I’ve just posted up my photos, videos and interviews from the launch of the Lotus Exos T125 on the GGLC blog. WANT!!!!

The drive down was uneventful and took me a little over 4 hours to complete. The fact that I was using my cool shirt on the drive down meant that I was extremely comfortable on the drive despite the high temperatures (80+ in Santa Clara to 98 in Buttonwillow). I even got to stop at the San Luis reservoir for a couple of great pictures.

There were 6 different Sevens taking part in the event including a Birkin, a Superstalker and 3 Caterhams (including the only R500 in the country) and we even had another Ultralite owner drop by to to say hi. The coolest car there was this maroon Caterham whose owner had put 70,000 miles on the car over 11 years but still had its looking like new. The even more amazing part was that he drove the car up from LA, completed a 2 hour enduro in it and then packed up and drove it to Lake Tahoe the next morning.

The track action was organized by NCRC and was up to their usual excellent standards. All of us had a blast and got to spend some quality time studying each others cars and talking to fellow Seven fans. As a bonus, Vanhap Photography got some excellent shots of the track action including a couple of staged shots of us together on track.

My favourite part of the weekend was a 4 lap sequence where I was tryng to keep up with the Caterham R500 above. The car has only slightly more power than mine (263 bhp Vs 240 bhp0 than mine but is significantly lighter (1200 lbs Vs 1400 lbs) which makes it much faster in straight line. The video below (watch it in HD) shows the action from my point of view and you can see that every time we get onto a straight he is able to pull away from me. the only reason I was able to keep up at all was because he would have to wait for point-bys from slower cars while I could just stream through the openings he made. Might be a good excuse for me to get that supercharger after all

The car performed very well on track and only had a couple of minor electrical issues. I had no heat issues and the coolsuit helped keep the driver cool as well. The tires performed very well and the only real problem was the too much rear bias in the brakes. Since the Ultralite has equal size brakes front to rear and equal sized master cylinders for each as well, the rear brakes are much too powerfull and will lock up way before the fronts even with the balance bar set all the way to the front. This means that I have to brake very early to prevent locking the rears and unsettling the car. I will likely be getting wither a smaller master cylinder or a smaller rear caliper before the next track day.

After packing up early on Sunday after I headed out early hoping to make it home before dinner. I was just over the half way mark when the car suddenly started producing a loud clunk from the rear when I either accelerated or decelerated. I pulled into the nearest gas station and looked under the rear to find that one of the two bolts holding the differential in place had backed out and that the diff was actually twisting around the remaining bolt and hitting the chassis to make the clunking sound. Unfortunately replacing it will require removing the gas tank which is not the kind of job to be done by the side of the road. Luckily I was less than a hundred miles from home which meant that AAA towed me back home for free

All in all it was a fun trip and I’m surprised at how happy I am despite having being towed back home I had a great time at the track and made some great new friends. The car was fast, fun and fairly reliable on the course. I may have broken down at the end but its an obvious problem and should be easy enough to fix in time for the next event. In the mean time you guys can check out the rest of the pictures below:

When I initially purchased the Ultralite it was running on a set of generic 7.5″ wide alloys with 235-width Falken Azeni RT-615 tires all around(above). While the Azenis are decent tires (we use them on the Lemons car), they are still street tires and just cannot cope with the absurd power of the seven. After having a few moments of wheelspin in 3rd gear, I decided that while long slides are fun, I did want to go to more grippy setup as well as increase the rear grip level to give the car some better balance.

I quickly learned that one of the more annoying things about having a kit car is the extreme amount of pain you have to go through to get a set of wheels. While most kit cars use off the shelf components from production cars for their hubs, they generally also use parts off different cars front to rear and have very different offsets anyway. In the case of the Ultralite it uses 5×100 bolt pattern with with the most common wheel sizes being a 17×8 fronts (offset 35-38) and 17×9/10 rear (45×48 offset). Now the unfortunate part is that while the specifications themselves are fairly common (Subaru WRX), I could not find a single large scale wheel maker that makes both sizes (8″ and 10 “) in the same wheel design. I should also add that 99% of the online sites out there only allow you to sear for wheels by car model and not by wheel specs which made the tire search extremely frustrating.

