Multi Project Thread - Lotus', Porsche and Viper oh my!

New forum member, long time subscriber.

I've been reading through the project threads and thought I'd post some of my own, I am currently working on something but I'd like to post about my ex-Lotus hopefully that's not too weird.

I bought my Elise completely stock, in Canada the Elise is fairly rare and that's one of the main reasons I bought it, however the stock Toyota engine was just too under-powered for me.

I started my build with an exhaust, simple enough. Yay pictures. My big goals for this car were removing weight from what was already a light car and adding as much power as I could.

Big heavy stock exhaust (this was not actually a heavy exhaust, haha):

Stock exhaust removed:

New exhaust (BOE Quarter Stick):

New exhaust installed:

Welcome! Looking forward to the build threads!

dyintorace wrote: Welcome! Looking forward to the build threads!

Thanks, that's a great 3 series, I've always thought they look good.

The next step after the exhaust install was a clam hinge kit, the plan was to do a lot of work to the car and one of these clam hinge kits makes any future modifications or repairs about a million times easier.

Here I removed the seats and the rear interior panel to access various bolts. Because the Elise is so simple it is an easy car to disassemble.

Trunk lining removed and body to clam bolts removed.

Properly supported for the removal of the wheels and the inner shell bolts.

Voila, so much room to work.

Here you can see the way the clam hinge kit works, a couple of hinges and a wire, the key is the mounting hardware for when it is down. Takes about 5 minutes from fully secure to open like this.

One last post for the Elise build.

Supercharger - Eaton M62 with air to water heat exchanger:

and done:

Ooooh can't wait to see more!

GameboyRMH wrote: Ooooh can't wait to see more!

Thanks, I had a lot of plans for the Elise but after driving it in supercharged form for about two months I put it up for sale as I didn't really care for the car. We don't have any good tracks around where I live so that probably was the biggest problem, maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I could have properly tracked it.

After the Elise I bought a 1990 911 C2, which was my second 964, I bought it knowing I wouldn't keep it long, I was searching for what I thought would be my perfect car a 996 turbo. When I found a black on black low mile 996tt a couple months later the 964 was sold and the 996tt was bought.

I started buying parts before the car even arrived, the first was a very light weight, very loud exhaust to replace the stock one, I love this exhaust and if I ever buy another 996tt I will get it again:

Stock on top, aftermarket on bottom:

I bought lowering springs, I know this is not the right way to do suspension but for me the car handled very well already, I couldn't justify spending a lot of money on full suspension:

The third mod that I purchased was a tune, these cars are crazy easy to add power to, with my datalogger I ran 12.4 stock and after the exhaust and this tune I was running 11.7.

I was really into lightening this car, they run about 3400lbs stock and I wanted to get it to 3000lbs. I use truck weigh scales and garbage dump weigh scales to weigh my cars and I use a standard bathroom scale to weigh the parts I take off, I then document all the weights. The above exhaust swap dropped 20lbs from the car.

Next I wanted seats, I looked forever for the right seats, I wanted authentic GT3 seats but I couldn't find them for less than $4,000 and I wasn't going to pay that much. I ended up buying replicas which I wouldn't do again, I should have just bought some generic Recaro's I guess.

Pulling the stock seats out, they were very heavy, around 60lbs. I sold them for $1200 and bought the aftermarket seats for $1700 so that wasn't too bad.

Aftermarket seats:

New seats installed:

I drove from the Calgary, Alberta area down to Whitefish, Montana and then West and up through BC mountains in these seats and with the loud exhaust, it was fine for me but my heavier friend only lasted a couple of hours in my car before going back to riding with someone else.

The 996tt was a great car, it was fast reliable and sounded great. Sometime I wonder why I sold it, it was offered back to me recently when I was buying a car and I turned it down. After the 996tt I bought a Viper, I've always been more interested in Euro cars but the Viper is such a cool car, it's hard not to want one.

I was originally planning on buying a late 90's GTS but I love convertibles too much so I bought a 2005 SRT-10.

Once again as with the Lotus and the 996tt I did a couple thousand km road trip, however during this trip I hit flooding, the worst flooding I'd ever seen. The car was not stable and I had to drive for two days pretty sure I was going to crash. The other thing about the Viper is it gets a lot of attention, too much for me. The Viper was sold before the project even began. It was replaced with a C63 AMG, I can haul the kids in it and still have some fun.

While selling the Viper I bought my current project car. I have always preferred the body of the 964 over all other 911's, I like the upright headlights, I like the feel of the car and the smell of it.

More on the 964! I need ideas.

I have owned this 911 for six months now and I am still in love with it, so here is my 1989 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 build.

When I bought the car it had some issues, the PDAS/Brake Light warnings were on the dash, near the end of ownership of my first 964 I had this happen so I knew it was not going to be cheap or easy to fix.

Using the forums I went through checking everything that I could find that would be a possible cause.

It turned out that there were two causes, the first is the little gyro sensor inside the car under the center console, a small pendulum contacts a sensor when the car accelerates, if this connection isn't made properly the car can throw error codes. This sensor is not cheap and is very delicate, me being the dunce that I am first attempted to loosen everything by banging it against the post on my lift, it was after that I read about how expensive and delicate the part is, haha. Well may as well look inside anyway, I opened it up and it looked fine, I couldn't see any metal flakes as some reported. I took my air hose and blew inside, that's when I started seeing the metal flakes, I used a very small screwdriver and the hose to clean all of the contaminants. I plugged it back in and went for a drive. The PDAS/ABS error lights did come on but they came on at a different time which means that I fixed one problem but had another.

