Queenie's Engine story

[Tyler Townsley]

First Drivetrain

When I got the car there was no drivetrain. I contacted Geoff Jeal in England who worked for Lotus on the LT-5 project. He knew where all the stuff that Lotus discarded after GM sold the company was located. (The Graveyard) He searched through the bits and pieces and found enough to build a Phase 2 engine. In his search he found one of 3 forged Phase 2 cranks built for testing and used it to assemble the motor, s/n 42. Through another contact I found an early ZF transmission but it could not be used due to missing pieces so I used a 1990 model transmission.
Because of faulty DIS modules and the wiring differences between the 1988s and the production cars it took 2 ½ years to get the engine started. It turns out that the 2 DIS engineering samples Geoff had for this motor were bad. Once this was discovered I tried to use a 1990 DIS but it was not until someone forwarded me a copy of LT-5 wiring diagram for the 1989 pilot cars that I discovered there were/are wiring differences between the cars. The 2 major differences were the DIS modules are wired differently and the primary fuel pump on the early cars were controlled by the oil pressure sensor vice the ECM. Once these were corrected then the car would start and run.
However starting proved to be a problem, There were 2 problems in the fueling system. The first was the ‘accelerator pump’ calibration event was extremely lean, I am running the original ECM and calibration map so I can only surmise the calibration was for non-alcohol formulated fuel and was just too lean. The second was the experimental injectors, they were designed before alcohol based fuels and over time they would break down and short out. During the troubleshooting process I would have occasions where the injectors kept injecting fuel while the ignition was in the run position. Until this was discovered and corrected there was considerable ‘bore wash’ and cam wear due to fuel diluting the oil. Needless to say it was a disaster waiting to happen and I kept my eyes open for a fix which happened in August 2011.