Custom Twin-Chargecooler setup

[t70]

That would be a big advantage to my system... everything is extremely well protected.

[t70]

Well, firstly, I must apologize for not being around on the forum for a long time. I have been uber busy at work and was temporarily an assistant manager of sorts. That being said, here's what's next for Aerobat's Esprit:

I have purchased a Vi-Pec V88 ECM, wideband o2 sensors and amplifiers, 735cc injectors and a 3 bar map sensor. This year we will basically be just getting the car running on the ECM and maybe tune to 420-450hp. I will post my progress once the parts begin to arrive. I will be maintaining all of the car's alarm, abs and airbag system through the factory ECU.. and even leaving the signals going to the ecm. I will simply be removing the output signals from the ECM so that it can't control anything, but that everything else runs as normal.

For those of you who don't want to read the entire thread.. here's a basic breakdown of what has been done to Aerobat's Esprit so far:

Full coil-over suspension

6 piston front and 4 piston rear brake upgrade with cross drilled rotors all around

Fully custom intercooler kit

3 core aluminum radiator

Larini De-cat pipes and straight piped back from there

Lotus "Red-Race" chip

Quaiffe Limited Slip Diff

Holloway Performance Gearbox upgrade

HKS SSQV Blow off valves

Forge Motorsports Wastegate capsules

Secondary air injection deleted

Raid Airbag steering wheel

Well, firstly, I must apologize for not being around on the forum for a long time. I have been uber busy at work and was temporarily an assistant manager of sorts. That being said, here's what's next for Aerobat's Esprit:

I have purchased a Vi-Pec V88 ECM, wideband o2 sensors and amplifiers, 735cc injectors and a 3 bar map sensor. This year we will basically be just getting the car running on the ECM and maybe tune to 420-450hp. I will post my progress once the parts begin to arrive. I will be maintaining all of the car's alarm, abs and airbag system through the factory ECU.. and even leaving the signals going to the ecm. I will simply be removing the output signals from the ECM so that it can't control anything, but that everything else runs as normal.

For those of you who don't want to read the entire thread.. here's a basic breakdown of what has been done to Aerobat's Esprit so far:

Full coil-over suspension

6 piston front and 4 piston rear brake upgrade with cross drilled rotors all around

Fully custom intercooler kit

3 core aluminum radiator

Larini De-cat pipes and straight piped back from there

Lotus "Red-Race" chip

Quaiffe Limited Slip Diff

Holloway Performance Gearbox upgrade

HKS SSQV Blow off valves

Forge Motorsports Wastegate capsules

Secondary air injection deleted

Raid Airbag steering wheel

[t70]

Well.. Today, other than working on two other esprits... We got the wiring all labelled for stand-alone, when it lands. This is photo is about half way there...

And this photo is 90% there.. (all that is left is power leads and ignition etc...)

[Bentzion]

I was wondering if you had contacted Neal at Apex speed tech or purchased the stand alone ECU from him? He also has an great blog in which he talks about using very high flow injectors on small motors: http://www.apexspeed...r-a-better-tune

Good luck with the tuning. The project is outstanding!

Edited May 6, 2012 by ramjet
No need to quote the post directly above yours

[t70]

Interesting stuff.. and in-fact.. the injectors I'm using are Injector-Dynamics. The place I will be doing the tuning at is LightSpeed in Red Deer Alberta. I will be laying my own base tune here first though..

[Bentzion]

Sounds good on the tune. I read someplace that you were going to make a kit available. Is that still the case?

Also, what do you think of the 4 pot motor with better intercooler and a custom ECU?

[t70]

I can make a kit available to anyone that is interested. It's a bit of an install and does require a bit of cutting etc.. At the moment, I don't have any extra parts that I could pre-cut, so that the install was seamless. I did sell a "kit" to Mike Sekinger though.

So.. as for the 4 pot motor and custom ECU. A guy in Red Deer, that I know, will be doing something along those lines shortly. The biggest problem with most water-air intercooler systems is that they use an oil-cooler type radiator up front. This has a very high rate of flow, but it's cooling effect is minimal. This is likely why the S4 has a spike boost that is only available for 30 seconds. Basically, you need a big enough radiator that flows slow enough to keep the intercooler(s) from heat-soaking quickly. The larger intercooler that you can purchase is only half the battle.

When it comes to the capabilities of the 4 cylinder... If I recall correctly, there have been a few builds on here to the 400hp range.

I will see if I can get my friend in Red Deer to post his build when he does it. (His last project was a 660hp 1.8 litre turbo, Audi TT)

[Bentzion]

Nice!

You cant help but be in awe of the people that do these upgrades out of their garage and make them work really well on a day to day basis! The big factories spend LOTS of money to get the formula to work along with very sophisticated equipment that vendors such as Bosch etc give them along the way. It amazes me!

Love to see the tuning that you do with the new ECU. That's when you can really get the car running like you really want.

[aerobat]

And I'm the lucky beneficiary of all his expertise!

What a sweet car .....

[t70]

Well, I received the Stand-alone on Saturday, and we put about 9 hours into wiring.. setting software, wiring, changing software, wiring... wiring... soldering... wiring.. heat shrink... wiring.. all I see is wires!!

