Scottish Elises

One of our guys either wants to buy a Honda conversion, either already done or to get Craig to build one. Would be interested in your views on these two, the blue one seems to be virtually a new car but he says no movement on price, it was a CAT D which would not bother me for a converted car, and it would have to be suitable for a soft top conversion.

The silver one is S/C but hard to fully see the bodywork condition.

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/ ... 511354?v=b

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/ ... 404573?v=b

tut

Out of interest, purely hypothetically......what is the cost of a full conversion these days by someone like Craig?

I.e. "Hi Craig, here's my car and my card number, phone me when its ready to collect"

Oh, and I like the silver one out of the two above, seems a shame to convert a 160 but I guess you can't be too sacred about such things.

£10K including suspension upgrades etc.

tut

Been looking into this too. An engine/box is about a grand, the kit is £3000, 40 hours labour and then oil/coolant/misc "stuff". ECU £500 I guess? Then there's VAT and, of course, everything else: "may as well get her tits done while her top's off" etc

Where do you stop? New clutch? Engine rebuild? If you're rebuilding why not add forged rods/Pistons. Cams? Bit of head work. ITB's. Sod it, gone this far, may as well supercharge it! Ohh, charge-cooler? Aye ok. Now I need better brakes. And some Öhlins. And magnesium wheels.

Etc etc

Not gone down this road with the Lotus yet but I did it with a Subaru...

I wouldn't suggest a rebuild unless you plan on doing mega-miles in the car ... the key to a straight forward conversion is to buy a running car, drive it for a while to make sure it goes OK, uses no coolant/oil, etc. then transplant to your car as is. I would not suggest cracking open the engine as the cost of genuine honda parts to do a rebuild is steep ... you could probably buy two or three donor cars for the price of cracking open and rebuilding one engine.

Also by buying a running car you get all the wiring loom, ECU and everything else you could need to be sure of a straightforward transplant. If you buy an engine that's been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for 5 years waiting for the right project you could easily spend as much again on getting all the other bits you need.

I would run on standard ECU - you can always Hondata/KPRO it later and get it mapped on rolling road. The VTEC is completely unnecessary on the road. On the track you obviously want it to work, but then the standard engagement at 5,800-ish is fine - you won't drop below this so long as you take it up to close to the rev limiter).

Of course if you're building a race car or you are going to do 100's of track days then ignore the above; but for a road car that does 3-4 track days a year, there just is no need to do much more.

Cheers,
Robin

robin wrote: but for a road car that does 3-4 track days a year, there just is no need to do much more.

This is me, I've been looking for a replacement, but for no real reason :S

I know and love the car I have. I have done the S2 thing a few times and don't feel a massive yearning to go back to them, plus the S1 just seems to speak to me more (although I am conscious of it's age).

I can't afford an S1 Exige, the S3 Club racer (1.6) looks appealing in a "Drive the doors off it" type of way and sounds like it could be a modern S1.....but I fear i might get bored of the lack of grunt so my mind got to wondering about Hondas. At this point it looks cheaper to buy an already converted car, but as I said, I love the one I have.

Driving training is probably more likely what I need as opposed to more power!

Sorry for the hi-jack Tut!

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/used-cars/h ... 3222211479

Haggle him down a few quid ("it's a 110K mile smoker mate; the seats are a bit worn; it needs a respray; it needs smoked glass windows for dogging"; etc.).

You'll get 500 quid back on the shell and maybe more if you can be arsed to sell bits and pieces on ebay/gumtree rather than selling the whole thing minus engine.

So maybe it costs you 2K but for that you get every little bit you need AND you get to check the engine actually runs/revs into VTEC before you buy.

You know it makes sense ...

Cheers,
Robin

tut wrote:One of our guys either wants to buy a Honda conversion, either already done or to get Craig to build one. Would be interested in your views on these two, the blue one seems to be virtually a new car but he says no movement on price, it was a CAT D which would not bother me for a converted car, and it would have to be suitable for a soft top conversion.

The silver one is S/C but hard to fully see the bodywork condition.

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/ ... 511354?v=b

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/ ... 404573?v=b

tut

I wouldn't worry about the bodywork ... if it's going to be used in Scotland on road runs it will soon look like all your cars do ... I also wouldn't worry about the CatD, but I don't like the S2 Exige body, especially not in that colour and I think it looks even worse with a soft top conversion. With the S1 you feel like the value is in the car; with the S2 Exige you feel like the value is in the presentation (which will soon get destroyed up here).

Of course the S1 will be approx 10 years older than the S2 ... and will go through wheel bearings like there's no tomorrow ... what you really want is an S2 elise, nitrons, n/a honda and motorsport wheels of some sort.

Cheers,
Robin

All very interesting stuff. Thanks! The civic ECU works fine in the Elise?

The standard Civic ECU will run the engine in an Elise with an immobiliser bypass. The Integra ECU will also work and it doesn't have an immobiliser so doesn't need the bypass.
Stark recommend against running it long term because of lean running:

Stark Automotive wrote: Can I use the standard Honda ECU?

The standard Honda K20A2 ECU from the Civic Type R EP3 can be
used, however it will need to have the immobiliser disabled to work –
we can supply a bypass box as an optional extra.

We don’t recommend using the standard ECU/map beyond the
short-term as the engine will run lean with our sports exhaust
manifold fitted.

The K20A ECU (from the JDM Integra DC5) does not have an built-in
immobiliser but the above warning about lean running still applies.

I have no idea how much of an issue that really is.

Thanks Simon, I had seen that on their website but have heard of people using the civic ecu for long enough without issue. Presumably the ecu could be remapped anyway to balance the AFR with the new headers?

The ECU should really always be re-mapped to the final Honda conversion in the car, both from the safety point of view of having the correct AFR, and also maximising the hp/tq output, it is mapped for a standard Civic Type-R, not an Elise configuration with a different exhaust manifold, exhaust system, and air filter.

You can easily lose 20hp over the Hondata mapped ECU as I found out on N1, BLiNK used the standard ECU whereas the other Convertors used the Hondata for which they had the equipment to re-map. There is no point in spending £10K on the conversion then not finishing it off properly for the sake of a couple of hundred.

tut

Unless I could absolutely prove the history of the engine I wouldn't buy used, too many "65k" milers with full history that when opened up have been to the moon and back, on the same oil based on what I have seen & bitter experience....

When was the last time anyone saw a CTR being driven sensibly, they all seem to be bouncing off the limiter by absolute neds

3.5k for an as new rebuild, no brainer IMO.

I must be one of the only ones who thinks Elise's should be left as Hethel created them