The only viable option that I found were the Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2 wheels that are used by a few other Ultralite owners out there. They are an afforable option and by all accounts stand up well to regular track use. Unfortunately because they are a fairly small operation out of England, the US importers have quite a limited stock of wheels which meant that I would have to special order the wheels and that could take anywhere from 2-6 months to get here.

At this point I happened to take my wheels off only to find that one of the wheel studs on the left front wheel was loose. I gently unscrewed the stud by hand only to find a large amount of aluminium shavings in the stud threads. It appeared that at some point in the past, a previous owner waaaay overtightened the lug nuts on the wheel and literally stripped the stud out of the hub. Additionally a couple of the studs were at a slight angle from horizontal which along with the stripping meant that the hub damage was too extensive to repair.

I contacted Brian Andersen at World Class Motorsports to get a part number for the hub only to find that the hub was actually a custom part that WCM modified before they put it on the car. They took a stock Wilwood Pinto hub with an existing 5×114 and 5×120 bolt pattern and machined a set of 5×100 pattern holes to which they added the wheel studs. This was probably done such that the bolt pattern on the front wheels would match the stock Subaru 5×100 pattern on the rear hubs. Unfortunately this also meant that if I bought a new hub I would would have to find someone to custom drill the new pattern into place for me. At this point I had the sudden brainwave that since the existing hub was mechanically sound (only the 5×100 stud openings were damaged) and still had other bolt patterns, I could just switch to a different bolt pattern and keep using the same hub. Luckily I had delayed placing an order for the Team Dynamics wheels which meant that I could just buy the front wheels with new bolt pattern without any wheel fitment issues. I went ahead and got a couple of multi-drilled rotor hats (existing ones were 5×100 only) with some ARP studs and quickly changed the front wheels to a 5×114 bolt pattern which allowed me to reuse the existing hubs and gave me access to a wider selection of front wheel options.

At this point I decided that I could not wait the 2-6 months for the Team Dynamics wheels and instead began investigating other wheel options. I came across the Wheeldude.com folks who had a good selection of Rota wheels and had the added benefit of being local (Fremont). While looking through their website I found that while they did not have any one line of wheels that would fit both my front and rear wheel requirements, they did have a number of different wheel lines that looked similar enough that you wouldn’t really notice the difference. After going through several different options, I decided that setup of G-force fronts and DPT rears would likely be my best bet. I then went over to their warehouse and got to see a couple of the actual wheels and compare them side-by-side before picking a set of 5×114 17×8 G-forces for the front and dual drilled 5×100/114 17×9 DPTs for the rear ($750 for the full set). An additional benefit of getting the DPTs for the rear is that I can in future move to the upgraded WRX STI rear end (5×114 hubs) and continue using the same wheel set.

The next step was to figure out the tires to use and it was a pretty easy decision to go for an R-compound tire. Sure I would have no grip in the rain or in sub-zero conditions but the chances of encountering either condition in a roofless, door-less, windshield-less car in California are pretty low . Additionally I had been using Toyo RA-1 tires on my Elise for the last year and was very impressed with not only their grip but also how they do not have any heat-cycling issues (important on a lightweight car like the Seven). Unfortunately Toyo has discontinued making the RA-1 and though they are planning to restart production for 2010 there were no estimate for when the tires would actually reach dealers.

