Lotus Europa Community
Lotus Europa Forums => Members Cars => Topic started by: ralf on Tuesday,September 20, 2022, 09:28:47 PM
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Hello everybody,
thanks for let me join your Forum. My name is Ralf and I am from Germany (in the south, 20km east of Stutgart).
I bought my Europa 1982 when I was 19 years old.
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The Europa was in a very bad condition. It take me about one year to make it ready to make some test rides. After this I don't work at the car for many years.
Then I bouht a Spyder chassis with rear susspention, fit a Renault 843 engine modified to Bosch K-Jetronic injection of the old Golf GTI, a aluminium rockcover I made myself and a 395 transmission. 1994 I get a registration for the car.
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In December 1994 I made an accident. A Renault 19 hit my left front wheel when I slide with cold Yokohama A008 tires into an intersection.
I was lucky that I don't get hurt. If I would slide 1m more into the intersection the R19 would hit my door instead the front susspension.
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2020 I started to repair my Europa.
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:Welcome:
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Welcome Ralf,
That was some crack to the front section to repair. We definitely have some die hard Europa fans here that share your enthusiasm.
Thanks for saving a part of history even with your upgrades.
:Welcome:
Dakazman
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Thanks for the welcome,
to weld the frame of my Seven I bought an old bench from CEVETTE for only €200.-. When the seven frame was finished I repaired the chassis of the Europa before I sold the bench again. With the bench you can make quiet acurate messurments on the chassis.
At the left front of the Europa chassis I needed replace some parts.
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When the welding was finished I brought the chassis to leach (sorry for my english. I get 'leach' from the google translater I hope its right).
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That was a nice setup!!
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After leaching the chassis was powder coated in RAL 7046 which is similar, but by far not exactly, the colour of the old Lotus chassis.
But the colour 'old battleship grey' was not available for the powder coating. To make work at the finished chassis easy I bought a cheap lifting platform for motorbikes.
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When the welding was finished I brought the chassis to leach (sorry for my english. I get 'leach' from the google translater I hope its right).
Maybe 'dipped' ?
Nice one - it looks like the chassis was dipped in an acid solution to remove rust and paint?
And I was Christened in Germany, but don't speak the language.
Obviously at that age, I probably wasn't speaking any language. ;D
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Thanks GavinT,
yes it was dipped in a solution of hot 'lye' (again a word I googled but don't know if it is right). With acid it is hard not bring away the coating, therefor lye can not bring away rust. But the chassis did not have any rust.
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The left front of the body was heavy damaged. So I bought a used body which the seller told me is in very good condition. But the rear was much worse than on my car.
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So I decied to use only the front of this body.
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At this front I removed the flashlight area.
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Down at the front I removed the area where the inner body was glued to the outer body.
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The front of my old body was cut away.
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The front and rear was positioned in the CEVETTE bench and glued together.
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To make work at the body more easy I build a frame on which the body can turned in any position.
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At the rear I also removed the area where the inner body was glued to the outer body.
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A friend of mine removed the paint and sprayed filler to the body.
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The lower area of the Spyder chassis is open. To get a flat floor I made a cover of carbon fiber. In this cover I integrated the oilcooler pipes.
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yes it was dipped in a solution of hot 'lye' (again a word I googled but don't know if it is right). With acid it is hard not bring away the coating, therefor lye can not bring away rust. But the chassis did not have any rust.
Oh, OK - 'lye'
'lye' is commonly known as 'caustic soda' or sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and often the main active ingredient in drain cleaner . . and also used to remove paint.
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Hello GavinT,
yes I guess it was a NaOH solution.
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Long time I was not sure what engine I should put into the Europa when I build it up again. In the 90th I used a modified 1643ccm Renault20 engine (843).
I used standard piston and camshaft. The compression was slightly increased and cylinderhead was little ported. It was modified to Bosch K-Jetronic anf get a aluminium valve cover. After I made the accident I sold the engine, but it would have been the easiest/cheap way to build again a Renault crossflow engine. However I don't like longstroke engines in light sports cars.
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I want a 1600ccm engine, therefor the Zetec was no option.
