lotusmotors

The original Lotus bearings were made by Vandervell and were made from their excellent VP2 bearing material - which is a heavy duty Lead/Copper (Tri-metal) material which has a high load bearing capacity and is very forgiving if metal to bearing contact occurs. Unfortunately the Vandervell bearing is no longer supplied by Lotus. I believe that all the bearings now supplied by UK specialists originate from ACL in Australia - the ACL bearing is an aluminium based bearing which does not have the high load bearing capacity of a Tri-metal bearing. In my experience the ACL bearings are not fairing too well in race / rally / tuned engines. Regular strip downs of these competition engines allows the opportunity to see how well bearings are performing - what I was seeing prompted me to have Tri-metal engine bearings made again. These are a similar grade to the original Vandervell bearing and are also the cheapest! I hope this may clear up any doubts about the current options and help with your decision. Garry Kemp

The red car was raced by Richard Jenvey - who now runs the well known throttle body manufacturing company - Jenvery Dynamics. It had a 2.0l semi-works engine (dry sumped) and ran a Hewland transaxle. Last I heard Richard still had the car and was dusting it off ready to race again. I think it ran in Group 5 in its day - but Richard should be easy enough to get hold of via his website amd give you all the information. Nic Olson (who works at AP racing) has campaigned a naturally aspirated G car for many years; and I think it won it's championship this year after a few years away - he also owned George Howard Chappel's Turbo Esprit race car which won the 750 sportscar series; George ran the Lotus GT1 race team in the early 1990s. He now runs the ProDrive Le Mans team that campaign the Aston Martins. Hope that helps a bit... Garry Kemp

Hi, I have a rear casing, brand new actually. Drop me a line - can't seem to get through to your personal messeages (inbox full).

One on ebay at the moment - item number 150155560175 ... Edit - Link added - matk http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...60175%26fvi%3D1

a dressed 910 with manifold and turbo is closer to 190kg.

One last thing; the opening in the front of the engine block (behind the pump) that the water is pumped through is enlarged on the later blocks. It is machined out rather than being left as cast and is maybe 25-30% larger. I usually open it out on the early engines when rebuilding them.

There is an Esprit manifold on ebay at the moment - Item number: 270006276837

I would suggest staying below 7250 rpm if you have the old style cast iron cam followers; from the S4 onwards the engine was treated to steel cam followers. If you plan to use higher than 7250 rpm regularly you really need to set the valve spring seated pressues: shimmed to 65lbs seated you can run 8000rpm; assuming the engine is in good health. Garry

The primarly pipes seem a bit on the short side to really tune in at any usable rpm. I am surprised they didn't go for a 4-2-1 set up considering the space restriction. I'd recommend primary pipes in the 30" - 33" range. GK.

I have some pictues; not sure how you post them though. The compression is 7.8 to 1; the fuel 105 octane racing unleaded. I am sure you must realise it is a drag car; so it doesn't see any road driving; most people would find re-packing the parachute a bit too much trouble after each prod on the brakes...:-) with two 650cc injectors per cylinder the MOT emissions test might be a bit tricky too... It only sees WOT for about 8 seconds at a time... The tyres; I am sure you can imagine are a little wider than standard. It has been very durable; on one occasion the driver forgot to turn on the electric water pump before his run; it returned to the pits with the header tank looking like a geyser and coolant at 145 degrees C. It did not break the head gasket.

The main challenge with this engine was keeping the head gasket in place; over about 380 hp they get a bit marginal. From the outset the plan was to at least double that figure. The liners were substituted for dutile iron; the head is dowelled to the block and head studs were custom items from the USA. The head gasket was replaced with an annealed copper gasket and a stainless steel wire ring is inserted into the top of the liner. The top deck of the block is machined and the liners are fully supported around the edge with a deck closing plate. While the tuning is quite extensive it is fairly standard stuff; bigger valves, gas flowing, bigger chargecooler, bigger throttle bodies, twin injectors per cylinder and a BIG turbo. The core components though are stock Lotus: Bearings, block, head, even the SE / S4 pistons are standard. The original turbo (a T5) was replaced with a larger turbonetics unit that is, as you might guess, as responsive as a supertanker. At launch the engine gets a 250hp hit of nitrous to wake up the turbo; which as I said earlier gives 3.8 bar of boost when up to speed. The car has been known to hit 60 in just over 1 second and go on to 170 in about 8.2 seconds. I can't say for sure; but I imagine it is probably the fastest Talbot Sunbeam in the world... :-)

Well nothing broke actually - it's been running 10,250 rpm regularly for about two years; with 3.8 bar boost it hits 0-170 mph in just over 8 seconds. Not bad for a Talbot Sunbeam; but to be fair; it's had a bit of work done... Richard Jenvey's group 5 Esprit circuit racer ran to 10,000 rpm in the late 70's; but I would be the first to acknoweldge these cars are the exception rather than the rule.

Are you sure an Esprit engine will reach 30m/s; on the road? You'll have to allow me a bit of slack here as I'm a feet and inches man; but the Esprit has a 3" stroke; it's red line is 7400 rpm so: 7400 rpm x 3" x 0.166 = 3685 ft / min, or 61.42 ft per second, which is I think 18.7 m/s. To get to 30m/s wouldn't you need to rev it past 11,500 rpm? Which I am not sure anyone has acheived with an Esprit. I've had one hitting 10,250 for short runs; but that is a long way from stock and is running around 26 m/s.

Look up Ross Hockley Autos; he's in Auz and makes his own gaskets, bearings etc - nice stuff, and cheaper than Lotus. He's a Jensen guy really; but they have the 907 engine so he should be able to help. GARRY