It’s been a while since we had an update on this car and a lot of people were starting to wonder what happened to it. Between the many obstacles to overcome, developing some custom parts, going back and forth on decisions, the owner of the car (and myself) having two having kids, this became a sideline project in the shop. Our usual chats shifted from the K20 swap to sharing our experiences raising two young children. Although progress was made slowly throughout, I wanted Part 3 to be the final part of the blog.
The team arrived back in Colorado Springs on Saturday, June 15th and we were greeted at COS airport by some really cool window artwork promoting this year’s race. After leaving the airport, we immediately headed over to our home-away-from-home: Winslow BMW of Colorado Springs and we were met with another fun surprise; this year’s “Signature” car, a BMW Z3M coupe and “Parade of Champions” car, a new BMW i5 M60 electric performance sedan. The liveries for both cars were unique for the 102nd Running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Legendary PPIHC Hall Of Fame Inductee, Clint Vahsholtz, was this year’s driver of the “Parade of Champions” car; which meant that after the race on Sunday he would lead all of the competitors down from the summit of the mountain back to the start-line. It’s an incredible honor, and I can think of no one better for the job considering Clint has raced Pikes Peak 30 times. And out of those 30 times, he’s won his class 24 times and he was King of the Mountain in 2020. Wow!
Following several successful planned test days at our home track of Sonoma Raceway in April and May, we finally arrived at the first Official Test Weekend ahead of the 102nd Running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC). This weekend took place on Saturday and Sunday June 1st-2nd, and as a rookie I was informed by the event-organizers that my performance across both days would be evaluated in order to make a final determination of my eligibility to race on June 23rd. No pressure or anything, but game on.
Over the 2023 winter holiday break is when things got really serious for our Pikes Peak car. We used the downtime to get a lot done, including a full rebuild of our Drexler rear diff.
It’s been over 3 years since I put the Honda K24 into our Lotus Exige and it was the first car that I made an engine harness for. Although the harness was reliable and never gave me any issues, I felt that my harness building skills have improved much since then. What I really wanted to do was get rid of all of the unused wiring and the mess under the dash.
It’s been over 3 years since I put the Honda K24 into our Lotus Exige and it was the first car that I made an engine harness for. Although the harness was reliable and never gave me any issues, I felt that my harness building skills have improved much since then. What I really wanted to do was get rid of all of the unused wiring and the mess under the dash.
A few months ago, we decided to register for this year’s 2021 Global Time Attack and Super Lap Battle Finals at Buttonwillow. The Exige wasn’t built for time attack, but we thought it would be a fun place to compete and see how capable the Lotus with a K-series really is; even if it is heavily outgunned in its class (because of the rule set, the car falls into Limited, a class that normally sees cars with forced induction engine setups making well over 600whp). We decided to set our own goal of a sub 1:50 lap, which may be the first naturally aspirated Elige to do so. The best time this car had done previously at Buttonwillow 13CW was a 1:51.7 on Falken RT660s.
Back in February of 2020, our longtime Lotus customer reached out about potentially building an Elise from the ground up. The idea was to build a car to his exact specs, a reimagined Lotus Elise. The plan was to buy a brand new tub chassis from Lotus and hand-pick, or fabricate, custom parts for one goal: his perfect “streetable” track day car. Most of the drivetrain and miscellaneous bits would be taken from his current 2011 Elise.
This past Saturday, April 7, we hosted our very first Trackspec Tech Talk, "Handling 101," featuring Shinoo Mapleton, owner of InoKinetic. Being in the Lotus industry for several years, Shinoo offered his knowledge on car handling, for Lotus Elise, Exige and Alfa 4C.
Monday through Friday
7am to 4pm