The other option is the Lotus TC. I still have a Stromberg head and a front cover. And with a TC bellhousing it is easy to fit to the transmission. I drove the TC in a Elan S2 and in an Elan+2 S 130/5 and it is a good engine. But in Germany it is expensive to assemble it and bring it to 150-160hp.
A Renault Fuego Turbo engine would also be a option. It is a 1600ccm and with modifications the power is almost unlimited. But throttle response of a Turbo is not for the roads in south Germany.
My favorit option would be the Ford BDA1600. You can find some in Germany, but the price are astronomic.
Then I found the webside of Bill Sherwood. The has a TOYOTA 4AGE page and descripes this engine:
'The Toyota 4AGE engine started life in 1983 as a logical progression from the 2A and 3A single cam engines. There was also the single cam 4A-C engine, which initially shared an identical block & very similar internals as the twin cam version. The 4AGE soon progressed to having stronger internals, and so they diverged from there.
The twin cam 4AGE is basically a road going, mass produced version of the Ford Cosworth BDA twin cam racing engine. They share the same bore and stroke (81mm x 77mm), the same size valves (29.5mm & 25.5mm), and in some versions of the 4AGE very similar port shapes & sizes. When fully prepared for racing, they both produce similar hp figures at similar revs, so it would seem that Toyota has done an excellent job with them.'
I found some information that a naturaly aspirated 4AGE makes 240+hp in the formula atlantic. And their are still plenty of racing parts availible for this engine. I found a Celica with this engine ready for registration for only €700.- which I bought.
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As you are surely aware, the 4AGE will require more fabrication than a Zetec, TC, or BDA to install into a Europa, but from what I’ve seen of your capabilities, you are certainly up to the task!
Many years ago, a fellow in the US by the name of John Pels, produced a kit to aid the 4AGE conversion. He or one of his customers might be a source of information.
I’m anxious to see how your project comes along!
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Hello BDA,
I bought the kit of Mr. Pels on EBAY, but I only use the adapter plate. The adapter plate is a good quality.
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Few weeks after I bought the Celica I found a MR2 engine which was removed from the car at the early 90th with less than 25.000km on the clock.
This was a perfect base for a tuned 4AGE engine. The disasembled block shows no wear. The cylinder bore was inside the tolerance of a new block.
I replaced the pistons by SUPERTECH pistons with 10.7/1 compression ratio.
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The engine get a BigPort head. The 4AGE scene belives that the Smallport head is better if you make modifications up to 160-180hp.
So I bought a Smallport head and replaced the valveguides by SUPERTECH ones. The almost new valves of the MR2 engine was used in this head, but the valveseat was cut to a smaler contact area and bigger inner diameter of the contact area.
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The inlet port was slightly ported ond the compression was equalised.
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Noname 272° camshafts with 8.1mm lift from Malasya were installed. because I want to use the original valve springs I reduced the weight of the cam followers by installing some without shims. These cam follower you can buy in diferenrt thickness. The weight of one cam follower is only 24grams.
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The position of the camshaft where adjusted to the specification of the supplier of the camshafts.
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Because of the camshafts and the ITB i want to use I decited to use a programable ECU. This ECU needs a signal which will give it the position of the crank-/camshaft. One easy solusion is to cut out 5mm of one teeth of the timingbelt sprocket.
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To get the signal by the 'missing tooth', a pickup of a 50ccm Honda bike was fixed to the toothbelt cover.
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First I want to use modified Weber carburators as ITB. But I get only 40mm Webers in stock. So I decited to buy cheap 45mm Weber style ITBs in England. They were mounted with a Weber to 4AGE Smallport manifold from Redline. For testing the PLA trumpet were made with a 3D printer.
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Impressive!
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Are you using racing followers and shims? I think street followers have a recess on the face of the followers for the adjustment shims but the followers in your photo don’t appear to have that recess. If so, I think that means your valve adjustment procedure will be similar to a TC motor but you won’t have to worry about your cam spitting out a valve shim at high revs.
If I’m right about all this, it appears you might have interesting plans for your car when you’re done and you might want want to consider a stronger stub axle/rear bearing arrangement.
