Early Photos and earlier upgrades

Here are a couple of photos taken when I first bought the car.

Since owning the car I have changed or upgraded:

• The suspension ball-joints
• Wheel bearings
• Shock absorbers to later Series 2 spec Bilsteins
• EliseParts stainless steel 6-inch silencer
• EliseParts stainless steel exhaust manifold
• 52mm throttle body

Tyres are currently Yokohama A050 R-spec tyres which work very well on track, not so well in the wet. 

I recently added some stripes to give a bit of drama and make the car more visible:

Head arrives and power measured

I've owned my 1997 Lotus Elise Series 1 for almost 5 years. It replaced a Westfield that I build and drove for 3 years.

Being an early model is has MMC brakes, aluminium uprights and rubber floor mats. On the scales at the local track it weighed 730kg.

It's a weekend driver, and I also compete in local sprints and "superkhanas".

In the time I've owned the car I've replaced the wheel bearings, Koni shocks for S2 Bilsteins, the exhaust was replaced with an EliseParts system with a std cat.

After lots of investigation I decided to go for a modest power hike to help keep me ahead of the competition in the sprints, and for more fun.

I like Honda engines, and was really keen to swap in a K20 from the Civic Type R, but the LinkUp conversion agents are in Sydney, 2500 miles away. I didn't fancy hacking the chassis to get a Stark kit in, plus getting hold of a decent K20 is increasingly difficult. I also contacted Essex Austosport about the Duratec conversion, but that didn't seem ideal, either.

So, I decided to go for a modest (initial) hike in power and Dave Andrews at DVA in the UK has built me a K13 kit on a new head. This gives me a good base to work from, so I can upgrade more with ITB's and go towards 180hp later. Hopefully the new head will be here during November. I plan to do the work myself over the summer (southern hemisphere!). I already have a new lighter flywheel, new clutch, upgraded tie rods, ball joints and magic sponges ready to go. I'll also be adding a new radiator, water pump, lower cooling hose conversion (I have the older "up-n-over" cooling system) and new oil rail/ladder.

From the DVA Power website:

Includes a fully ported big valve cylinder head with larger REC inlet and exhaust valves and new inlet guides, the head is fitted with Piper fast road cams and Piper springs to allow later fitment of more aggressive cams if desired. The head must be provided by the customer and as modified  flows enough air for 200BHP so is ideal when later upgrades are planned. Gives large gains in torque and much better drivability. Works with the standard S2 ECU.
Work to the cylinder head includes extensive porting to both inlet and exhaust ports, heavy modification to the combustion chamber , radiused valve seats and tapered guides. The valves are stainless steel and tufftrided and fully lapped to the seats. Inlet valve size is 29.5mm and exhaust size is 26mm. The valve springs will accomodate all cams up to 11.5mm lift.
Recent examples have given more than 160BHP and over 140lb/ft of torque.

This is what the new head looks like: 

I'll show some comparison photos with the old head when I've taken it off.

At the dynamometer today, before fitting the new head, we recorded 118.8 bhp at the wheels, not bad for an engine that originally produced 118 bhp at the crank.