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My NASA TT1 Build

49K views 187 replies 47 participants last post by  LotusCC 
#1 · (Edited)


Thought I'd toss up some pics of my 2014TT build.

Little history, BOE stuff aside, the reason I do what I do is largely about loving to study and engineer the car to get around the esses faster and more reliably tomorrow than I did today. I surely enjoy the design/build process equally as much as the driving.

I won 2012 regionals in TTU (which is now TT1) in 2012. I took 2013 off to enjoy time with my new son and prepare the car for the 2014 season. My competition has become much faster this year as I knew they would.

My plan for '14 was more downforce, more tire, better data acquisition, more safety (caged), more reliability, better cooling, and replacing the remaining wear items still on the car from 2005 when I purchased it new!

It was a lot of work. Thought I might share a few pics....

In this first set, I focused on more tire. I've not had much luck with diffs. Tried a couple and not getting to where I want with my power and sequential tranny. So this year, the diff is open. I wheeled down to 15 inchers but 10 inches wide so that I could run 275 hoosiers int he rear to help get the power down. To do this, the 949 rear wheels needed some spacing. Lathed out some billet spacers that are hub centering on the car and to the wheel. Pretty slick really. The studs are ARP and pressed in. The spacers are secured to the hubs with ARP fasteners. Not worried about strength! The wheels only weigh about 13lbs each and the spacers are about 1.5lbs... not bad!

To cover the wheels, Some reverie flares are crudely added. The car is off to the body shop this winter to make it an acceptable 10 footer--- which is all that is needed for track duty, IMO...
 

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#2 · (Edited)
Nice Phil!
I came about a similar solution just in the last 2 months using 15" TRMotorsport wheels and 275 Hoosiers. My wheels are only 9" wide. Had 20mm spacers made and added longer wheel studs to hold them on. In retrospect I think 23mm would be ideal. Need to get more tire to hold down that awesome REV400TVS power!
Great minds think alike, Eh!

Bill
 

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#4 ·
Nice:up: Mine are 24mm. I'd be a bit concerned about running a stud so long. Perhaps when you make the thicker spacer, switch over to the way I did it. Should be stronger than running an ultra long stud, FWIW.
 
#3 ·
In this set, came the cage. Cage selection for the Lotus "Elige" is..... well..... pretty cagy.lol There are some really bad cages out there and few people are talking about it... I have a mandrel tube bender, and I'm reasonably handy with a TIG. I've also built a few cages over the years. They're "some work" to be sure---Something I really didn't have the time for.

After looking around and talking to friends, my buddies at VSA had that right ticket. Their cage is undeniably the hardest cage of any of them to install. That said, it is the nicest for club racing that I've seen. It's tucked in and out of the way. No ingress/egress issues with theirs and the design makes sense! They shipped it promptly. It was palletized very well. Some welding was required once the two halves were settled in the car.

I elected to remove the factory "firewall" and replace with a proper removable aluminum firewall. I deisgned the it basically as a 60/40 split. The left side is the 60. The ECU, relays, etc all hang off of it and are secured with studs and or rivnuts for easy service. The right side is the 40 side. There's nothing attached to it. It's easily removable with a few dzus fasteners providing me friendly access to the alternator, drysump, etc.

I also spaced the firewall about 5/8" off the cage tubes for easy belt routing, clearance for fasteners, and to reduce vibration. The firewall panels are ofcourse lined with edging to further help with vibration reduction.
 

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#5 ·
Cooling...

It gets darn hot in the midwest where our circuit is. In recent years, we've had well over 30 days above 100F during our track season. Humid too... ugh:facepalm

So, cooling is important. My cooling system for the motor was OK, but not perfect. We learned a need for more block pressure to help reduce steam pockets hot spots. I have a friend across the pond tracking higher hp like we do and they were finding the same problem... more on that in a bit... Also needed better cooling for the water circulating through the intercooler (chargecooler, if you will;)) My poor car normally receives all prototype parts and this was starting to show up in its performance. So it was time to make a change and start adding some of the finished parts that BOE customers get. So we swapped out the old front mount cooler I was using for our dual pass front hex (As we call it). It's a very nice part that we had C&R work up for us and have installed in the World Challenge cars as well as several customer cars. It's extremely efficient and designed to allow adequate airflow to the engine radiator in a stacked position as you see here. (more info on that part on my website if you're interested)

The engine radiator is from Brent B. Very large rad that has been converted to single pass. We were careful to seal things up well to help ensure most all the air coming into the front of the car was forced through the radiators...

You don't see a radiator fan because I don't run one....
 

