The state of the Tune

A while back I mentioned mods. Yup, I've made some. The emphasis has been weight savings. Sheding 10lbs is equivalent to gaining 1hp on a car like this, so my car now performs at ~12 hp better than the stock curb weight. The Lotus is now 6% lighter than the stock curb weight when I race it. In addition, the sway bar and the tires are very important turning mods. The free-flow exhaust may also add a couple hp, but this is esentially unknown.

Given the 190bhp that this car makes, I am now at 9.8lbs/hp. For reference my (entirely stock) Mazda 3 is a peppy little hatch back with 23lbs/hp, and A Ferrari F430 has 6.6 pounds/hp.

What does the future hold? I have a Fujita F5 Cold Air intake ready to be added. This weighs only 2lbs so it should allow me to cut a few more pounds from a relatively high and rearward position. I'd probably get the best benefit out of a shock improvement, but that's pretty expensive. About $2500 Cheaper and probably next best is a chip-tune for the car. That would add 8hp and move the cam change over down by about 500 rpm. I would be down to 9.4 lbs/hp. One worry about adding power however is it may also make my open differential that much more obvious of a problem. The AC delete is free and probably sheds 10-15 lbs. I dont use it anyway, so I may do that if I can get the right drive belt.

However there is one mod that stands out above all others. Mostly, I need to tighten up the Nut behind the wheel! A driver with 18 years of experience recently proved that he could drive my car more than 3.5 seconds faster than me on a 60 sec course. The car is still faster than I am.