186 replies to this topic

[cs_]

Hi there, after reading once in a while as a guest, peeking some stuff like the ABS topics, I finally managed to register here and no I am reading on a regular base.

So I think it is time to introduce my car now. Some few of you might have seen it in the www, it has its own website containing my personal weblog, how did I get to this car, what have I done with it, fixing problems, little to big projects of modifications bla bla bla. Problem is, the website is almost completely written in my native language which happens to be german, sorry for that. But today in the age of modern technology, one can use such marvellous things as Google Translate and hopefully be able to get the sense of at least some of the sentences written down.

So that's the story:
In 2003 I had a very bad motorcycle accident which permanently disabled most parts of my right shoulder. The following months consist of intense rehab procedures and medical investigations, conclusion was that there were nerves ripped in my neck never will heal again, leaving the shoulder disabled for the rest of my live. Other muscles had to compensate to their ability the muscles I could not use anymore, mainly the triceps was completely dead and still is today.
In 2004 then, the shoulder was no more dislocated at least, I had the great opportunity to drive a Lotus Seven replica of a friend on a race track! It was a show for car enthusiasts, no racing at all, only decent driving. That was somehow my rising from the ashes. First time for many months I felt alive again. And it was the starting point for my love in lightweight cars.
In the following months I was looking for a used Seven, liked to have some vintage one, an original Lotus, but could not find one. In early 2005 I finally found one near cologne which I thought was a beautiful and good car to go for. I had no clue, bought it and some months later I had to admit I bought a pile of junk. Looked nice, completely sh*t under the bonnet.
I wanted to get a national drivers licence for motor racing and booked a course in Hockenheim at a swiss automobile club to get it very early, thinking the Seven will be the car to use for that. Two months before the event it was clear that the Seven will take some months to years to rebuild. Btw. it is still in the process of rebuilding today, a huge pain in the arse!
I had some spare money in 2005, so I looked for something decent to drive on a race track. Finally I bought an Opel Speedster Turbo, almost new, for half the list price. There were many almost new cars thrown on the market way back in 2005 because the emission standards changed in the beginning of 2006 and cars with emission class EU3 could not be registered for the first time then. So they registered the whole stock and sprayed the cars all over the hessian car dealers to sell them fast, giving them big rebates.

I bought one of them. Thought I would sell it right away after Hockenheim. But I fell in love in a strange way with this car.

The following years I did improve and strengthen many things on this car and today it is in a nearly perfect condition for me. Driving some trackdays a year, but mostly taking the car for a decent cruise on good weather conditions, it is the perfect companion for me now.

Some actual specs:
294 PS (290 BHP)
490 Nm (392 lbft)
LEH turbo charger
PA (water) charge cooler
Klasen dual plenum intake
80 mm air mass meter
A'PEXi air filter 80 mm
wideband lambda metering
Tullett 3" full exhaust with 100 cpsi cat
PA big aluminium radiator
Lotus Exige ABS unit
RL traction control with FTS, LC and DA
Öhlins road & track supsension
ATS DTC wheels with 215/45 front and 245/40 rear
308 mm compound disc front 288 mm compound rear
hoses for brake venting through the fog lamp holes front
Dempert ptfe bushings for the anti roll bar
forged tie rods rear
gear box vent

and lots of things just I forgot for sure.


Here are some pictures:


the day I bought it, way back in 2005


Hockenheim 2005


that was my car last october, now having another splitter mounted


last october


the engine bay


just the gauges one really needs, no more


and that is the new splitter


my new camera mount, solid as a rock


latest dyno run


vmax of the latest 3 development stages, one can see the impact of the Klasen dual plenum intake (red line), I estimate a vmax of more than 270 km/h (163 mph)

That's it for now, I think.

Regards from Germany to the U.K.!

[AllanM]

Welcome. Nice car

[Cookies220]

Looks Is that a dump valve you have fitted there? How do you find that as I've heard that due to having a recirc valve already, the dump valve acutally causes a drop in performance.

[cs_]

The dump valve does a very fine job! Without I encountered a big lag of boost right after shifting. Just this tiny little upgrade made the lag almost not noticable anymore. For me a must have. What I like especially is that this works almost without any noises because the internal recirc valve is still operational. So it works without the need to watch out for policemen with big ears.
The recirc valve is not the original one, I have replaced the rubber thing with the piston one from Evolution:


Works like a charm for two years now.


