[Nathan Howard]

Hello Everyone!

Long time lurker and since Nov 22’ I’ve been a short time owner.

Decided to finally make a build thread for a car I own as this is my dream car and I’d love to document every major step of my ownership journey so hopefully someone can learn from whatever mistakes and triumphs I make.

Like a lot of people here, the Elise has been a dream car of mine since I was little and towards the middle of my 27th year on this planet I finally had the means to buy one. I was searching through multiple sites when I came across an Orange Chrome 2005 Elise here on Lotus Talk.

The car had been previously wrecked but that didn’t bother me as I’d bought plenty of rebuilt titled vehicles before. This car was also rebuilt by Wirewheel and had tons of people vouching for their work so I wasn’t too worried.

Some of you may remember the post which can be found here: 2005 Orange Chrome Elise for sale - Rebuilt Title

The then owner Nick was an absolute rockstar to work with and we were able to come to an agreement quickly. I then flew out to Indiana (ironically my home state) and drove the car back 1800 miles to Ogden, Utah. It didn’t skip a single beat the entire trip and the wife and I had a blast.

The plan now is to turbocharge the car (which my wife has now dubbed the matchbox car) by the end of this month and start tracking it and daily driving it when weather allows. I’ll update how the project is progressing and how ownership is treating us in future posts.

Thanks for reading this far!

 

[Nathan Howard]

Alright, so first things first.

After we got back from IN of course I did all the fluid changes, inspected everything on the car, and installed some LED headlight bulbs that were awaiting us at home.

I honestly believe Nick was very conservative with his description of the car because it was easily a 9/10 in all aspects to me, especially for being what’s essentially a hand built British kit car.

Then the research into mods started.

The first mod that I did to the car was install a Gated Shifter from GRP (Greg’s Race Parts) and the GRP Rear Panel Eliminator which can all be found here:GregsRaceParts.com GRP

Firstly shipping was insanely fast and everything was packaged perfectly. Shout out to you Greg!

With the Gated Shifter Plate being a Christmas gift from my wife, and therefore I had to wait for install, I promptly installed the rear panel delete.

I honestly found this installation harder than the gated shifter simply due to having to fish the bolts out around the heat shield. Outside of that the install is very straight forward and the heat dissipation is noticeable to the touch. I wish I would have grabbed some data with my infrared gun but you know, excitement and all.

Eventually however my wife let have my gated shifter plate early in a trade for one of her Christmas presents, score! So of course I installed the shifter plate on a random Tuesday night.

This mod has received mixed reviews from people for sure but I absolutely LOVE it. Following a YouTube video on the installation made this a breeze.

The biggest complaint I heard from people was that fast shifting was really hard, especially in the even gears and sometimes you would just get denied a shift into 2nd gear. At first I didn’t experience any of these problems but after about 50 miles I started getting those hard shifts into 2nd.

I took a close look at the shifter plate and noticed the rear bolt and nut were moving up and down every time I shifted into 2nd and 4th. Basically the bolt was too long and the shift linkage would hit it. Easy fix.

I cut down the bolt and now it shifts like butter. The looseness in the stock shifter is basically gone and I’ve yet to miss a shift. It’s turn what’s an unremarkable transmission into my most favorite manual transmission I’ve ever used.

I can’t speak highly enough of this modification and the amount of attention it got at the last Cars & Coffee I attended was worth the price of acquisition.

 

[Nathan Howard]

Since I brought the Elise home, I’ve essentially daily drove it whenever the weather in Utah allows me too and whenever I don’t have children with me. It basically gets driven as much as my ISF minus the long highway trips to Salt Lake City.

In this time, I’ve had a couple weird Lotus-y things happen.

Firstly, the alarm chime wouldn’t shut off one day for whatever reason so I had to disconnect the battery (after troubleshooting for an hour) and then reconnect it and it went away. Since then it hasn’t come back. Weird.

Second, I found the immobilizer bypassed by two random pieces of safety wire. Ignorant to what was happening there, I plugged the immobilizer back in and surprise, surprise, the car wouldn’t start. So I hard wired the fuel pump and starter wires together from the immobilizer plug and now I no longer have the issue. The car fires off every time.