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#6 ·
Some other front end items...

Some other little front end items of note...

In these pics, some little details to make my life easier.

-Mounting the remote rezzies where I can reach them even with the clam all buttoned up

-Machine and tap the back of calipers for dual top bleeders on the calipers (we have special SS lines and fittings for this in stock if anyone is interested). Also pictured are the full-floating rotors we've been using for a long time. In the calipers are still the original prototyped SS caliper pistons. No complaints on the braking :D

-There's no HVAC, and the battery is where the heater/AC blower would be (not in the pass footwell). I wanted the battery as far forward as possible.

-This particular setup does not run any part of the OE radiator shroud. The way you see the rads stacked above is the way it looks before the clam goes back on. It's all very simple....
 

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#7 ·
Telemetry

As most know we're co-developing the stock ECU editor known as FastWorks. Fun stuff and a lot of work. We started working with AIM to develop a CANBUS template so that their dataloggers will feed off the data in the stock ECU. So I dumped the RacePak bits and switched over to AIM. No regrets as the AIM software is miles easier to work with in addition to better support from Josh at AIM.

So to be a bit different than the standard MXL Pista, I went with the more advanced EVO4 and Formula wheel:cool:

Lathed out an adapter that we then welded the FIA approved SPA stub to for the quick release formula wheel. This made the wheel plug 'n play with lotus hub. No cutting so that I can change to a GT wheel easily should I ever choose to. After racing the car, I can say that so far i LOVE the formula wheel for the Lotus. It seems perfect! :shift:
 

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#8 · (Edited)
Total gangsta! Yo!

Love it.

And it's Graphite Grey! Love it even more.

We are all very fortunate that Phil's passion is our passion. Very fortunate.

I may have started happily purchasing parts from other Lotus vendors before I purchased my car in early '06 and while I've continued to do so (hell, for a few years there I shoulda just direct deposited a portion of my paycheck into their bank accounts), I have to say that my partnership with Phil & crew at BOE has been the most rewarding. Phil originally spent two and a half hours on the phone with me, the first time I contacted him, talking me off the ledge back in 2010 when I found out my 14k mile engine had "an oil control" problem. Even after I initially decided to go a different route after that (just swapping in a used engine), Phil still provided plenty of free, friendly (hell, downright cheerful) guidance and counsel just as if he hadn't just lost a sale. Fast forward a few months, after it became obvious I didn't have the time to do the engine swap myself, I brought my car to BOE for the engine swap and a Nitron suspension install.

Then the scope creeped (mostly due to my flipping through the damn BOE catalog!)...

Rev 300 supercharger (a.k.a. the only time Phil ever up sold me. Admittedly it was a pretty big up sell, equally admittedly I was pretty amenable to being up sold, tho I did struggle a bit with the percentage increase in project cost as a result... "Uhhh yeah, Frank? This is Phil. Andrew and I are just about to install the engine in your car and we were thinking that it'd be a real shame not to put at least a small supercharger on there.").

Aero. Exige M.Y. '10 rear wing, APR CF front splitter (that Phil included a vote cf confidence cardboard template with for when I eventually tear it off so I can cut a piece of MDF to replace it with) and BOE street diffuser. I added the S111 RaceSills and APR canards after the fact.

Other items from my original 2011 build included clam hinge, 1/4 stick exhaust, etc. The hinge was the only thing I had a bit of buyer's remorse over. Then I used it for the first time and... Buyer's remorse... Gone.

I added a few BOE goodies, like SS caliper pistons and such in the interim and then decided to bring my car back to BOE for a once over and a few more goodies. My car is there right now getting de-HVACd, new radiator, front caliper brake bleeder & inlet line mod, front battery relocate, pressurized coolant swirl pot, Fast Works dyno tune, alignment & corner balance, etc.

Anyway, I didn't intend for this post to be a thread-jack / build thread for my car, so let me get to the point...

I've spent a lot of money with BOE... Twice... and I couldn't be happier about it as I've derived so much more value than the dollars I've spent. Phil, Andrew and crew are not only good people, but also great partners in this insane hobby / passion / obsession of ours. Do your car a favor and send it to BOE, at least once. Do yourself a favor and pay your car a visit while it's there. The shop is amazing, Phil's car is crazy amazing (warning: seeing it is gonna make you wanna buy shyt. A lot of it.). The whole experience is an exercise in delight.

Thanks BOE, you share my passion and you've certainly increased the units of pleasure, and pride, I derive from my Lotus and that's not an easy thing to do.

Lovefest off. ;) Back to this thread's regularly scheduled programming...
 
