The last week has been pretty busy getting the car prepared to go over to Dave Walker at Emerald near Norwich for mapping the K6.
Jobs on the list were fitting motorsport quick release catches to the bonnet and boot. This involved removing the old catches and making up some aluminium brackets to mount the Q/R post to.
The boot cover needed a repaint from its original silver to satin black. Plenty of rubbing down and spraying later it was ready to go on. Similarly the doors that I had stripped down months ago had to be rubbed down, painted satin black and re-assembled and re-hung. All of this took up a whole weekend. I am a couple of window seals missing but those can be sourced over the next few weeks.
The new rear Sport 160 spoiler and raiser blocks had to be painted after first lining up and drillng the rear clam (scary!) and then a bright vivid red paint job. After 24 hours for the paint to harden it was fitted on the car.
The motorsport lightweight hardtop was next to go on after first fitting a new seal to the perspex rear window and making new retainers for the rollbar cover clips as they are not available new from Lotus. The hardtop is fixed with four bolts at the leading edge which involves drilling the windscreen surround (scary moment no.2!!). After drilling the hardtop first and marking the surround it was a careful job to drill the surround. It's about 50mm thick and needs to be at the right angle to bolt up squarely. Having checked the bolts would go in, tiger seal went on the roll bar cover which would secure the hardtop at the rear. Job was quite straightforward in the end.
Next job was to fabricate a heatshield between the exhaust manifold from the large piece of nimbus I had bought from Yvo at Elise Shop as part of the SELOC group buy. I started by making a template from card. I wanted it to wrap around the manifold protecting the bulkhead, laminova and oil pipes and go down to to the undertray so that all the heat would be funnelled up and through the boot cover vents. Took a while and while I was at it I fabricated a small piece that would protect the oil filter which becomes pretty close to the manifold when the oil cooler take off adapter is fitted. I took the opportunity to fit the alternator heatshield from Eliseparts. It comes flatpacked and takes a while to work out where it bends and folds, but I got there in the end. It looks really good now it's finished and works very well.
I had originally intended not to fit wheel arch liners but changed my mind. I had 2 rears already and just needed a pair of fronts which I picked up from SELOC classifieds.
On the big day (today) I had to fit the liners, quickly set front and rear toe by eye and bleed the brakes once more just to be sure. I was due at Emerald at 2pm and started the jobs at 7am. I checked all the fluids once more plus tyre pressures and torque up the wheelnuts. I had only ever started the engine in the garage and reversed it in and out a few times but never run it up through the gears and bedded the brakes. Wasn't too worried about them as they would not be needed today. So at 10.30 i reversed the car out and onto the road and ran it up and down my quiet rural road just to make sure I could get gears and all was ok. Took a few pics for posterity....
Finally I was ready and after a quick check of the preparation notes for mapping from Emerald, I had a last check of oil and water before setting off. A quick txt to Andy Napier to check what fuel was best and I was off to Watton in Norfolk. Andy had recommended Shall Super V but there were only BP stations on route so I had to go for BP super unleaded. The elise was filled right up and a jerry can also filled for good measure. Dave recommends bringing plenty of fuel as cars can use a fair bit on the dyno.
Watton is about an hour and 15 away for me. I was made welcome by Dave and the team and they quickly set about checking the car over and strapping it down on the rollers. The dyno is in a sound proof room and fitted out with plenty of air blowers that were positioned at the front of the car for cooling and blowing air in and around the engine bay. There is also a meaty exhaust and fume extraction setup as you would expect. Dave prefers it if the undertrays are removed which was handy cos they had not been fitted (one less job for me in getting the car ready!). Dave hooked up his test bay PC to the serial comms port and positioned the twin lcd screens he uses during the mapping so that he can easily read them when he is sat in the car at the controls.
The screen on the right had the standard M3D software running and the screen on the left is dedicated to various instrument and dyno live readings.This screen can also display graphs of results after each mapping run. Dave has a wireless keyboard and settings console for use inside the car whilst he is at the car controls.The mapping process consists of adjusting and setting ignition and fuelling for each of the 16 load sites in the M3D ecu at increasing revs. A wide band lambda probe is put in the car to get AFR readings.
Dave was happy for me to sit in on the session provided I used the ear defenders provided. It was all pretty relaxed at first as he set about mapping at low revs. I was a bit nervous generally as the car had never been properly run apart from a few engine starts in the garage and a couple of hundred yards of running up and down the road at home just to check that I could get all five gears on the new box and linkage. Mapping is laways carried out by Dave using fourth gear runs.
I started to get more nervous when the revs got a bit higher! Once you get to about 5000 rpm it's all very noisy and the car is really straining at the restraint straps. During the full power runs towards the end at 7000 rpm maximum revs I hav to admit to having my fingers crossed.I needn't have worried as the car ran faultlessly with no leaks and the temps stayed rock steady which showed that the PRRT and laminova were doing their job.
Power Curve
Next blog update will be after the TDI power test when I will post up the official power curve.
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