PC-Engine said:
What you said doesn't make any sense at all. The Exige is a midengined car so in order to get lots of cool air to the engine you will need a scoop. A scoop mounted on the roof is the best place to get cool air. Side scoops would work too which the Exige already has. Don't know how you get hot air from up there. The SC is also intercooled. This is nothing new and have been done on other midengined cars.
I'm not really sure how going from 190hp to 240hp is draining power.
What are you talking about? It's not about getting more power from another SC. It's all about how much power you need while not compromising engine reliabilty. You act like they couldn't get more power out of the SC or something. In fact Lotus engineers have gone on record of saying they could get 350hp out of the 2ZZ if they wanted to. It's not a coincedence that's it's called a 240R (240hp) and to match the 340R.
Hey, I was just as surprised to hear it from the Lotus dealer themself. It was late 2004 when Lotus dealers across Europe were informed by Lotus that there would be a Supercharged Exige. At the time, little was known but it was beginning 2005 (I think January/February if I recall correct) when details did surface of it being ~240bhp and the price for the
option /
upgrade.
It was just before the 240Rs revelation that I spoke to the dealer (I would have been a customer of the 240R) to find out that they [Lotus] are having trouble and that they [our local Lotus Dealer] would be going with the supercharger by a tuning company specialised in Toyota/Yamaha engines. Being quite confused about the 240R, I spoke to the chief engineer of Lotus overhere which is where I am taking my information from.
Basically, and I'll repeat it again, the Exige 240R has the flaw that the air-intake - which is used for the intercooler - is *very* small (something that's quite obvious if you've ever seen one in real let alone the 240R) - especially under hot conditions. In fact, the air-intake is that small that it basically isn't doing much more than for for design reasons anyway in the standard Exige S2. And hot conditions would be the killer because hot air has a lower density. Ultimately, the power and effectiveness of a/the supercharger is dependand on the amount of air it can compress and deliver to the engine. Because the air out of the supercharger is hot, it needs to be cooled, which ultimately is dependend on how much cooling air goes into the intercooler. Hot compressed air is less dense, so less air that goes into the engine equals less - the result being that you have a resistant heavy supercharger connected to the engine doing little to nothing (= which results in it draining power). Of course there are no performance numbers nor statistics (only Lotus has them) of how well the 240R works and under which conditions, but it is clear that they are having problems - that much I can confirm and that's as directly from Lotus as you can get.
It actually makes quite a lot of sense since the 240R was planned as an upgrade/option to the standard Exige and later changed to be in limited numbers only. It certainly surprised the heck out of me, as I said, because I would have been a potential customer.
Having that said and considering the facts, I am not going to take any performance claims of Lotus's PR devision seriously about them getting even more power out of that supercharger. Not in the current implementation anyway, that much is obvious - at least to those that have seen the car in real (I have, as have the Lotus people I've been talking to). And I'm not sure why you're bringing up the 340R - it's another car and has little to do with the Exige, let alone it isn't even any indication of how much power it has either [the name 340R].
As I said, I'm not entirely sure that there are any 240Rs out on the street at all yet - I read Pistonheads article (I'm sure you have as well), but then again, I'm more likely to take information directly from one of the chief engineers than any other source let alone any PR devision. I guess we'll see how this pans out. I'm more than interested if word does get out about 240Rs on the street from their customers. (if there are any). If anything, I think no one except Lotus knows exactly how well the supercharged performs in practical situation (let alone on a track). If anything and from the information I've got - it probably just gets the job done under ideal conditions but you're damned to run into problems on a hot day on the track, which IMO I would find very disturbing given that the Exige is a track car.
And no, my point wasn't to bring up that they can't get more power out of it - simply that the 240R's implementation of its supercharger isn't elegant at all and accoarding to Lotus overhere flawed - which is something that any tuning company that specialises in superchargers will be able to tell you upon inspecting the air-intake for the intercooler/supercharger. As I said, Lotus overhere is officially backing the supercharger by a Yamaha/Toyota tuning company overhere that has more power, better torque and its properly cooled as the air is taken from the front of the car and directed to the back of the car for the intercooler/supercharger. Because the intercooler/supercharger isn't mounted on top of the engine as in the 240R, it's even available as an option for Elise 111R customers.
Edit: Some typos.