Since my preferred option was not available I had to decide between the Yoko AO48, Nitto NT01 and the Toyo R888s. Both the AO48 and the R888 tires are pretty common in the Elise community and from all the feedback I was hearing they appear to be good tires with a high peak grip but are prone to getting greasy after several laps and also heat cycle before they run out of tread depth. The RA-1s in comparison have a slightly lower peak grip but instead will maintain the same level of grip after several laps and can be used all the way to the cords without any heat cycling out. Since I will only be using the Seven for recreational driving and non-competition events, peak grip isn’t an issue and with the light weight (1300 lbs), heat cycling resistance is much more important than tire wear. Looking further into the Nitto NT01 option, I was surprised to find that Nitto was actually a subsidiary of Toyo and the NT01 apparently uses the same rubber compound as the discontinued RA1. A little more investigation showed that Discount Tire Direct would sell me a a set of 4 tires for ~$725 shipped which also made them the cheapest option by far

So in the end after about 2 months of searching and modifying the bolt pattern I ended up with 235/40ZR-17 Nitto NT01s on 17×8 Rota G-Forces up front with 275/40ZR-17 Nitto NT01s on 17×9 Rota DPTs on the back. As you can see from the pictures below, the wheels actually match quite well and people don’t realize that they are different front to rear until I explicitly point it out.

So far I have only used the car for street events and one truncated track day at Laguna Seca but even in this short span I have to say that the wheel combo is very well balanced and it now takes some intentional provacation before the rear wheels start spinning. In terms of absolute grip I was able to easily pull 1.2 G at Laguna despite having a lot suspension issues and not pushing very hard. Once I get the setup sorted out and start really pushing the car I expect that the G meter will be reading quite a bit higher. I should also add that I have been running the tires at about 15 psi hot all around which seems to work pretty well. Tire pressure only goes up by about 2-3 psi during a track session which may not sound like much on a regular car but its a 20% increase when you start at such low pressures.

The first thing that struck me about the collection was just how many cars are crammed into such a small space (larger panoramic shot). The cars are so tightly packed in that it was actually quite difficult to get photographs that show the whole car. Every time you try to step back you would find your way blocked by another piece of classic motoring history . Unlike most other museums there are no glass screens or velvet ropes, the cars are essentially just parked on the garage floor and you can walk all around the cars and look at them from any angle you wish. In fact you were even allowed to open up the cars and sit in them if you wished. The picture below is the drivers eye view of the dash of a Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing.

The other striking thing is that many of the cars are in unrestored condition and have license plates which allow them to be street driven (imagine this Le-Mans veteran D-Type Jaguar as a street car ). These cars are actually driven around and are not the usual “concourse quality frame-off restoration” cars you usually see at Pebble Beach.

The collection is a very eclectic mix and goes all the way from bicycles to some very pedigreed racecars including an OSCA Tipo S driven by the Rodriguez brothers at LeMans and an Ensign F1 car driven by Patrick Tombay, Jackie Ickx, Nelson Piquet (his first F1 drive) and Derick Daly before being campaigned by Mallya himself in the 1980-81 races at Sholavaram. One highlight is the 1913 Silver Ghost that the Rolls Royce Owners club describes as “the most original mechanically correct veteran ghost we know of”. The following picture shows the engine controls on the steering wheel from the days where the driver served as the cars “ECU” and had to manually adjust things like the fuel mixture and the timing.

Apart from cars, the collection also houses some very nice memorabilia with paintings, a land speed record timeline, a DFV engine block coffee table, model cars etc… My favourite piece would have to be the letter below in which the FIA grants the Force India team its official F1 Super-License for 2008.

As you would expect I did take a lot of pictures and captured most of the cars. The collection is so incredible that I actually forgot to photograph some pretty significant cars like the Jaguar XJ220, Ferrari 365 Spyder and Jaguar E-type.

Click here to view all the pictures as a single collection. You can also use the following links to directly view pictures of a specific car (opens in a new window):

• 1913 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost
• 1947 Schwinn Black Phantom
• 1949 Auto Shippers Special (Indy roadster)
• 1953 Alfa Romeo 2500S (Bucci Special)
• 1954 Jaguar D Type (short nose)
• 1955 Allard JR
• 1955 Mercedes Benz 300SL Gullwing
• 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder
• 1959 OSCA Tipo S
• 1960 Mercedes Benz 300 SL Roadster
• 1965 Shelby Cobra 427
• 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4
• 1969 McLaren M10A/B
• 1972 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS Spyder
• 1973 March 73A
• 1974 All American Racing F5000
• 1977 Ensign F1
• 1980 BMW M1
• 1990 Jaguarsport XJR 15
• Bicycles
• Memorabilia

While the current location of the Mallay Collection is a temporary warehouse, they are looking to build an official museum in the city of Sausalito. Please join their Facebook Group to show your support and convince Sausalito to give them the appropriate permissions.