#17 ·
Total gangsta! Yo!

We are all very fortunate that Phil's passion is our passion. Very fortunate.
+1...!

I have been thinking that someday NASA time trials would be fun. I now see that competition might be kind of.....uh, stiff, especially in Phil's region!

Cool build, really cool.
 
#10 ·
THANK YOU FOR THE VERY KIND WORDS, FRANK!:bow:

Many more segments to the build. I'll post some more up tonight...

-Phil
 
#12 ·
One of our guys here at the shop t-boned a wall at the track two years ago in his Elise. He's tall. Telescoped his leg (tib fib) when he submarined despite having ASM belts. If there were a knee bar, he would have telescoped his femur too! So I'm with ya there!
 
#14 ·
Next was getting the cage painted and cleaning up the firewall installation.

It was important that the stock ECU fit the firewall since the '2014 plan is to be running the stock ECU in lieu of the EFI standalone ECU.

To keep things as relatively PnP as possible, the OE relay pack setup and chassis harness is retained. What a factory engine harness will work fine on this car, DRS supplied a mill-spec engine loom to factory specification.

Things are still looking pretty messy, but the vision is forming at this stage :D
 

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#15 ·
Swirling...

I'm a fan of swirl pots for cooling...

We worked up an aluminum swirl pot for the intercooling system. It has 3/4" I/O. Then mounted on the firewall. Recall that all the mechanicals that end up on the firewall end up on the "60" side so that I can easily remove the 40 side...

The pump pushing coolant through the intercooler system is upgraded from the standard Bosch pump we normally would use to a Meziere 20gpm pump. There's no way to get 20gpm through the system, but it will still push more fluid than the standard bosch pump.

The large swirl pot for the engine cooling is unique. We've been using these for a while and comes back to the bit I mentioned earlier about block pressure. The swirl pots or header tanks replace the stock header tank all together. They're designed to swirl the entire cooling mass. This is in an effort to remove more air from the coolant than a standard header tank or a swirl tank that doesn't swirl the entire mass. Remember that coolant boils locally around the cylinder jackets and it always having more air introduced. Aerated water/coolant doesn't cool (transfer heat) as well. This system is designed to constantly rid the system of air. In addition, you'll see a schrader valve on the tank. With this, we can add additional pressure to the system to increase the "air spring" within the system and increase block pressure. We typically run about 25-30 psi block pressure. Higher pressure not only raises the boiling point, which will reduce localized boiling around the cylinders, but it also reduces the size of the air bubbles in the system to promote better heat transfer.

Below, you can see a prototype part and the final part....
 

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#16 ·
Interior and motor

I wanted the interior to look decent despite the industrial and purpose built nature.

The interior shot below is essentially how the dash ended up. Using a second air bag cover, I did away with the stand cluster setup since the wheel has 4 pages of data...

The motor was my standard build. I know this motor setup well and can make about 400whp. However, I cannot run that hard for NASA TT1 after some other mods that penalized me, so we detune to about 360whp.

You see our BOE drysump setup in the pic here. This is the same drysump system that the world challenge cars, Zust's XP car, etc have ran with great success.

The REV400 TVS is pushing about 15psi boost, has stage 3 cams, Nikasil bores, port matched head, 10.5:1 Arias Pistons. Nothing too fancy.

Fuel Delivery is through our BOE surge tank....
 

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#18 ·
Rear Downforce...

For the wing, I worked with US composites maker, Crawford (they make composites for ALMS, Indy, etc). I wanted a top mount wing to help improve the effectiveness of the foil, lessen drag, and increase DF..... and because it seemed like an interesting challenge :D

The uprights are shaped like that are with the points at the top to be vortex generators. One tool I don't have is a wind tunnel. lol... So in the absence of a wind tunnel, I have the several aero engineering books, some industry confidants, and my own intuition to use in the design work... So that's the reason for the Mad Max look. Same applies to the end plates. The mad max struts are tied directly to the frame through slots in the boot..

