on straightish fast roads, and not the back lane twisties. If that's the case then my advice is to sit back and appreciate what your car is really good at and remember that there are plenty of more powerful cars out there... a 118bhp Elise will be shamed by plenty of boring repmobiles on the motorway but get it on the twisties and you're laughing.
Bonce said:
The fact that you're talking about power improvements and not handling leads me to think that maybe he was pulling away from you on straightish fast roads, and not the back lane twisties. If that's the case then my advice is to sit back and appreciate what your car is really good at and remember that there are plenty of more powerful cars out there... a 118bhp Elise will be shamed by plenty of boring repmobiles on the motorway but get it on the twisties and you're laughing.
Spot on.
At a Rockingham (on the inner mini-circuit) Lotus track day recently, the insane ease with which standard Elises were 'doing in' S3 Scooby STis was a revelation.
The fact that a rep after a bad day in his 406 Tdi can out run you elsewhere is not really part of the plan...
Having said that, the EVOs are different; I've driven my old S1 Elise back to back with the EVO VII across my regular rutted blacktop blast routes and although sublime, the Hethel marvel was and would be no match in a genuine twisty/bit of straight give-and-take environment.
A colleague has just informed me that 'his mate' has just successfully imported an several month old EVO VII from Japan (approx 18k on the odo) for £14k inc all relevant taxes.
When you think about the prices of used Elises too, it does focus the mind ito genuine, automotive vfm.
dragstar said:
should i let the car hit 8,000 revs then, (and it wont fall apart?)
Can you hit 8K? My rev limit is 6500 which is past peak power anyway, not much point taking it over 6K IMO. If you can get to 8K somehow but the rest of your engine is bog standard then it's probably not a very good idea as you may end up popping a piston or similar disaster!
BTW my car has induction, 52mm TB, CRP and Janspeed exhaust, soon to have Janspeed 4-2-1 fitted so it's got pretty much everything done to it that you can without going in for head work. I really want to get time at 1st Lotus, probably the cheapest performance improvement you can get, they're just so damn busy all the time though
derestrictor said:
A colleague has just informed me that 'his mate' has just successfully imported an several month old EVO VII from Japan (approx 18k on the odo) for £14k inc all relevant taxes.
When you think about the prices of used Elises too, it does focus the mind ito genuine, automotive vfm.
blimey! I thought the days of massive savings from Japan were gone...
can you get more info?
dragstar said:
yep i can hit 8,000 revs and the engine seems to scream between 7-8,000 revs. mines a 111s with a few extras (exhaust, ptp etc). i dont know if this makes a difference to how high the car revs (im just not that technical). up until 7 revs its fine.
Ooops, yep I did think after I posted that maybe you had a 111S. The VVC engine does rev higher to take advantage of, erm, the VVC
Still, not sure if it has a stronger bottom end to deal with that more. The best thing you can do is get your car on a decent rolling road so you can see at what rpm your power curve starts to drop off, then use that as your manual rev limit. BTW update your profile so we know what motor you've got for future reference
Surely its not where your power curve drops off. Its where the torque vs. rev graphs is equal for the gear you are in, and the gear you are changing to (factoring in the change in revs).
Interesting thing about this in a recent Car & Car Conversions. Can't remember if it was this months. Also made it more complex by pointing out other reasons to hold a gear.
Most interesting point they made was contrary to what I'd been told in that they said the common wisdom was to gear your car so that on a given track, you reach the max revs at the end of the longest straight. They explained why thats probably not so clever.
Anyway I've got a sore head now.
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