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Hello BDA,
the followers are shimless. For the BDA engine you can buy followers with different hight. I get followers from 5.18mm to 5.58mm in 0.02mm steps. I bought the followers for Austrailian Dollar 10.- each which is less than I pay for one shim for the TC in Germany.
I get a spyder rear susspension with a modified driveshaft. The only thing I don't like at the rear axle is the conecting of the driveshaft to the hub.
My plan is to get about 160hp out of the engine. With higher lift and longer duration of the camshaft I guess this engine could be easy a much higher output. Cams up to 320° and a lift with more than 10mm are available. In the Formula Atlantic where they use the 4AGE for 15years the original output was 240hp.
With a Turbo modification some people claimed to get 800hp out of the 1600ccm 4AGE with the original crankshaft.
But I want to make it stressless to drive if I go to the city, so I chose a milder cam.
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G'day, ralf,
What does it look like if you place a Renault head gasket on the 4AGE head.
Obviously I'm wondering if a 4AGE head could marry up to the Renault block.
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Hello GavinT,
I don't know, I dont have any Renault engineparts any more.
But I guess an engine swap is more easy than a cyliderhead swap.
And the 4AGE has a realy good engine block. The original crankshaft is good for 10.000+rpm.
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This brings back memories of building up a 3 rib 4AG with a small port head that I put in a Lotus Seven replica. I ended up running 40 DCOE's, 290ish duration cams, and a Megajolt ignition. It was great above 4500 rpm, but was a little flat below that. I think at the time guys were using, I think, Yaris cam followers as they were the same as what you're using, various thickness without shims.
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Hello RoddyMac,
I like the charactersitic of the 4AGE too.
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First I used a KDFI1.3 ECU but when it made trouble I changed to EFIgnition46 which is like the KDFI a low budget one.
In Germany it cost include shipping from the Netherlands less than €400.-.
Both are MegaSquird based ECU which are not to difficult to setup if you use the free Tunerstudio software.
To use this ECU I needed a manifold presure sensor, an air- and water temperature sensor, the pickup sensor at the sprocket,
a position sensor for the throttle and a lambdacontroller. I don't use the distributer anymore, therefor I use a coil with four outlets.
A new wiring loom for the was made.
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To setup/adjust the engine I build it into the Celica. The Celica has a weight of 1100kg, which make the setup more easy,
because its accelaration is much slower than that of the 650kg Europa. The exhaust was, exept of 'cleaning' the catalytic converter,
standard which might reduce the output.
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The adjusting with Tunerstudio is quiet easy. You get a chart where you type in the AFR you want to get.
The you run the car and press autotune. Pressing save it saves the injectiontime in another table.
When I finished the modification the I tested the accelaration of the Celica with a QStarz GPS.
The accelaration from 0-100km/h changes from 10seconds to 8,5seconds.
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After driving 13.000km with this engine in the Celica it was removed to get installed in my Europa.
The block was sprayed in the same grey like the chassis. A aluminium oilpan was installed.
This pan has the oilstick at the right rear position, so it is easy to check the oil level in the Europa.
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To mount the 4AGE engine to the transmission I used a adapterplate made by Mr. Pels.
This plate is a very acurate part. However to fit it I the Spider chassis some adjustments has to made.
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The Toyota flywheels weight was reduced from 7.04kg to 5.81kg. A Renault (Fuego, R18, R20) 200mm clutchdisk was used.
The pressureplate from SACHS TYPE MF200 made for an Opel was used to make a hydraulic clutch conversion.
The the flywheel and ressureplate were balanced.
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A heavy modified central slave cylinder from the Opel Adam was used. The bellhousing was modified to hold the cylinder.
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A Quaife LSD Type QDF2X/7 (for Lotus Europa 4sp 336) was installed in my Renault 395 5speed transmission.
To install it some modifications at the inner driveshafts dand the seals were required.
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To mount the engine in the Spyder chassis I used couplings of a Jaguar XK (similar like used in the Seven S1).
Two inner and two outer brackets where made to install them. The outer brackets get powder coated, the inner zinc plated.
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To install the transmission in the chassis a Spyder 395 carrier, which get a grey powder coat was used.