Thirdly, I keep getting a really random P0172 code. This bothered me because I used to get P0171 on my Lexus for the longest time and couldn’t ever get my fuel trims low enough till my tuner helped me out. That said, I learned a lot about fuel trims and diagnosing P0171/172 in that time. So color me shocked to find out that my fuel trims were basically perfect (+/- 3) in all situations outside of acceleration, which is normal.

I had thought I solved the problem when I found an open vacuum tee from when this car was supercharged during a clutch install (I’ll get but looking back on it that should have given me a 171, not 172 code.

It got to the point where I would reset the Ecu and the next time I started the car the code came back IMMEDIATELY without even leaving the garage. Clearly that’s not normal. After leaving the battery disconnected yet again for a couple hours the code hasn’t come back and the cars fuel trims are still dead on.

I’ve just chopped it up to weird Lotus ECU things as I also have suffered the random hunting idle once. Regardless, I have a new ECU on the way (will get to that soon) so this one will go in storage soon.

Oh, and some of the stock Internal Wrenching Lug Bolts were torqued to the wheels so tightly, or perhaps seized, that my 1000 ft lb impact gun couldn’t get them off. So after struggling with that for a bit I eventually got some Black Splined Lug Bolts to replace them.

 

[Spooky pantz]

Looking good! I came from an ISF and miss them a lot (I had 3 before the Elise)

 

[Nathan Howard]

Next we all went on a family vacation to FL where I finally made the decision to just go for it and turbocharge the Elise…

So when I got home I got in touch with my good friend Nick Pagan, the owner of Graveyard Performance, and began ordering parts.

Whatever Nick couldn’t get for me, I got from Monkey Wrench Racing and Amazon/EBay.

Parts began arriving quickly and everything seemed to be going as planned.

But as with any custom build inevitable delays happen. Sadly after a miscommunication from ECUMaster, the shipping for my PNP EMU Black was delayed by a few weeks.

Long Story short, MWR holds the distribution rights to sell the 2005 specific EMU black. We were told by one representative that ECUMaster could send it to us but after weeks of delay we found out only MWR could sell it to us. Luckily the problem has been rectified and the ECU will be here within the next few days.

The plan is to shoot for 280-300 whp using waste gate spring pressure as to not be tempted to turn it up more and destroy things. I’m planning on using the stock oil coolers as heat exchangers for the A2W intercooler and put a larger single oil cooler in the rear of the car by the right side vent.

All the piping will be cut and welded together by a now good friend of mine who runs a Fabrication Shop and has even made a dual mode true dual exhaust for my ISF.

The tune will be handled by a local tuner who specializes in standalone ECUs including the EMU black. He’s tuned many multiple MR2s and Supras so I have comfort in knowing he’s handled many high powered VVTI Toyota Engines and hasnt

For anyone curious, here is the shopping list of what I got for the project:

Garrett GT2860RS

• T25
• IWG 7PSI/.5 Bar
• .86/AR

Oil Pan Gasket
2ZZ Oil Pick Up Kit
OEM Oil pick up gaskets
Oil Cooler
10 AN fittings
eBay 3” A2W IC
Water Tank
VW Water Pump
3/4” Hose
3/4” clamps
K&N Filter RB-0900
CNC Maf Flange
2.5” IC Piping
Couplers/T Clamps
3” Stainless Exhaust kit
T25/3” V band Flange
3”-4” exhaust tip
x4 O2 Bungs
TurboKits.com T25 Turbo Manifold
Borla ProXS 3”
MWR Oil/Coolant lines
Turbosmart Raceport BOV
MWR 630CC PNP Injectors
MWR 265lph DWS Fuel pump
ECU Master Plug & Play (MWR-870461)
ECU Master DataLogger (ECU-EDL-1)
Ecu Master Wideband Kit (ECU-WHPWB491)
Android Tablet
Tablet Mount
2 qts Redline MT90
1 QT Valvoline synchromesh

Maintenance (rock auto)

NGK-BKR7EIX plugs
Serpentine Belt (K060667)
Exedy 16800 clutch

More on the continuation of this project in following posts!