Here are some older performance test videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-unXAN5cIhk
Spreewaldring 2008, getting pulled by a GT3

Note: I am NOT a heck of a racing driver, doing track days only two or three times a year just for fun. Just like to blow my mind free on track, being careful enough not to risk my car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vOQ70BqU68
0-200km/h / 100-200km/h (4th gear) with two different older setups.
That is quite thrilling for people that do not know the potential of the VX220, which is usually underestimated.

[zx9rjason]

Welcome! I have watched many of your videos on youtube.... Lovely looking car

[cs_]

Thanks a lot. Just using it on dry weather conditions. And only for leisure. Not every day. That's the reason it has only 25.000 mls. on the clock and looks so unused.

[redvts]

sweet gauges on the center console where they from if u don't mind me asking

[cs_]

Initially bought them from VX-Performance (boost and oil temp) but later found them on ebay veeeery much cheaper. But without the aluminium housings of course, these are from VX-Performance and you do not get them from somewhere else, Uwe Regelin had someone manufacturing them for him. The upper instrument then is the digital lambda readout from www.LM-1.de. They are the german distributor for Innovate Motorsports but made their own readout displaying lambda and not afr (which is basically the same thing but in another scale, different units). The housing I made on my own, copying the other two so all matches together.

I like this place for the instruments. Cabling is easy, going along the console to the front and back departments of the car. And readout position is nice down there.


That's how it looks in the dark. Doing overboost.

Edited by cs_, 05 February 2011 - 05:43 PM.

[redvts]

that's a very nice setup hopefully i'll get something similar sorted in the summer

[Frittiersalon]

Tach Chef.

[cs_]

Moin.

[Tommess]

Tach Chef.

[cs_]

some kind of SIG sit-in here...

[cs_]

First test drives this season with the fresh mounted Racelogic Traction Control showed lots of noises at low speeds sometimes even leading to ABS failures and heavily cogging the engine in first gear. Now developed a solution. I put in a filter network which cancels all noises down to lowest speeds. Could now configure the TC to start working at 10km/h and any low rpm I like (actually I configured 1.300 rpm yet).

Here's the PDF with the current schematic and the description of the filter network:

Mounting a Racelogic Traction Control

NOW the TC works really perfect!




wheel speed signals BEFORE


wheel speed signals AFTER:

Edited by cs_, 05 March 2011 - 10:39 AM.

[forgotmepassword]

Lovely looking car, and a very interesting read. Thanks for sharing :0)

[2.2_na]

I think I've asked this before (but no-one answered...as maybe it was a silly question!) but - were all these 'European' Speedsters also built by Lotus in England, or were they made somewhere else?

[cs_]

They were mounted at Hethel, like all the VX220 and also the Elises and Exiges.

[Baron Von Scubadaddy]

Great looking car very nice

[alanoo]

First test drives this season with the fresh mounted Racelogic Traction Control showed lots of noises at low speeds sometimes even leading to ABS failures and heavily cogging the engine in first gear. Now developed a solution. I put in a filter network which cancels all noises down to lowest speeds. Could now configure the TC to start working at 10km/h and any low rpm I like (actually I configured 1.300 rpm yet).

Here's the PDF with the current schematic and the description of the filter network:

Mounting a Racelogic Traction Control

NOW the TC works really perfect!




wheel speed signals BEFORE


wheel speed signals AFTER:

Very interesting read on the blog

Has this cured the ABS error codes too ?

[oblomov]

First test drives this season with the fresh mounted Racelogic Traction Control showed lots of noises at low speeds sometimes even leading to ABS failures and heavily cogging the engine in first gear. Now developed a solution. I put in a filter network which cancels all noises down to lowest speeds. Could now configure the TC to start working at 10km/h and any low rpm I like (actually I configured 1.300 rpm yet).

Here's the PDF with the current schematic and the description of the filter network:


NOW the TC works really perfect!

Nice car and some intereting info on your website. My bhp may be slightly more than yours but your torque figures are way higher than mine.

I installed my Racelogic unit on the rear of the engine compartment as close to the ECU as possible, just to the left of where you (and I) have our charge cooler tanks mounted. Despite the long wire run to the ABS unit I have never experienced any problems with errors at low gear/speeds, perhaps I'm lucky. My wheel rim sizes are still the same front and rear though.

Edited by oblomov, 13 March 2011 - 09:17 PM.