P.S.: I did ask about Lotus content in the collection and was told that as of now it is limited to a Seven and a Europa, both of which are in India. They may in future add an F1 car to go with the F1 exhibit he is building in the UK.

As you can see from the picture above, when I got the Ultralite it came with a simple asymmetrical rollbar that was barely taller than my head. While most track clubs would let me drive the car as is, the lack of side impact protection meant that I was not comfortable tracking the car without a full roll cage. Additionally the existing Ultrashield race seat had no head and neck support and the harnesses were long expired which meant I generally had to perform a full safety upgrade before tracking the car. For this I turned to Tony at TC Design who is the Bay Area’s premier roll cage fabricator.

Roll Cage
After looking at some of the existing cage designs for the Ultralite we decided to go for a design that had single high rear hoop and two side impact bars on each side.

The two side impact bars tie into the existing chassis hoop that holds the dash in place before the top bar extends further up to the main chassis rails.

Additionally they welded in a new square tube section within the chassis to act as a load path for the upper impact bar.

The next step is to paint the cage and add some SFI spec padding for extra protection in an impact.

Race Seat
The biggest difficulty in putting a race seat into a Seven is usually the severe lack of space. Surprisingly my biggest problem with the existing seat was actually the fact that it was too big for me. I was getting thrown around between the two rib cage supports and the supports also interfered with my left elbow while making large steering inputs. Additionally the seat was completely lacking in lumbar support and even though I tried putting in some additional padding in various positions I would invariably end up with some back pain if i drove it for over an hour. My initial plan was to go with a custom Kirkey seat with full HALO support but after the back pain issues I decided to put in a composite seat instead. Composite seats are generally a lot more comfortable (I’ve done 4+ hour stints in the Lemon) and they have a one-size fits all approach which means you don’t have to screw around with measurements for every specification.

After deciding on the composite seat, I pulled the existing seat out of the car to measure the width of the cockpit to see how much internal room I would have. The 18.5 inch width, along with my HALO requirement meant that there were very few seats I could actually consider. The two main seats I narrowed it down to were the Sparco Circuit Pro and the OMP Pista. Both are FIA homologated with full Halo support and were narrow enough to fit in the car. I then contacted Wine Country Motorsports to see if I could try out the OMP Pista before purchasing it. Mike @ Wine Country was fantastic to deal with and was happy to help me not only try out the seat but also to test fit in the Seven to make sure the measurements would fit. After trying it out I found that it was a snug fit (I likely wouldn’t have fit in it 2 years ago) but was very comfortable and holes in the HALO support afforded excellent visibility as well. After buying the seat I took it back to TC Design to have them fabricate the necessary mounts and fit it in the car.

The seat is now mounted using 4 bolts going through the car floor and attached using large size backing washers. Also it may not be visible from the pictures but the left edge of seat us actually under the chassis tube – this is literally the largest possible seat you could fit into the car without modifying the transmission tunnel.

Point to note is that the cage had to be modified so that the side impact bars would clear the halo wings of the drivers seat. It did not have to flare on the passenger side since I do not plan on fitting in a HALO seat and there is no room to fit one in either (passenger area is 2 inches narrower than the drivers side). The other unfortunate side effect is that my legs are now slightly higher in the car which means that my knees interfere with the stock steering wheel. I removed the seat bottom padding to drop myself lower into the car seat but still had to move to a smaller steering wheel to get the full range of motion. While the smaller wheel is ok at speed, it does make driving a lot more physical at low speed and in hard turns (T11 at Laguna is tough).

