Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

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Stu160
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by Stu160 » Mon Feb 23, 2015 9:35 am

Not yet. I do have plans for this year, fancy a track day or 2 in the 160, so need to get moving on it.

Stu
S1 S160
Caterham 310R

Scuffers
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by Scuffers » Thu Dec 10, 2015 6:14 pm

And as 2015 draws to close...... :damnfunny

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Dominic
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by Dominic » Thu Dec 10, 2015 6:37 pm

Someone needs teaching that there is a nice way to ask for an update. Also need to learn to grow up and realize that the style in which they post reflects so badly on themselves.
http://www.dsaccountancy.com

1999 Lotus Elise Sport 135'99

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Stu160
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by Stu160 » Thu Dec 10, 2015 8:28 pm

Thanks for asking Simon, i had no idea you were so interested in my car.
Well, its been another year of work i am afraid, and have gone back to racing karts, so thats soaked up all my spare time, but its been worth while, won the Crail Prokart championship, and finished second in the Rotax club championship as well, against good grids ,20 to 28 karts each month. Also won the Crail Gold Cup weekend.
The Elise has been running fantasticly well in its standard S160 form, the wee K never missing a beat all year.

Perhaps next year i will get some time to put into it, hopefully i will be able to sell the 211, then the S160 may see some local track action again, although the V6 is very nice to just get into and do the odd track day.

Cheers, and thanks again for asking.

Stuart
S1 S160
Caterham 310R

Scuffers
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by Scuffers » Fri Dec 11, 2015 8:31 am

Hi Stuart,

Sounds like you have simply moved on, I can respect that.

As I am sure your aware, my interest is less about you and your life, and more about over 10 years of Erland's unsubstantiated claims - yes, it's over 10 years now.

I wonder just how much of other peoples money has he burned though in this decade?

I would suggest that you have dodged a bullet, and long may you continue to do so.

Maybe now we can all draw a line under this chapter and see it for what it actually was, one man's insane pipe-dream fueled by others dreams, hopes and hard-earned.

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mckeann
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by mckeann » Fri Dec 11, 2015 9:04 am

Simon, genuine question, are you still involved with Honda development??? I was looking recently as I considered another conversion, and see Maidstone sports cars seem to have bought the rights to the kit from eliseparts.

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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by Scuffers » Sun Dec 13, 2015 9:49 am

mckeann wrote:Simon, genuine question, are you still involved with Honda development??? I was looking recently as I considered another conversion, and see Maidstone sports cars seem to have bought the rights to the kit from eliseparts.
I have not been 'involved' as you put it for years (EP took it over in late 2006).

I only ever developed the kit in the first place so that I could race my car with a Honda engine, then kept up with it just because people wanted it, I always planned on letting others run with it, and apart from a handful of 'specials' I never got involved with converting peoples cars.

In the context of stuff I have done, this is not really any different to all the other stuff I have had a hand in developing, everything from PG-1 gear linkage kits (1999), GT uprights, etc. to EP's 6/7 speed sequential gearbox, but surprisingly enough, I don't seem to get the same level of grief from doing them as I do from Honda conversions!

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tut
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by tut » Sun Dec 13, 2015 10:20 am

Had three of yours Simon in sixteen years, probably more miles on them than any other converted cars, engines never missed a beat, initial probs were driveshafts and the odd engine mount.

tut

captain
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by captain » Sun Dec 13, 2015 11:32 am

Tut, I've heard vague rumours about non-specific driveshaft issues before, are these resolved with the latest Honda conversion kits?

P.s. I got the fourth wheel by the way, thanks!

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tut
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by tut » Sun Dec 13, 2015 12:05 pm

Jolly good, did not hear anything so presumed all OK.

Drive shafts and CVJ's have been sorted out now and are pretty reliable, although they have to cover the range of 200hp for a N/A to 350hp for a S/C CC car. However I may have one going at present but will not know for sure until it goes down to Craigs.

tut

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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by Scuffers » Mon Dec 14, 2015 8:52 am

captain wrote:Tut, I've heard vague rumours about non-specific driveshaft issues before, are these resolved with the latest Honda conversion kits?

P.s. I got the fourth wheel by the way, thanks!
I do love the way this always come up.

A quick history lesson:

the long and short of it was two problems:

1) QC of some GKN CV's
2) lack of care and attention by the installers specifically with track only cars.

In the early days GKN made the complete shaft assemblies for me, this was OK except for track/race cars where I was finding that the Lotus/Rover CV was simply not up to full time track use - simply put, they would overheat, burn off the grease, then self-destruct, (to put numbers to this, they were OK from cold for ~1:30 mins, then would fail).

