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Learning how to build Lotus Seven replicas...together!
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PostPosted: September 2, 2016, 8:57 pm 
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The louvers arrived and I couldn't resist installing them and building the rad ducting. I started by laying out the paper template that was included with louvers and cutting into the hood. I flipped the hood over and trimmed back another 2" all around so I could dig out the exposed foam core and seal it back up with some fiberglass.

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I was originally planning to make the rad ducting out of aluminum but due to the changing shapes, slight offset, and obstacles that needed clearance I made it out of fiberglass instead. I pretty much followed the same process I used for my fenders except there was no saving the foam mold this time.

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Before starting the project I never thought to test the pressures with a manometer and by the time time I saw the suggestion in badermatic's thread I had already cut the holes so there was no going back. I thought I would at least do some testing with yarn strands when it was completed, and to my relief I do indeed have flow in the right direction. It actually works quite well and dramatically reduces the frequency that the fan comes on. As an added bonus, I can use the air stream to warm my hands and it should extend my comfortable driving season a bit. The next step is going to be building some sheet metal damming on either side of the rad to see if I can increase that pressure differential a little more.


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PostPosted: September 2, 2016, 9:47 pm 
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Location: White Rock, BC, Canada
Good stuff. If you still need more cooling, a fence in front of the new ducts would probably make it pull through better. Like the Cheetah cars have (for the same reason).

Cheers.

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PostPosted: September 2, 2016, 10:34 pm 
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looks good.


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PostPosted: September 2, 2016, 10:59 pm 
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You've got zero ducting going INTO the radiator and since air will take the path of least resistance it's going around your radiator.

But with that said I don't see how you could make some ducting because of your suspension. That means you'll never have optimal air flow, but maybe you'll have adequate air flow with this. How about a sucker fan too?

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PostPosted: September 3, 2016, 6:42 pm 
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This is what I had in mind for damming up the front.

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I took the car for an hour long test drive this morning, and with the cardboard damming the rad fan never came on once. The highest the temp got was 92*C while i was following someone. Once the car got back into clean air the temp dropped back to 88.5-89*C which is the thermostat temp. Now I just need to make a nicer looking aluminum version.


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PostPosted: September 4, 2016, 11:07 pm 
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Location: Upstate NY
Looks great Zac! Nice work!


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PostPosted: September 5, 2016, 1:34 pm 
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Location: British Columbia, Canada
Absolutely top notch build, Zac! I also live in the lower mainland, so maybe one day I can come take a look at your car in person.

A few questions for you: Where did you get your tail lights? Where did you source the vinyl wrap? Where did you get the safety inspection done?

Keep up the fantastic work!
Mark

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PostPosted: September 11, 2016, 10:23 pm 
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mainlandboy wrote:
Absolutely top notch build, Zac! I also live in the lower mainland, so maybe one day I can come take a look at your car in person.

A few questions for you: Where did you get your tail lights? Where did you source the vinyl wrap? Where did you get the safety inspection done?

Keep up the fantastic work!
Mark


Thanks Mark. Anytime you're on the Island feel free to contact me and you can come check out the car.

-I got the tail lights from ebay. Search for oval LED stop tail turn trailer lights. You might have to sift through a few listings but they'll come up.
-The vinyl wrap I sourced from 3dwraps.ca. They're Canadian and shipping is very fast.
-The inspection I had done by my local OK Tire

I finished the aluminum shrouding around the radiator this week and went to two events this weekend.

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The first event I got FTD by about 2.5 seconds and gave a few ride-alongs to some kids that were there. Needless to say, they thoroughly enjoyed it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTt1_v8XmAI

The second event had some stiffer competition. I had a blast battling for FTD the whole day with my best friend Hamish, but in the end he got me by 0.071 seconds. He was driving the BBQ, a propane powered 84 Corvette on 315 Hoosier A6's. There was an At-om Spec Racer on A6's at the event as well. He was a little over a second slower than my car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcsH5NFOD9k


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PostPosted: September 13, 2016, 6:53 am 
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Posts: 103
Zac88GT wrote:
There was an At-om Spec Racer on A6's at the event as well. He was a little over a second slower than my car.


How good does that have to feel!! Congrats! Just for grins, I looked one up. Not very lo-cost, "PRICING FROM $53,750":

http://arielatom.com/specraceatom/

Nicely done! Excellent work.

Chris


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PostPosted: September 4, 2017, 3:28 pm 
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Posts: 177
It's been a long time so I thought I'd give an update. I made a few alterations last winter and most of them I'm pleased with. I added a large vent for the fuel filler so now I don't have to trickle the gas in while refueling. I changed the alignment slightly for a bit more camber and that seems to be working well, although it could still use more for maximum cornering power. I also pulled the engine to clean it up and do a bunch of upgrades:
-balance shaft delete
-manual timing belt tensioner
-aluminum flywheel and new clutch
-Wavetrack LSD

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The balance shaft delete removed 13lbs of mass that was rotating 2X engine speed, and I'm no longer feeding 6 bearings with oil, so that's great, but with my stiff engine mounts the added vibration has taken some of the cruising pleasure out of the car. While I don't mind the vibration itself, at certain rpm's some of the sheet metal panels start to resonate and it becomes loud and unpleasant. Some of the components were permanently modified so there's no going back without a new engine. I may try stiffening the problem panels to change their resonant frequency.