Racing Harnesses
Since the harnesses in the car had expired several years ago (SFI belts expire in 2 years) , I had to get a new set of harnesses. Having used a several different belts over the years I decided to go for the Scroth Profi II 6-point belts since I find their adjustment system to be the fastest and easiest to use. The other feature I like the way the lap belts can be configured to pull-up tightening which allows you to strap yourself in tighter without any outside help. The final step was to add a set of arm-restraints though I will likely use them only on track days and not on the street (I use my helmet and R3 on the street)

Conclusion
All in all it was a pretty expensive and slow process to go through all the safety upgrades but it is a one-time thing and should now last me for several years. I have to give a huge thanks to TC Design for doing a fantastic job with the full safety setup and also squeezing me into their busy schedule. Thanks also to Wine Country Motorsports for letting me try out the seat before actually buying it.

You can see more pictures of the cage and seat installation at in my Flickr set. Click here for the rest of my “Setting up a Seven” series.

As many of you know I purchased a Lotus Seven replica called the WCM Ultralite S2K late last year to make it a street legal track toy. While the Ultralite may maintain the spirit of the original Seven, as you can see below, it has a distinctly different shape and has generally larger dimensions to accommodate drivers of all sizes. In order to move this extra bulk (relatively speaking) around it comes with the incredible F20C engine out of the Honda S2000. The end product has some astonishing performance figures:

Weight: 1300 lbs
Horsepower: 240 bhp
Redline: 9000 rpm
Power to weight ratio: 400+ hp/ton
0-60 mph: 3.5 seconds

My particular car was the first prototype built by World Class Motorsports and is the actual car used in most of the magazine tests. The original owner of the car then sold it to an active PCA member who took fantastic care of the car and documented his changes. He also had the car made street legal under the California SB100 exemption for kit cars. After a few years he ended up selling it and the car went through 2 other owners before I found out that it was on sale again and jumped at the chance.

The first and most immediate thing that hits you when driving the Ultralite is sheer mind-blowing acceleration. When I bought the car it was on a set of fairly old 235 width Falken Azenis. Now while the Azenins are actually pretty good tires for autocross, they have nowhere near enough grip for the ridiculous horsepower of the Ultralite. The very first time I tried a hard acceleration run I spun the rear wheels in 3rd gear and got a full on fishtail moment at 60+ mph. This is the only car I have driven where you have to rev match on upshifts or the rear wheels will happily lose traction Even within the same gear the acceleration is phenomenal. The car pulls pretty strongly below 6k rpm but once you go above the 6k threshold the VTEC cuts in an it feels like someone has hit the fast forward button. Plus with the 9k redline you have plenty of time in the powerband and dont have to keep rowing the gears. Also despite the fearsome power, I do have to say that the Ultralite is actually a very benign handling car. The rear gives you plenty of notice before it steps out and you can easily use the throttle to play with oversteer through the bends (see opposite lock below ).

Driving the Seven is very visceral experience where you can see, feel and hear every mechanical thing on the car. While you are “one with the road” it is a very different experience than what you feel in a Lotus Elise. The Elise is delicate, nimble car and will eagerly follow your every command while the Ultralite is like a raging bull that you have to manhandle into position before you step on the throttle and hold on for dear life. It is very much of a “mans car” where the controls are very heavy and you end up smelling of oil and gasoline after every drive.

While the car was in running, registered and mostly-drivable condition when I bought it, I nonetheless had several improvements in mind before it would be truly track worthy. While this car is likely to be a project car for the rest of my life, for the more immediate future I plan on a series of “Setting up a Seven” blog posts about work I have already done including the safety setup, wheels/tires, exhaust, suspension, etc… In the meantime enjoy this video of Rob doing a run at the last Lotus Club autocross of the 2009 season.

video by cxcheng

Car info:

