Created by Petrolheads, for Petrolheads

Yesterday I spent an enjoyable couple of hours with Paul, Ollie, Ben and Nat at the QuickSilver Exhaust Design Centre in Witley as together we began the process of designing a proper Alpine sports exhaust to replace the EU nannied OEM unit to give the A110 an exhaust to be proud of. An additional aim of the project is to loose weight and help unleash the engines full potential alongside the Litchfield engine remap due in September which will take the car to 310+bhp and giving her a sub 4 second 0-60 time and a sub 9 second 0-100 time.

This being the first time that they had got their hands on a A110, it was like watching kids in a candy store. They whipped off the rear diffuser, had a good poke around, did measurements, took pictures, took sound readings and then put it all back together. Next steps will be the design process using CAD. They will then have the car for 1-2 weeks during August and at the end of it all we should have something that sounds like an 70’s/80’s B Class rally car.

Once up on the ramp we also found a few surprises along the way. One being that many of the key nuts and bolts had been painted and colour coded to their final torque positions which is standard motorsport practice. This just shows the love and attention to detail that Alpine apply when hand building each of their cars… impressive. Two there are elliptical camber bolts built into the wishbone suspension mounting points ready to change the wheel angle on all four corners for track use. Three we also found the body had been signed too.

Some just captured images of SPR’s new stripes plus development work.

Although its probably never going to be finished, its given me a taste for changing the shape of old ‘Hell Yeah’…

1. Centre panel cut out of the donor hood

2. Panel raised into position:

3. Forming the sides from card and filler:

4. A coat of primer evens it out to gauge appearence:

5. Test fit. Maybe a bit much….

Fresh in from the workshop is a shot of SPR with her roundels and rear wheel arch spats (not the best pic in the world but you get the idea).

It means the car will be ready for Saturday – the excitement builds.

The seats and harnesses are in, plus fire extinguisher, plus we have our timing strut. Here are a few more spy shots, but she is looking like a proper little racer now.

For most of August, good ol’ Hell Yeah has been with Trevor. She’s being transformed:

Trev smoothing.

The shark-like profile in glorious primer

Big Mouth strikes again!

Oops. Broke her.

Back in the shop for more light work…

SPR has been to Minister Power to have their Lotus Elise 160bhp Sport engine upgrade. This is the same upgrade Bell & Colvill offered on the S1 from new. It involves removing the head and polishing and porting to 160 spec, fitting of Piper cams and vernier pulleys, refit head with new head gasket, cam timings reset with replacement timing belt and tensioners, new aux belt and waterpump. Bigger injectors are added plus we required x8 new exhaust valves and x2 inlet valves (this may explain the slight loss of power we had been experiencing due to a slight loss of pressure as the valves had worn and were not sitting snug). Finally to gain the max from the conversion we fitted a new 4-2-1 replacement exhaust manifold to our existing sports exhaust. Our original aftermarket air filter set-up was retained as it was found to be working very well in conjunction with the new work.

In addition, to make life easier getting in and out, we fitted a quick release steering wheel mech, as a revised unit has recently come on the market following the old units failings and withdrawal from sale.

As Jeremy Clarkson would say we now have poweeeer! The car is significantly quicker through the whole range. Max speed is now at 135mph+ (in 118bhp tune we could barely touch 120mph with the roof on). A shake down test at Bedford is planned for this coming weekend when we will discover exactly what she is now capable of recording.

I think we will need better brakes next to deal with the extra power and increased corner approach speeds 🙂

Our Tyresure tyre pressure monitoring system has failed. It has come to light that after around 12 months use via thermal heat transfer within the tyre the transmitter valve units crack and stops working (it has become a known manufacturing fault). Image attached for reference. We are trying to get a replacement set under warranty, but unfortunately for us our system is 18 months old. Be warned all those considering, enquire first to see if they have upgraded the product to overcome this issue! Having said all this the product does work well, when its not overheating 🙂