Everything else I'm very happy with and the car seems to be working pretty good. I had a chance this summer to do my first trackday. The facility is brand new and built as a driver training/ test track so it's fairly small with lots of technical corners (blind, off camber, and cresting). Aside from the front and back straight, the speeds were on par with a lot of the autocrosses I do. I was the fastest car out there that day and managed to get some pretty respectable lap times. It was really hot (>30*C) so my cooling system couldn't keep up while going all out for a 20 minute session. After about 10 minutes the coolant temp was getting up to 108*C and I would back off for a few minutes and then get back on it for the last couple of laps. In hind sight I probably could have pushed it to 115*C and it might have maintained that temp for the whole session but I thought I would take it easy. I would like to add an auxiliary cooler using the heater core circuit and possibly add a proper oil cooler as well for next year.

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https://youtu.be/i3SYtRLPuGA

I've also done some more autocrossing this summer. The car has been pretty solidly getting FTD, although I haven't come up against either of the two cars that beat me last year. The last event I got FTD by 4.4s. While I still find the car understeers at times, I'm not really sure if it's much of a problem since I can drive around it. A little trail braking or a sharp steering input can get the car rotating and makes for a very quick lap.

https://youtu.be/Fpv18Brh0F8

Two weeks ago I had the chance to do my very first motorcycle trackday, and it was at the same facility as before. Having previously driven the course was a huge advantage and I was able to start going hard pretty quickly. The speeds were much higher on the bike (190 vs 160) and it sure felt a whole lot faster, even though I doubted it would be. Riding the bike was so much more involved and my legs were sore for days. When I put the videos side by side the car looks really boring, even though it's 8 seconds faster! Both videos were about 2 seconds slower than my fastest lap times so I thought it was a pretty fair comparison. The fastest bike at the event (race prepped new cbr1000rr on slicks) being ridden all out, laying rubber out of the corners and all, just managed to match my car times. I'm really interested in how much time I could drop with a set of slicks on the car.

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https://youtu.be/asgXpG6xryk


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Last edited by Zac88GT on December 8, 2019, 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: September 4, 2017, 10:45 pm 
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Hey Zack,

Thanks for the update. Sounds like you have your car well sorted. Are you going to bring it over to the Area 27 track someday?

Mark

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PostPosted: September 5, 2017, 10:34 am 
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mainlandboy wrote:
Hey Zack,

Thanks for the update. Sounds like you have your car well sorted. Are you going to bring it over to the Area 27 track someday?

Mark


I'm hoping to make it out there next year. I'd like to do the same thing where I go once with the car and then with the bike. I was thinking about going this year, but decided I should wait until I increased the cooling capacity since it gets so hot there in Oliver.


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PostPosted: October 11, 2017, 4:44 pm 
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A new dyno shop opened up near me so I thought it would be a good idea to put the car on the rollers and get a baseline before I start my power upgrades for the winter. Right now the engine is still pretty well stock. H22a1 with a vibrant header, 2.5" exhaust, balance shaft delete, and an aluminum flywheel. The results were about as expected, ~180whp. The exciting part will be seeing the difference next year.

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Last edited by Zac88GT on December 8, 2019, 3:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: October 11, 2017, 6:12 pm 
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That's about right. My dead stock (other than intake and exhaust) H22A1 put out 190hp.

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PostPosted: February 18, 2018, 2:44 pm 
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I've been keeping track of some other cars that have gone on the dyno and am pleasantly surprised. This dyno seems to be fairly conservative, and consistently reads about .75 of what the manufacturers claimed power is for 2wd cars. One of the closest comparable cars was my friends AP1 S2000 (rated at 240hp stock) with an exhaust and his car made 2whp more than mine. The H22a1 that I have is only rated at 187 so it seems that despite it's relatively high mileage it's fairly healthy. I was debating whether or not to replace the rings this winter but based on this, my compression test of 215psi accross the board, and only 4% leakdown on all cylinders I decided to leave the bottom end alone.

My quest for more power began last winter when I started modifying a spare intake manifold. I welded up the grooves underneath the manifold so I could completely remove the dual runners in the lower manifold. Modifying a stock manifold this way has been shown to pick up power throughout the rpm range and actually be better than any aftermarket option. I also gutted the butterfly plate and bored out the upper manifold to match up to a 70mm throttle body. I ended up milling through the air passage for the IAC so I had to do a bit more welding and boring to block off the original air passage and repair the plenum. For the new idle air supply I installed a fitting right below the solenoid and plumbed it directly to one of the air filter ports.

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Along with this manifold I installed some cams and other supporting bits I've been collecting over the past year. The cams I picked up are the Skunk2 Pro1's. They're supposed to be the best cams for a stock bottom end and make the most power everywhere in the rpm range with a smooth VTEC crossover. The idle quality is supposed to suffer a bit, but it's a worthwhile trade off for the mid-range gains you get. Because of the lift and duration of these you have to check the valve-valve and piston-valve clearances, and properly degree them in. I took the head off to make things a bit easier, clean things up a bit, and change some gaskets. I also put in some Skunk2 Pro Series valve springs, and titanium valve retainers.

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The engine also got some larger fuel injectors, AEM wideband, and a Hondata S300 ecu to make it all work. The center console looks a little more filled out with the new wideband gauge, and a few extra switches to control fans and new ecu features. I thought a fire extinguisher and an oil catch can would be a nice additions as well. Last, but certainly not least, I sewed up a nice elbow pad that should make a huge difference in comfort while cruising.

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Last edited by Zac88GT on December 8, 2019, 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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