GKN then owned up that they had used different CV's for Lotus MS cars because of similar issues, and said joint was a little bigger/stronger, but required a different shaft spline.

This did help, but not by much as it's not a strength issue as much as a friction/heat issue, this was cured by using high spec CV grease as opposed to the std common CV grease (cost something like 20x the price too!).

this solved the problems, assuming they were assembled right and a high quality boot was fitted properly, which then brings on the problems with the other end of the shaft, the tripod joints, they are plenty strong enough, but also get hot with prolonged track use, and unless the boot was spot on, the grease would liquefy and escape, leading to broken joints, this was helped also by higher temp/quality grease.

all this was in the first ~12 months of the kits being installed.

after this it all went quiet for a while, until Ford stopped using said CV in production, so GKN scaled back making them, only doing small runs for spares and the like. This became a problem because the next batch of joints they got were out of spec, in that they were simply way too tight, fine for a road car, but on anything used in anger would heat up real fast due to friction. GKN then spent the next few moths denying the problem, in the mean time joints were failing and non-tight joints were almost impossible to find (in the end I commissioned some new balls to be made to 'looses' the joints). Eventually, GKN used all this batch up and the next ones were fine again.

in the mean time, predictably, all hell let loose, whilst in reality very few people suffered, (in terms of the numbers of cars out there) it's always the very visible track-day guys it hit.

Other bit you have to remember is that I had already pass the job on before all this started up, so was trying to resolve it 3rd hand, that's not to pass the blame, just help understand the issues in terms of understanding who/where/what/why.

these days, it's a lot easier, other makes of the CV's are available, and and the QC on some makes are much more consistent.

A lot of people try and claim it's the angle/load/power that's the issue, and whilst they all have a factor in it, none of them are the root cause, the angle is not great, but because of the way the Elise was designed, your stuck with it (as in the shaft angle is actually almost identical to the std Rover install, what Lotus were trying to do was keep the engine ahead of the drive line for balance reasons, so they stretched the limits of shaft angles to achieve this (if you note, they did not do this with the Toyota install, hence the cars are more back heavy, not the sole reason, but a large part of it).

This was one of the driving factors in the design on the EP sequential, we moved the diff relative to the crankshaft line to straighten out the driveline, by some 20mm, this means on the Rover chassis'ed cars, an almost zero horizontal angle (you still have a vertical angle dependant on ride height and camber), and on the Toyota installs, the engine is moved 20mm forwards in the car improving weight distro.

Power wise, the joints are more than up to the job, many high-powered race cars run year to year without issue, including Jamie's TA car with over 600Hp/440lbft at the hubs.

Here endeth the lesson....

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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by captain » Tue Dec 15, 2015 11:02 am

I wasn't fishing or intending to wind anyone up so forgive me, no offence intended.

Were you involved in development of the original conversion? Who are GKN?

Like I said, all I'd heard (literally) were vague rumours and half stories so was looking for some opinions on the truth of the matter.

Cheers :)

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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by Scuffers » Tue Dec 15, 2015 3:49 pm

captain wrote:I wasn't fishing or intending to wind anyone up so forgive me, no offence intended.

Were you involved in development of the original conversion? Who are GKN?

Like I said, all I'd heard (literally) were vague rumours and half stories so was looking for some opinions on the truth of the matter.

Cheers :)
Really?

you got as far as drive-shafts yet have no idea who I am in relation to the kits out there?

Hint, I (under the trading name Link-Up) designed and made the kits used by MSC/Brooke Kensington/etc. since 2004, it's by far the most used conversion out there, sold in 6 countries with several hundred kits shipped to date.

as for GKN http://www.gkn.com/Pages/default.aspx, they are one of the words largest powertrain/Aerospace engineering companies, (with revenues over £7Bn), they make parts for just about every car manufacture on the planet.

(Goggle clearly isn't what it used to be!)

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tut
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by tut » Tue Dec 15, 2015 4:40 pm

That is why it never took off until they renamed it Google. :D

tut

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robin
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Re: Building a K 160 Sport engine to beat a Honda...

Post by robin » Tue Dec 15, 2015 7:20 pm

Scuffers wrote:
captain wrote:I wasn't fishing or intending to wind anyone up so forgive me, no offence intended.

Were you involved in development of the original conversion? Who are GKN?

Like I said, all I'd heard (literally) were vague rumours and half stories so was looking for some opinions on the truth of the matter.

Cheers :)
Really?

you got as far as drive-shafts yet have no idea who I am in relation to the kits out there?

Tut posted he had issues with driveshafts initially - Captain responded to that with a question on the subject (addressed to all, not you specifically). Don't really see an issue with that ...
I is in your loomz nibblin ur wirez
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