 

[Nathan Howard]

Looking good! I came from an ISF and miss them a lot (I had 3 before the Elise)

They’re incredible cars and they’re not making anymore! I absolutely just couldn’t part ways with mine so she’s still around and getting used regularly. I don’t think I would have got the Elise if I couldn’t have them both.

 

[Nathan Howard]

Next I decided to do the hardest part first, clutch install.

Taking apart the car was insanely easy with the clam removed… Putting it back together, at least initially was a nightmare.

Thankfully some hidden gems were found along the way.

Upon removal of the transmission, I found the car had an ACT HDSS clutch and MWR flywheel already installed. SCORE!

I still went ahead and replaced the ACT clutch with the new Exedy unit as I didn’t want to be down here again soon but I still had the flywheel resurfaced of course.

Now the hard part, getting the transmission back in was a colossal pain in the butt. However, with help of my neighbor and my wife we got it back in the car and putting the car back together after that was a breeze.

While I had the clam off though, I test fit my coolers and installed a Radium Clam Kit. I have no idea why Lotus didn’t set it up this way from factory but clam removal is so easy now. My only gripe is lining of the engine lid has been incredibly hard and I still don’t have it 100% perfect. It’s worth the trade off though.

 

[Nathan Howard]

Before eventually putting the clam back on, I did some quick maintenance.

I changed out the serpentine belt which was a dumb process in itself. I don’t know if maybe the actuator for my tensioner is seized or what have you but it was really hard to get the belt off initially.

I also swapped the spark plugs with new, colder NGK units to help aide in the turbo build, only to find the same plugs were already in the engine. What a nice surprise, again. I still swapped them out for new ones but held on to the old ones.

This is also where I found the unplugged vacuum Tee.

However, after quadruple checking my work I put the clam on and began the process of breaking in the clutch.

A few commutes to work:

Some leisure driving:

and a not so local Cars & Coffee later:

The break in miles were completed.

So naturally I tore into the car again.

 

[Nathan Howard]

Today I removed the oil pan and installed the MWR Oil Bung from their Turbo Oil & Coolant line kit.

After the MWR bung was installed I decided to give the oil pick up spacers a try.

The Celica guys put me on to these as a solution to potential oil starvation on the track. Ford had similar issues to ours in their race cars with the pick up being too far from the floor of the pan. After they extended the pick up and set the distance from pick up to pan from 6-9mm the problem went away.

The factory spacing on this 2ZZ was 15 mm (.59”) from pick up to the pan. After adding the spacers it’s now 7.5 mm (.29”).

More than happy to be the Guinea pig on this for Lotus owners. I’ll check back at the end of this next track season to report my findings on these.

If you’re interested in this modification, here’s the link: Toyota

Now we await the EMU black so the car can be sent to the fab shop for welding of the turbo kit itself.

 

[Catsailr27]

Very well documented! Hopefully you lathered up plugs with noox when installing to prevent arcing. Any plans to beef up the transmission? Suspension upgrades?

 

[Nathan Howard]

Very well documented! Hopefully you lathered up plugs with noox when installing to prevent arcing. Any plans to beef up the transmission? Suspension upgrades?

Thank you!

I did not. I’ve never even heard of noox till today but the clam is coming off again tomorrow so might as well pull the plugs and coat them then!

If the transmission goes I’ll look into beefing it up as well as looking to drop a Celica 6th gear into it for better highway economy. I’ve seen a lot of people have their transmission live just fine at this power level with moderate track use and some people seem to blow them on the street. I kind of like the thrill of breaking things and making them better personally.

I just started looking into suspension last week. I jumped in head first with the turbo since I knew if I didn’t do it now, I probably wouldn’t in the future. Suspension is a bit cheaper and more accessible than this lol. Any recommendations?

 

[Catsailr27]

I would inspect your a arm bushings closely at that many miles if not changed they will need it. Most of LT vendors sell them I like BWR self lube. V2 steering arms will allow more -camber I would get a good alignment after all suspension work is done using Inokinetics recommendations. Invest in some good coilovers. Penske, Nitron, Ohlins whatever along with good alignment will bring your car to better than new handling. I assume car has toe link brace if not get it.
When PO of my car did the suspension mods he said that changed the car as much as the REV300 if not more.

