“I can attest to this upgrade. Recently got this from SSC along with Kumho’s. Even more confidence inspiring if that’s possible and got me 4 seconds a lap more at Sydney Motorsport Park in first outing after upgrade!”
Chris Dan
Imagine reducing your lap times in an Elise or Exige for around $600
If you do track days most likely you are keen to improve your driving, go faster than your mates & just challenge yourself. Even if you aren’t interested in racing, most Elise or Exige owners always enjoy seeing their lap times get better. We also know that most owners enjoy a bit more front end bite & a bit less understeer, even for a spirited drive through the mountains.
Chris upgraded the wheels and tyres on his Lotus so that he could use the stickier Kumho R Spec tyres. Having a spare set of wheels & tyres for track days is quite common for Lotus owners & the better quality rubber on its own can help reduce lap times vs using street tyres.
What Chris also did was to install our Anti Bump Steer & Increased Camber Steering Arms. This is a powerful combination for any driver that is serious about reducing their lap times. Effectively without changing anything else on the vehicle, he immediately he had more grip and improved the front end response of his Lotus. This gave him so much more confidence when driving on the track and immediately led to taking seconds off his previous best lap times & it only cost around $600 to achieve.
Chris is just one of many Elise or Exige owners who have purchased this upgrade that our engineering team designed.
While adjusting your Exige or Elise’s suspension can help reduce lap times it won’t be the only thing that can help in this area. It’s important to remember that sometimes it is the ‘sum of all parts’ so to speak where a combination of driver training, tyres, track conditions and the right suspension set up can work together to help shave seconds off any previous lap time.
Watch the video to see how it works on an Elise or Exige
How does this suspension upgrade improve an Elise or Exige's handling?
MORE NEGATIVE CAMBER ADJUSTMENT
REDUCED BUMP STEER
LIGHTER THAN OEM PARTS
MADE FROM SOLID BILLET
TOUGH AND DURABLE
BEAUTIFULLY CRAFTED
We designed the Anti Bump Steer and Increased Camber Steering Arm to be made out of a solid piece of billet that is CNC machined. This makes them tougher, stronger & dare we say it, even better looking than the OEM units.
The SSC steering arms are not only lighter than OEM (890gm Vs. 1050gm per pair) but they are designed to allow up to 3 degrees negative camber. The rack pick up point is also lowered to reduce the effect of bump steer on cars running lower ride heights. This is a straight-forward suspension upgrade that can give any Elise or Exige owner increased front grip, and has reduced the lap times on several of our customer cars, we have even used it on our race cars.
Our team can provide installation, set up & a complete wheel alignment after they have been fitted.
How more camber on a Lotus can reduce lap times
The Simply Sports Cars dealership team spends a fair amount of time at the race track or tarmac rally events plus we have participating in lots of motorsport over the years. So much time in fact that we have full time engineers on staff who are constantly developing products that can be used to upgrade an Elise, Exige or Evora sports car.
The team takes the learnings that are gained from working with the cars day in day out whether it is for daily driving or as track day cars or targa rally sports cars. They get to listen to what every driver is asking for or can see areas that might benefit from slight improvements made to items that are used on the vehicle.
As we have already mentioned on this page, one of those examples is our Anti Bump Steer and Increased Camber Steering Arms.
Camber is the angle at which the wheel and tire sit relative to the road or the race track. The simplest way to see what camber looks like is to view the wheel and tire head on. If the vehicle is stationary, the tire maintains a static camber angle but obviously when cornering this contact patch will change and shift. So typically to counteract this and have the greatest amount of tire on the surface while cornering, camber settings must be taken into consideration
By increasing the amount of negative camber on the front wheels you can achieve a more aggressive level of turn in and thus reduce the amount of understeer being produced. Obviously this situation will vary depending on the type of driving style, track surface, tyre type, width of tyre & even temperature or track conditions. Although it is something that is quite popular for Elise and Exige owners, especially those that use their vehicles for the track.