• 1986 BMW 325 E (E30)
• Class winner at Reno-Fernley 2009
• 2 Top 5s and 2 Top 10s in the last 4 races
• Excellent handling and fast lap times
• Ultra reliable – no major breakdowns in last 5 races
• Full safety gear
• Autopower bolt-in roll cage with additional weld in door bar
• Recaro Profi SPG XL seat withe Recaro mounts on Recaro dual locking sliders
• New G-force 6-point harnesses
• 20 gallon fuel cell with additional internal baffling and safety foam
• 6 TR-Motorsports wheels with Hankook tires (enough rubber for 2 races)
• Fully stripped for maximum weight reduction
• Lexan windshield
• Sunroof and rear parcel shelf replaced with sheet aluminium
• Door skins only
• lightweight sealed battery
• dashboard, excess wiring and interior completely removed
• Updated brakes (new master cylinder, stainless steel brake lines, new Hawk race pads, Super Blue racing fluid)
• Wired for in-car radio (4 radios and helmet mics included)
• 2 gallon drinks system in place (separate 1 gallon bottles)
• Cool suit mounting system (cool suit not included)
• Numerous other safety, reliability and speed modifications – contact for full list
• Never had any BS Penalties or tech issues
• “Lemons Legend” on Jalopnik
• Click here to follow the history of the car and its racing efforts

Car package includes all safety gear, radios, wheels, tires, drinks systems, fuel filler hoses, etc… – just add gas and race!

The car is located at Dietsch Werks in Santa Clara and we are happy to show it with an appointment. For pricing and more information please leave a comment below or call Rahul at 510-439-7265

In the meantime check out this video of a Lexus IS-F lapping the Fuji circuit with its virtual recreation side-by-side.

You can see the speed, heart rate (BPM), longitudinal G (acceleration + braking) and lateral G in the dashboard on the top of the video. His average heart rate was in the low nineties while on the grid and rises to to 101 just before the start of the run. As the run progresses you can see it quickly rise all the way to 145 bpm by the end of the 45 second run. Just as interesting is the way his heart rate falls as soon as the run ends and drops to the low 130s just 10 seconds after the run. So now if anyone asks you why you autocross just say its for the health benefits

Unfortunately the video quality is not as perfect and the heart rate only updates every 5 seconds but all in all it was a successful test of the system. I have already ordered a Polar RS800CX (1 sec resolution) and I plan to run this same setup for the duration of the Lemons race at Buttonwillow next month. So stay tuned for the health benefits of endurance racing

This post has been cross posted on the GGLC blog.

One of the highlights of the 2008 West Coast Lotus meet were the time trials that were held at the go-kart track of Jackson County Parks facilities. You often hear that the Lotus handles like a go-kart but this was the first time that I got to drive my Elise on an actual go-kart course. Our run format consisted of running 3 back to back laps on the outside of the track to count as one single timed run. It was an interesting day and we got to to run the first session in the dry before the rain came down creating a very wet second session.The following video combines in-car and external footage of my first wet run of the afternoon. Major thanks to Rob and Jen from Dietsch Werks for taping the run from the outside.

Lotus Elise on a Go-Kart track from rnair on Vimeo.

Since my R-compound tires were completely slick I had to swap to my AD-07 street tires for the first time in six months. The combination of skinny tires, street compound and wet surface meant that I had no grip and I almost went off while braking for turn 1 (I was later riding with someone who shall not be named when we actually went off at the same spot ). I make the turn with about six inches to spare and am pretty cautious and slow waaaay down for turn two only to find the rear end wants to fishtail on the exit. Turn 3 went much better but the lack of front-end bite at turn 4 lead to a few NSFW comments. At this point I slowed down even further and tiptoed my way around the course for the rest of the run. We later found out that the county had repaved about half the track which meant that the course had sections with both old and new asphalt which account for the wide variance in the grip levels at the turns. Turns 1 through 4 had the lowest grip and you had to tiptoe through them before getting on the throttle for the rest of the course.

The next video is incar from my final run in the dry. The lap is much better and doesnt have too many mistakes apart from a missed shift on the start of lap 3 – I believe it ended up being the second fastest Lotus time of the morning.

West Coast Lotus Meet: Time Trials from rnair on Vimeo.