I acquired the Lotus to go racing, something I have dreamed of doing for years. Thanks to my darling wife who encouraged me to get started, I bought a racing Lotus and spent a year trying to master the art of driving quickly while still pointing forward.
This turned out to be more fun than I had even imagined and quickly the Lotus was needing some tweaking. I replaced the pedal box to reduce my frequent brake-instead-of-accelerate issue (not much space between the old pedals) and did a full refresh on the suspension bits.
It did not help me to go faster, but the car did feel a bit more "together". By this time I had managed to get my times down from a somewhat pedestrian 1:37's to 1:30's. This did put me firmly at the rear end of the field, but at least there were a couple of other cars to race at those lap times.
Consistency, rather than talent, saw me winning Class E at the end of the year, which posed a bit of a challenge. The lotus was topping out at around 1:28's in it's current configuration. And would need some work to go much faster. Seeing as Class D (the fun side of the island) was well populated I would have to make the Lotus quite a bit faster to be competitive given the 1:27 to 1:24 time split for Class D. Just knocking a second off the Lotus would see me at the very bottom of D, not much point in that. Why not stay in Class E you ask? I prefer to retire at the top ...
In these kinds of situations there are only really two things you can do. Improve your skill or improve your equipment. The choice was simple. I needed a much bigger engine!
Enter Craig Harper.
He's a rather uniquely talented fellow in that, annoyingly, he can not only drive cars very fast, but he can also build them. He had a car called the Harper Type 5. A sleek open top two seater that ran a rear mounted Toyota derivative engine. Two were running in the Sports & GT category with us and both we competitive in Class D. The choice seemed obvious.
However, nothing is ever simple. A second childhood dream (it's always good to have more than one) was to build some kind of wild snorting beast of a car with a V8 engine. Cobra's, GT40's, Ultima's etc had all been lusted after at different times, but none really hit the proverbial spot.
Then in passing one day Craig mentioned he had thought of maybe building a Type 6. This would have a longitudinal engine and could take, you guessed it, a V8!
The conversation when something like this...
Me: Hey Craig, I want to build a new car. It needs to be road legal and something that I can race to replace my Lotus 7.
Craig: Ok, I can help you with that. How about a Harper Type 5?
Me: Mmmm, interesting, can we put a V8 into one?
Craig: Huh? Um, no, won’t fit.
Me: Oh
Craig: How about a nice two-litre turbo? That can be pretty quick.
Me: I really want a V8, surely it can be made to fit?
Craig: No, its too big.
Me: Ok, what about
the Type 6 then, that’s going to take a bigger engine?
Craig: It’s just a
thought in my head
Me: ..and?
Craig: Well, it’s just
an idea I have
Me: …and? Ok, if
you decide to build a Type 6, I’ll take the first one.
Craig: Let me think
about it.
Two weeks later I got a call from Craig to say he had warmed
to the idea and we should investigate this a bit further. It was showtime!
What followed was nothing short of a miracle. Craig set
himself some pretty tight deadlines, not that I was complaining. Car was to be
drivable by Christmas! Impressive bearing in mind that is was already October. I
set about researching the drivetrain while Craig went hi-tech with his CAD
software and started redesigning the Type 5 chassis to take a longitudinal
engine.
We settled on the Lexus 4.0l V8 engine since it produces an easy 200kw, around 380Nm of torque and costs less than a stale bun at the corner cafe. Gearbox duties fell to the venerable Audi (Getrag) FWD gearbox as it masquerades nicely as a transaxle and cost only slightly more than the afore mentioned stale bun. After much deliberation we decided to use the 01X unit from a 2004 A4 2.0 FSi. This gearbox has a really good spread of ratios and is a six speed, and, handily, there was one for sale on Gumtree. We figured that, given the relatively narrow (225) rear tyres, we would break rear traction long before we broke the gearbox. Time would of course tell ...
The engine and gearbox were duly purchased and mated together. The mating process took a bit of planning, but in the end was fairly straight forward. Craig CAD'ed up the engine and gearbox faces, joined the two together in software and ended up with a CAD design for an adaptor plate. The plate was then cut from 20mm aluminium and drilled accordingly. The Lexus is a nice choice for a project like this, not least because it has the starter motor as part of the engine, relieving one of the burden of having to accommodate one on the adaptor. The clutch package of choice was from an Audi Allroad. This pressure plate and clutch plate combination is used to good effect by the GT40 guys here in SA and I managed to get the clutch plate cut down and resurfaced effectively producing a 5 puck racing style clutch from off the shelf parts. Finally, a suitable flywheel was machined up, again according to a CAD design Craig built up.
We now had something to work with and the build began in ernest.
Quick plug:
Harper Sports Cars are based in Cape Town and manufacture kits for the Type 5 and Type 6 two seater open top sports cars. The cars are fully road legal and great fun to drive. To check them out got to www.harpersportscars.com or follow them on Facebook for frequent updates on what's happening in Harper world. Facebook link here.
You can follow the rest of the build and subsequent hijinks from the links at top right.