We placed the Vi-Pec ecm on top of the factory ECM so that they both get mounted together and to make the wiring harness shorter and easier to place.

Here it is for it's test fit:

Here's the first bit of soldering done:

Here's most of the wiring completed (This would be optimistic.. likely we are only a little over half way there)

This was the Eureka moment... When I plugged the laptop into the Vi-Pec and it worked!!! (It doesn't run the car yet.. but at least it's communicating with the laptop!)

The Vi-Pec came with an inlet temp sensor that was completely different than the factory sensor and I had to get an NPT plug, drill it out (tapered fit.. so very interesting to do without the proper drill bit.. took a while.) Then, after that I threaded it with a tapered tap and then cut the top off of the plug so that it would not block the actual sensor at the end (basically the plug was too deep and the sensor wouldn't penetrate the depth of the plug). Here it is, installed:

[aerobat]

Wow.

Or Yikes!

One of those two seems appropriate .....

[t70]

Yikes is right!! I never thought it would take this much time to do the wiring.. wow.. Glad we did a lot of pre-marking on the wires last week.

[Bentzion]

So i understand that if you are able to get full knock control with enough sensors to feed information you can effectively push for more power more effectively and have a car that tracks beautifully!

I hope that works out. If you run into any issues I understand that injector dynamics actually can connect to your PC (if you allow it ) remotely and he'll help you fine tune the car. That's what I call awesome!

[t70]

The Stand-Alone ECM (which is a Vi-Pec) is fully controllable. It's so controllable that I can even setup a "Launch Control" where you put the accelerator to the floor and it will control the rpm for launch... also it will help spool the turbo off of the line. I can also control boost vs rpm vs gear and a whole lot of other parameters as well.

[t70]

Last 2 sensors hooked up! Now comes the terrifying part... getting it to run.

[fsrowsell]

Good luck Mark!!

Felix

[lotus4s]

_{This is exciting, fire that mutha up....}

[t70]

Well... I've gotten most of the way to starting the car.. I had to adjust a few ignition trigger sensor settings in order to get the car to register an rpm signal and finally start to fire the plugs. Now it's flooded though.. lol. I will pull the plugs friday and add a little oil to the cylinders. Then, double check my ignition timing and start adding fuel to the mix again.. So far though... every wire is correctly done!! WOOT!

[t70]

So, the next step is to figure out what the engine timing is with respect to the signal from the reluctor-type crank angle sensor. The factory harmonic balancer/pulley does not have any timing marks on it however.. so this poses a bit of an issue. First thing I need is a pointer of sorts that I can attach and see where the timing marks should be made. Now, since I need to do a couple of timing belts at the moment anyway, I thought I should do a dual-purpose marker. So.. I pulled an old aluminum ruler off of the wall and started:

I cut the end off..

Then used a 13mm socket to make a nice scribe of a circle that will fit properly:

Get the vertical sander ready...

Here is the end finished..

Then I drilled a 5/16" hole in the end.

Then... sanded out a notch and an angle-type marker:

Then.. Install it so that the bends can be done properly and that it has a fine clearance from the harmonic balancer:

And heres the final shot of the side profile with the bends complete:

[dodgy]

What you are doing is beyond me as you know I do miss the 'shop' work and you guys

Awesome work!

Maybe in under a month, I will be able to start work on getting my car back to 100%! this waiting game is too much!

[aerobat]

Hi Dave, nice hearing from you again!

I am wishing that you get your car back to 100%. I'm also hoping the real estate market works out to your favour. Hope all is well, and you are able to come back for a visit sometime. You'll have to give my car a spin after Mark and Garry work their wonders on it!

[t70]

Wonderful to hear from you Dave!! Hope all is well with you!!

Today I decided that I should build something that I should have built years ago.. Since the majority of the cars that come through my shop are Lotus'.. I built a rear car-cover for working on the engine etc.. (soooo much better than using towels etc..

[fsrowsell]

Looks good Mark. Good Job!

[t70]

So, I tried a few times to get Johns car to run as it sits, however, I learned that the factory ecm has a built in ignitor. This means that I don't get any spark power. So, I baught an igniter from a 2001 Volkswagen Passat. Instructions are to apply a heat sink to the aluminum backing, so I got my friend to locate me a nice heatsink from an Asus Computer processor chip. I also found one harness in my collection of random electrical connections for the 4 pin side, but I had to order a new 5 pin connector for the input signal side.

Tonight, I built a mounting system for the new ignitor....

Here's the ignitor:

Here's the Heatsink, mounted to the ignitor:

Remember that aluminum ruler I used to make the timing marker... I used it again

Then I drilled a couple of holes in the aluminum ruler part and threaded it for a couple of small 4mm allen bolts:

Then I polished the ever living heck out of the aluminum ruler... lol

Here it is installed...

And here's both ECU's installed with the Ignitor:

So.. next is to wire up the new harness' and VAROOOM!!!!

Edited May 3, 2012 by Mark T-C

[aerobat]

Got my fingers crossed that it all works out as planned. Looking good, and ingenious as always.

Nothing is ever easy, when it comes to working on a Lotus, is it Mark?