More on the wing. The wing is full width of the body and has a massive 350mm cord. The gurney flap is removable and tunable as it sits in a channel. The foil is dry layup, very light, and very strong. For the techies, the profile is a Selig 1223, which is known for ultra high lift and low Reynolds number. This is arguably the most effective profile for a race car. You won't find these features on the Chinese APR wings... or even Reverie for that matter.
The expense of the wing project was FANTASTIC. I had to commit to purchasing 4 of these. I'm still on the hook for 3 more that can be made to any width and upright dimension in case anyone is interested.... Perhaps one day I'll have the remaining 3 sold... otherwise, you're looking at a $12,000 wing right there! rotfl.... oh wait:eek:

I can only guess as to the DF this wing makes at 140mph, but I'm certain it's multiples of hundreds of pounds. I've had the car on the track as of last weekend at 140mph. Interestingly, that's 8mph faster than the car used to go on the same straight with the Reverie wing. The downforce was so great that it stretched the 4 M6 bolts/mountings that I had securing it... It has a place for 6 of them, but due to time constraints, I only fashioned 4 connection points. Obviously, I'll be revising the mounting strategy before next season! :D
 

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#19 ·
Front Aero

While on aero, I got fixed up with Technocraft by VSA and purchased their full length 211 splitter. I obviously don't have a 211, but figured I could make it work. A few of the LCS guys are running these on their 211s, but trimmed down significantly. I'm not too worried about the aesthetics of the part at full length and figured I would be able to cleanly support it well enough to keep it full length for maximum effectiveness. To pull this off, I figured the splitter must be hung exclusively from the crash structure. In no way did I want the front clam stressed by the front aero/splitter like it is from the factory. This is also makes removal of the front clam about a 5 minute procedure even without quick releases.

So here you can get an appreciation for the size in the splitter as well as the strength with me standing on it. With the support I've added, the splitter is VERY strong. It flexes none with me walking across it even at the furthest edges. The splitter extends right at 8 inches in front of the bodywork.
 

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#20 ·
Some motor pics

Since everyone likes engines...

The engine bay is actually quite clean and certainly the most easily serviced Lotus I've ever worked on...

In these pics, you'll see the swirls pots, Quaife Sequential, drysump tank, our BOE side mount oil cooler, etc... I thought I'd try my hand with the twitter app. Meh, I think I prefer the original pics rather than the "Aged" look that the twitter filter gave the engine pics... you get the idea though :D

I'm sure someone will ask about the breather ports being blocked off on the valve cover. When converting to a drysump system, we seal off the motor entirely-- no breather ports, dipstick, etc. This allows the scavenge sections on the pump to pull a vacuum in the crank case. The vent is over by the tank. In this pic, the vent filter is not currently installed. It's just an open tube, as you can see. Obviously a filter is placed on the tube before use.

Additionally, the tiny catch can on the roll bar strut is attached to the transmission.
 

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#21 ·
Other Stuff

Some things were carried over...

Shocks, springs, etc were all carried over from previous. Just Nitron "GT3s" with my own springs and valving. No idea where I'll end up with these. Suspension is always something I'm changing anyway, so there's not really a final resting spot in my future here...

Car sits pretty low. Need right at 17 feet of ramp to get on my low slung trailer.

The Diffuser is something we make and is carried over from the past several years. It's fully sealed off with no wheel openings. The fences extend in front of the rear wheels to help keep the high pressure out.

The aero package is not "done" by any means... I'll still do something with side sills and need to seal off the splitter, block off the oil cooler holes in the front clam, etc...

The top is very modified and cut up version of the Blackwatch Racing's carbon top. It's a wonderful part that every track rat with an elise should have.:up:

Interestingly, PRIOR to corner balancing, I snapped this shot of the scales with no driver ballast. Obviously with me in the car, everything changes, I just thought it was interesting how balanced the chassis happened to turn out after moving so many heavy parts around the car. I was reasonably happy with ~1914lbs. I can still cut a little weight out of the car and be legal, but not much. Easiest place is the windscreen. Just so happens, I have a "plastic" Speed Glass screen from Percy awaiting installation:up: Not a lot of easy places to find substantial weight savings beyond that--- not that I can afford to shave much more off and stay legal anyway...

The trailer is from Montrose. The box is 20 feet and the whole thing weighs 2,200lbs. The front "clams" open for super easy access to front attachment points.
 

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#23 ·
Interestingly, PRIOR to corner balancing, I snapped this shot of the scales with no driver ballast. Obviously with me in the car, everything changes, I just thought it was interesting how balanced the chassis happened to turn out after moving so many heavy parts around the car. I was reasonably happy with ~1914lbs. I can still cut a little weight out of the car and be legal, but not much. Easiest place is the windscreen. Just so happens, I have a "plastic" Speed Glass screen from Percy awaiting installation:up: Not a lot of easy places to find substantial weight savings beyond that--- not that I can afford to shave much more off and stay legal anyway...
The 1914 is without the wheels...right? :D
 
#22 ·
At the track...

I used the last NASA race (regional run-offs) of the season to shake the car down. I have not been on the race track since October of 12. I was rusty. Real rusty.