 

[Nathan Howard]

I would inspect your a arm bushings closely at that many miles if not changed they will need it. Most of LT vendors sell them I like BWR self lube. V2 steering arms will allow more -camber I would get a good alignment after all suspension work is done using Inokinetics recommendations. Invest in some good coilovers. Penske, Nitron, Ohlins whatever along with good alignment will bring your car to better than new handling. I assume car has toe link brace if not get it.
When PO of my car did the suspension mods he said that changed the car as much as the REV300 if not more.

Ironic you mentioned bushings. I was actually planning on replacing the bushings on both my cars this summer.

Ohlins are good stuff. Again, ironic you mention them because I was considering Ohlins for my ISF too. Might as well make them match.

Any specific alignment specs to look out for? Or are factory specs good enough for say 80% street 20% track?

 

[Krazykevin]

Inokinetic's alignment specs are a great starting point: Alignment Recommendations.pdf

 

[JMack77]

and a not so local Cars & Coffee later:

View attachment 1332898

The negative camber on that Golf GTI in this picture is absurd. 🤦‍♂️

Looking like a great build btw... 👌

 

[Catsailr27]

Ironic you mentioned bushings. I was actually planning on replacing the bushings on both my cars this summer.

Ohlins are good stuff. Again, ironic you mention them because I was considering Ohlins for my ISF too. Might as well make them match.

Any specific alignment specs to look out for? Or are factory specs good enough for say 80% street 20% track?

Ino's recommendations for 200TW in post 14 are the way to go.
Shock rating from Turbophil
turbophil
Vendor
Joined Dec 10, 2005
6,310 Posts
#6 · Aug 11, 2017

Track pack is just a terrible
Shock.

It's basically like this:

Track pack < Standard < LSS < Lotus Ohlins < Nitron < Penske

Cheers, Phil

 

[Nathan Howard]

Inokinetic's alignment specs are a great starting point: Alignment Recommendations.pdf

Thank you! I’ll pass these along to my alignment guy.

 

[Nathan Howard]

The negative camber on that Golf GTI in this picture is absurd. 🤦‍♂️

Looking like a great build btw... 👌

I try to respect all builds but I really wish negative camber would have died in 2015…

I appreciate it! Going to be exciting to see where the dream takes me.

 

[Nathan Howard]

Well today was an exciting day.

Firstly, got the oil drain bung welded on the pan and now the pan is installed on the engine again.

Next, the EMU black finally came in!

I honestly find it crazy how small that ecu is, especially when you consider it’s capabilities. My commute this week is insane so I’ll only have an hour or so a day to work on the car but hopefully I’ll get around to getting the EMU ready to fire up the car on a base map.

And the most exciting part of the day was finally getting to test fit the Garrett Turbocharger.

In using the TKC turbo manifold, I’ve found I have no choice but to turn the turbo around and have the compressor on the passenger side of the vehicle. It’s nearly impossible to fit a filter or coupler on the turbo inlet in this configuration unless you wanted to shave down the transmission. No thanks.

That said, the exhaust won’t need as many bends in this configuration. It’ll be a lot like how the downpipe set up is on the Celica/Corolla set ups from turbokits.com.

Progress is slow this week but at least there’s progress. I’ll update with more as the days go on!

 

[Nathan Howard]

Anyone else using the EMU Black PNP on their 05 Elise/Exige?

I’m having a really weird issue with mine.

When I plug in the OEM ECU, everything works perfectly.

When the EMU is plugged in, I get 0 fuel level and the fuel pump doesn’t cycle. The injectors and coils also don’t fire off when I test their outputs.

After uploading the base map and updating the firmware all the lights on the dash flash like crazy, the fuel level still reads 0, all the relays in the engine bay start going crazy, and the fuel pump continuously cycles on and off.

I’m at a loss on what to do from here. I reached out to MWR already but as I’m awaiting a response I’d like to see if anyone here has a solution.