The 964 C4's have an ABS computer that is different than the C2's, it is also around $5,000 to replace from Porsche and most other places I looked. This was the most likely culprit, from factory it is mounted downwards at the front of the boot, this is a great way to collect water in it. Mine was very corroded, a couple pins even broke off when I pulled it out... great. There is a company who rebuilds them, I phoned asking about a rebuild and they told me that they can't fix corroded ECU's... great. So then I started phoning dismantlers, I found one for $2500 which I almost bought, then I found one for $2000 from another location with less of a positive reputation. I was almost going to buy the one for $2500 just based on the better reputation but when I called the second place back and got a different person on the phone he offered it to me for $1500 w/ $200 core. Since they don't give the core refund if the part is corroded I ended up paying $1700 which is a lot better than I thought I would have to pay. This solved the second PDAS/ABS issue.

mazdeuce wrote: More on the 964! I need ideas.

Reading your thread I thought that I would post my own and that you were lucky you didn't have a C4 because of the couple extra expensive failure items that I ran into.

A porsche ABS computer is more expensive than my engine build...

Isn't there some way to run the car without ABS? What do guys who track the C4 do? I like ABS as much as the next guy, but I don't $5000 like it.

There is now a road course at Castrol Raceways in Edmonton. You can now track your cars in Alberta. Try www.trackjunkies.ca as one lapping day offering. There are others too.

fidelity101 wrote: A porsche ABS computer is more expensive than my engine build...

Ya I know, I'm a die hard Eagle Talon guy and back when I owned them I could get a decent built long block for what I've put into minor stuff on these other cars.

I would like to mention that the ABS ECU is not the norm from my experience, I've daily driven five 911's now from different years and this ECU was my largest maintenance purchase, I really do believe that they are not an expensive car to live with every day. I had to buy a enew trunk lid for my Viper after an incident with mine overextending and Dodge wanted $7700 for just the lid, not including hardware.

mazdeuce wrote: Isn't there some way to run the car without ABS? What do guys who track the C4 do? I like ABS as much as the next guy, but I don't $5000 like it.

I did look into this, I read some threads on the lightweight 964 C4 and different peoples builds that didn't include ABS and I chose to just fix it. Brakes have always scared me as changing major components I assume could change brake bias or something else I could easily mess up. This is something I'll have to work on.

rodrammage wrote: There is now a road course at Castrol Raceways in Edmonton. You can now track your cars in Alberta. Try www.trackjunkies.ca as one lapping day offering. There are others too.

I have read a little bit about Castrol's new road course, I really used to enjoy Stratotech, I'll have to try Castrol this summer.

I like this guy!

Welcome!

bgkast wrote: I like this guy! Welcome!

Thanks a lot man. This forum has been very interesting to read.

After doing the needed maintenance including a much needed oil change I then focused on the stereo. I originally wanted a really nice sound quality car, this idea turned expensive fast. If I had to do it over again I think I wouldn't have gone so far as per cost and weight added, in fact I may start pulling the stereo just to see what kind of weight I can remove. Although overall I don't think the stereo was a success the installation was fun and interesting so here is some of it:

For the head unit I wanted something subtle, I looked at the retro style modern head units but they were too retro, the modern units were too flashy. In the end I just chose the unit that had the functions that I liked. Wiring for the unit was a mess, I had to clean it up and solder the connections that were poorly made by previous installations.

Before:

After:

Welcome! Thanks for sharing the stories of the cars.

Welcome aboard, I'm enjoying this thread so far!

Rad_Capz wrote: Welcome! Thanks for sharing the stories of the cars.

dj06482 wrote: Welcome aboard, I'm enjoying this thread so far!

Thanks guys.

Although I have little interest in stereos beyond listening to them I am going to finish off talking about what I've done.

The head unit I bought and installed was nice, the only issue is it doesn't have bluetooth music, but it's not that hard to plug it into the cable and at least it stays charged this way.

Next step was speakers, I wanted quality but with my lack of stereo knowledge I just did some basic research and bought something that had good reviews.

Hertz 165XL: Out of everything I've bought these speakers to me have been the best purchase, they sound amazing.

Next was an amp to power the Hertz speakers, I went with Rockford Fosgate amps, they seem fine, the picture below is a mess as I had snow get into the boot and I had to move everything around to clean it out before it melted, stupid winter:

The second amp in the picture is a monoblock 600w or something like that to power my two JL 8" subs.

I bought the subs and enclosures pre made from a store down in the Southern states, these are easily the worst sub enclosures I've ever seen. Reviews said they were good but in reality they aren't even enclosures, they are just a couple pieces of fiber board with carpet that sits in the rear footwell. When I get more time and interest I will actually build them into enclosures.

So to recover from the stereo thread I'm going to post something random.

Changing the clutch on my friends Viper was a neat car experience, the sizes of various components is almost funny. The cheap Chinese lift definitely helps. The giant in the pictures is not me.

May as well change oil while we have it on the lift. Hello 8.3L V10.

That large engine needs support with the transmission removed (The apple juice can for size reference):

The transmission is a Tremec T-56 which is used in a variety of cars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg-Warner_T-56_transmission

For a guy who has worked on Eagle Talons for most of my life it is large transmission:

The driveshaft is thick and short... there should be a joke here but I will take the high road, haha.

Driveline tunnel:

The car is definitely neat, I only owned my red one for about half a year but I did enjoy many aspects of it.

Just for a laugh here is the guy above (black Viper owner) getting into my Elise: http://www.streetfire.net/video/big-guy-getting-into-a-lotus-elise_735071.htm

Came here looking for an Elise with a V10 swap with Porsche transaxle

Nice selection of cars. I feel your pain about lack of tracks. Shame about Race City in Calgary. Lethbridge has some auto-x if that interests you. There is supposed to be some ice racing this winter too.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lethbridge-Sports-Car-Club-LSCC/157091857643921

Love the red 964!! Such a great looking era for the 911.