Had some wonderfully quick cars there including the ST2 national champion who happens to have a V6 powered Exige Cup car (V6 conversion). He's obviously very fast. Also present was the TT3 National Champion. Fair to assume that my car is classed higher than these guys and it should be faster, but we all know a driver makes up for car deficiencies!

Typically, at the national level, you'll see 1-2 seconds separating class 1, from 2, from 3. I have no illusions to the reality that my driving is no where near to the level that these two champion drivers are. Those two are pro-level drivers with various championships under their belts in both SCCA and NASA. They obviously beat plenty of cars in faster classes on a regular basis, set track records, etc... They're also super helpful and nice guys in case you ever run into them:up:

My Mad Max car made me look smart despite my all thumbs driving. It also performed without incident, so I couldn't have been happier with that! It was so fast and balanced that I managed to set fast lap of the weekend among all classes and set new track records. -eek-:crazyeyes Was about a second faster than the ST2 champion and 2.5 seconds faster than the TT3 champion... I'm really looking forward to rediscovering my driving skills and improving upon them to see just how far I can take the little lotus in 2014.

Some pics...
 

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#26 ·
Ya, that weight was just so I had a number to fill out my classing sheet. Following that, the car was lifted, wheels replaced with stands, lowered, and setup began... If I could drive with stands instead of wheels, the car would be many pounds lighter though :D
 
#27 ·
Pls give us more awesome eye candy!!! Also a great promotion as to why your BOE parts work so well.
 
#28 ·
THANKS!

Working on a vid. Will try to have it up here tonight or tomorrow :D

All these track cars are a work in progress and are never "done". I still have a list of things to complete over the winter and there will be a new list next winter, I'm sure.

Hopefully we can get more cars out on the track competing and maybe some of these pics will get some wheels spinning.

"It's OK to cut" ;):D:shift:
 
#30 ·
Thanks. It's a fun one!

Here's a video from the other day. I was darn rusty not having been on the track in a year, but the car did great!

 
#32 ·
In other news, I switched my TT car back to the stock ECU this weekend (2005 T4). It was running an EFI plug 'n play standalone. That is one of the more modified cars that I've done on the T4 (2005 ECU, specifically). Really came together quite easily since I've done similar builds on the t4e and the two ECUs work quite similar from a tuning standpoint. With stage 3 cams, compression, porting, boost, fuel, sequential, and etc there were plenty of things that could make tuning interesting. I took her up to 392whp at 8200rpm and called it more than enough, as I now need to back it back down to 350 or so to be class legal. Few ways to do this. Less RPM, less boost, or less timing...

Also revising the diffuser, wing mounts, and going to town cutting the rear clam. In my shakedown run in October, I found that I stretched my wing mounts which I tested with nearly 500lbs of static mass prior to the shakedown. Hard telling how much DF the wings makes at 140mph (my terminal speed during the shakedown at HPT in October with a relatively moderate straight), but I'd venture to say it's easily 500+lbs.... We'll be at tracks with much longer straights and 155+mph terminal speeds (actual GPS speed), so will be making significant improvements there....

Need to get some more DF up front. Looking to lower the front another inch and block the unused oil-cooler openings to help energize the splitter better.

Now that the stock ECU is driving the motor, working on making the ECU friendly with "flat shifting" the sequential. Have the parts, now just need to get some free time to sort it out...

-Phil
 
#33 ·
Phil,

Do you have any more detailed pics of where your front splitter is mounted to? And how is your rear wing mounted, does it go straight to the rear subframe? I'm looking to mount mine in a similar way and wanted to see where exactly you mounted yours to give it such strength.
 
#34 ·
Sure. I'm redoing all this at the moment but can describe what I had that was decent but not decent enough:eek:

I added 1/4" 2x2 angle to the top of sub frame. Slotted the boot so that the angle could protrude through the boot floor. There were two holes in each angle's vertical leg. The wing mount went thought the clam where there was a 5" wide by 3/16" thick "drop plates" with nutcerts at spacing that corresponded with the 2 holes in the angle on the frame. This way I could retain the clamhinge operation after simply removing 4 bolts that attached the drop plates to the angle. This wasn't the prettiest, but it was effective at holding vertical load well. It wasn't as strong as needed to be with lateral load in combination with vertical load, however... I felt that it was worth a try to retain the ease of service in retaining the clamhinge with this strategy. Fail. lol

I'll end up having a more substantial structure back there for the real season that won't bend, but it will be at the expense of losing my clamhinge on this car :( But that's the point of a shakedown run :) Will miss my clamgine though...

-Phil
 
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