We were thrilled to finally attend the West Coast Lotus Meet, hosted by the Golden Gate Lotus Club, and it truly exceeded our expectations! Jon and I have long wanted to join this event, but in the past, scheduling conflicts, distance, and not owning a street-legal Lotus kept us away. To be clear, you don’t need to own a Lotus to participate. The Golden Gate Lotus Club is incredibly inclusive, welcoming all makes and models. However, there’s something extra special about fully immersing yourself in the activities when you have a Lotus to share the experience with. What made this event even more special was our decision to close the shop and bring our entire team along to join the experience. We had an incredible time!
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.
In part two of the K24 swap, we were left waiting for the header to arrive. We ordered a Hytech 4-2-1 header specifically made for this swap, which took a little over a month to get, but was well worth the wait! It fit perfectly. Other than trimming the J-pipe to length it needs no modification to fit any muffler designed for this chassis. Once fitted, all we had to do was make an extension harness for the wideband o2 sensor.
The first race of the 2020 season feels like a lifetime ago...and not because it was way back in February, but because the world as we know it has changed dramatically over the past 15 weeks. COVID-19 caused just about everything to shut down...businesses, offices, parks, restaurants, schools, and what can best be described as a “normal way of life.”
When we left off in part one of the K24 swap, we had the engine in the car and started getting things connected. Although it seemed like it was close to being done, there was quite a bit left to do. We decided to keep the factory dual oil coolers. This may change in the future, but we wanted to make sure the temps were stable even on extremely hot days. Moving along on the track is one thing, but following closely behind another car in “dirty air” and it can get hot pretty quickly. Because these cars are known to over cool engine oil, we installed a thermostatic sandwich plate with a 200F thermostat to help maintain proper temps.
If you grew up in the 90s and were into cars, then you’ve heard of the Honda B-series engine and how amazing it was. It was the “hot rod” engine of its time and my gateway into modifying cars. The planning, researching, parts sourcing, building, and then seeing how it improved the car’s performance is what got me hooked. In the early 2000’s, Honda came out with something even better..
In Part 8, we were waiting on a driver net before we could have the tech inspection done. The Schroth net with the new quick release mechanism that we originally ordered was still undergoing testing and its availability was severely delayed. So, we went with a equally good option- Safecraft.
We love the start of every race season because it represents new possibilities. In winter of 2019, we decided that 2020 is going to be a year where we’ll be more focused on endurance racing. While we love the NASA Super Touring (sprint racing) series, we realized we enjoy enduros even more. As a team, we are aiming to win (our class), podium, or at the very least finish the 25 Hours of Thunderhill with my E36 BMW M3, “Heidi.” So, that’s what we’ve set out to do.
With a year of rebuilding and developing the Exige behind us, we were excited to begin our “winter project,” the roll cage. When the car came back from the last track event of the year (a very wet Laguna day), we gave it a good wash inside and out before getting into it. We also had to do some homework and make sure that what we build is safe and legal for the the local sanctioning bodies we plan to race with. We followed NASA’s Club Codes and Regulations handbook as a guide.
Every year, we like to take the team on a fun trip. For the past four years, we’ve been going to SEMA in Las Vegas. We’ve always had a good time there because we like to win free tools, and every year, we’ve won something amazing: OTC diagnostic tool, Hunter tire balancer, and CP power tools. Not to mention, Vegas is a fun location…there’s always a little something for everyone to enjoy in Vegas! However, this year, we wanted to do something different. With half the team following Formula 1, and the other half discovering it through the Netflix docuseries, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, it seemed like the best thing to do was watch a Formula 1 race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX.
At the last two-day track day at Buttonwillow with Speed Ventures, shifting in the Exige started to get notchy. It would sometimes be difficult to get into gear, but we kept driving it. By the last session of the day, we were not able to get the car into gear after pulling off into paddock. If the engine was off, it would go into all gears, so we suspected it to be a failed clutch that was not fully disengaging...
This blog post will be shorter than usual because our race weekend ended early at Sonoma Raceway due to the Kincade fire. On Sunday morning, just before 8am everyone vacated the track to make room for it to become an evacuation center for families who were fleeing the flames. Our hearts go out to all of them and to our brave service men and women. This meant that the final race of the 2019 Super Touring season actually took place on Saturday, October 26th.
Fuel starvation is a well known problem with this platform. It’s mostly noticeable on long left hand corners because the fuel pick up is on the left side of the tank. It’s typically not an issue if I keep the fuel tank full, but every time our got down to about 70%, it would starve. This can cause a lean condition and be harmful to the engine, especially with forced induction.
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