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In my opinion the original design of the transmission linkage is not good.
I made a different design which might be better.
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I don't find an exhaust manifold for an 4AGE in an Europa. But in UK I found a flange for the 4AGE that I used to make a manifold.
I also found manifold of a Ferrari 328 which looks like it can be used to make my own manifold.
The 4to2 area of this manifold fits realy good for my project
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The rest of the exhaust was made my standart parts welded together. I use two 2 1/2inch silencer, after the first I can open a valve
to release the exhaust straight out.
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After 13.000km driving the 272° inlet camshaft shows some wear. I was replaced by a 292° with only 7,5 lift by Fritzinger.
To make the engine look like a Lotus TC a aluminium Valve cover was fited and the mounting for the distributor was cut away.
The alternator of a Citroen 2CV was placed at the bellhousing and driven by a pulley mounted to the exhaust camshaft.
There are two posts how the valve cover and the pulleydrive were made in 'Garage' ('BigValve style valve cover for TOYOTA 4AGE 16V engine' and '
alt pulley modification for TOYOTA 4AGE')
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Congratulations for all this work. You do great things. A real pleasure to read you.
;)
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Very good innovative work, ralf!!
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... and very interesting reading!
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Thanks,
The 4AGE waterpump will be replaced by a electric on from Davies Craig. A adapter was made to replace the waterpump and
to bring the water straight from the radiator to the block. The outlet at the cylinderhead was modified so it could
be turned 180°.
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In December 1994 I made an accident. A Renault 19 hit my left front wheel when I slide with cold Yokohama A008 tires into an intersection.
I was lucky that I don't get hurt. If I would slide 1m more into the intersection the R19 would hit my door instead the front susspension.
Hi Ralf,
my name is Stefan and I'm also from Germany. It's very funnny that I seem to have ended up buying the damaged front section of your car in 2020. I purchased the light blue front and a rear section from a different car as a package, when I needed parts to repair my own car's rear end. At the end of last year, I sold the front to Austria to a hillclimb racer, who had a front crash on the passenger side. Your body, which was crashed in 1994 will get a second life in 2023 :pirate:
The rear, from which you took your new front, is still in my posession. I'll keep it in case, I'd have another crash. I didn't use it for my repair in 2020, because I was able to source another used body, which was already cut into seven pieces. I have six of them left, as well :deadhorse:
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Hey guys, slow it down a little. :FUNNY:
I've been trying to save these parts. okay never mind ... Just have fun. :beerchug:
Dakazman
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Hallo Stefan,
ja, das sind die Überreste von meiner Reparatur. Hatte keinen Platz um sie zu lagern.
Hello Stefan,
yes this is the rest of my repair. I did not get space to store them.
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Hello,
the fueltank for my Europa is finished.
It get an universal 240-30 Ohm fuel gauge sender from a boat, a BOSCH fuelpump and an adjustable presure regulator.
It is made of 2mm AlMg3.
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Hello,
the fueltank for my Europa is finished.
It get an universal 240-30 Ohm fuel gauge sender from a boat, a BOSCH fuelpump and an adjustable presure regulator.
It is made of 2mm AlMg3.
Hi Ralf,
Would you mind sharing the part numbers that you used? I am exploring the options. I am debating doing an in tank pump up, but I am struggling to find a good solution for the bulkhead connector. As soon as my press brake is running I am going to make some baffled FI capable alloy tanks for all three series of Europa, my Eclat, and my Esprit.
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Hello Chuck Nukem,
I used a BOSCH pump which is regular used for outside. The inlet of the pump I connected with a 16mm Aluminiumpipe so it can get the fuel from the bottom of the tank. Inside that pipe I put a pre filter.
The fuel gauge sender is a universal one, like they use in boats.
The pressure regulator is an universal adjustable one.
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The pressure regulator is one like this:
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Thanks!
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As soon as my press brake is running I am going to make some baffled FI capable alloy tanks for all three series of Europa, my Eclat, and my Esprit.
If you can weld and are doing an efi tank, this is how I did mine with an intank pump.
http://www.lotuseuropa.org/LotusForum/index.php?topic=2999.msg29287#msg29287