JohnCh

E55, it might be worth looking at this thread on Elan.net that was started yesterday The person has the Mangoletsi on his Twin Cam and didn't want to remove material from the intake manifold, so came up with solution. Might work for you as well, or give you some inspiration for a different workaround. -John

Thanks Bruce, I'm familiar with your efforts with the manual. That doc is precisely the type of resource we are adding to the Downloads section. I'll send you a PM with my email address and you can send it to when you have time. Thanks, John

Thanks Graham, I’ll watch that when I can. I’m dealing with some connectivity issues at the moment that complicate making it through the video. Thanks, John

According to whotoo's profile page, he last visited the forum in 2014, so I wouldn't count on a response. Hopefully someone else with experience in this area will chime in. -John

I didn't realize this was fixed in a Caterham. Westfield welds pinch fittings to the rear of the frame for each leg of the tire carrier. Simply loosen the pinch bolt to slide the carrier out completely or to adjust for a specific tire width. As to Vlad's point, when I rebuilt my car, I didn't drill the holes in the rear tub for the carrier and don't carry a spare. There are a lot of good tire patch kits out there that include very small and light compressors or that use CO2 cartridges. Granted, there are some situations where this won't be enough, but it's served me well for many years and many tours. -John

We have galleries here, but vBulletin essentially hides them. The issue with promoting their use has been storage costs. However, this is less of an issue with the new hoster. The number of albums and total images will vary between registered users and Paid Club Members, but they will be enabled, and Invision doesn't make them hard to find, placing the link on the same navigation level as Downloads and Articles. I'm between martinis (hey, it's Friday) so thought I'd watch the video I mentioned above and throw together a quick home page that is essentially a portal for the community. It's far from perfect (did I mention the martinis?) but gives an idea of the kind of things we can do. -John

That's included in the platform. I haven't played with it yet, but it's supposed to be easy using area blocks. Each block can show different things: featured downloads, featured articles, featured photos, and latest threads. There is a video showing them putting one together in less than 5 minutes. -John

Thanks. The screenshot below shows an activity stream where the three most recent posts are: Text plus photo Photo only Gallery update As you can see the post with text and photo does preview the text but not the photo. Given thumbnails show up in the Gallery update, there is probably a way to achieve what you're requesting, but it might require custom dev. I have an email out to Invision asking about this. BTW there is an option to show an expanded view which previews the post (view below) or a condensed version that eliminates the post preview and shows smaller thumbnails for gallery updates. Again, this is user choice, so everyone will have flexibility to create the activity stream view they prefer. -John

I just realized I forgot to address your comment about content being available to visitors. Guests can view the content (although we may keep Downloads behind the registration wall). They can also reply to a post. However, when they click submit, they are asked to register, which they can quickly do with their Facebook credentials. -John

Thanks for the information. Addressing in order: Driving new content is a separate topic. By improving many facets of the forum and integration with social media (coming) we hope to grow the community and the daily content. I'm a member of many forums on various platforms and haven't seen the pictures included in the activity feed. I'll ask, but an example would help. The feed will show thumbnails of images added to a gallery, so it may be possible. The feed is also highly customizable by the individual user, so you can set it up to show what you want and ignore the rest. Landing Page - TBD for reasons you state @mentioning (tagging) is included Giphy is included. We can also set options by MPAA ratings. With this group, that may be a good idea. Pictures are now easy to add. You can simply copy & paste or drag and drop from device, or paste in URL from hosted image. Images resize and compress, so we will only have a limit on the total size in a single post. We can adjust this over time, but original thinking is 10-15MB per post. There are performance considerations here so we'll look for best practices. You didn't mention videos, but those auto embed when pasting in the url. Many platforms are supported including YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook. Platform works very well on a phone through a browser. Everything resizes properly and it's easy to add photos and post. There is also a mobile app, but that isn't available in the demo environment, so I can't comment on that. Thanks, John

I didn't see that there is a native Giphy plug in that is turned off by default in the Demo site. It's now on and works. Took about 60 seconds. What else do you want? -John

Invision allows you to paste the link to a gif in the editor and it will automatically embed it in the post -- no need to click a button and go through an upload menu, or manually type in HTML or BB tags. So if you find a gif you like when doing a search on Bing or Google, it's very easy to add it to your reply. We can consider adding a plug in that gives people pre-canned choices searchable within the native environment, but there a number of other things we are working on that will take priority. Once the new forum is live and people have a chance to use it, we'll create a dedicated thread for upgrades/improvements to capture the various ideas. -John

I have started a new thread here that will serve as the single view of the truth for the timeline and need-to-know information for our move to the new hoster and forum platform. It will be updated with additional information as we get closer to the dates. -John

As Croc mentioned in this thread, we are moving the forum to a new hoster and onto a new platform. This will not only resolve many of the issues we have today with vBulletin, but will also improve the user experience. I have started this thread to keep everyone apprised of the timetable and what to expect over the next month. To ensure the information is easy to consume, any pertinent updates in this thread will be date stamped and added to this initial post to keep the need-to-know information in one place. This is a two hop migration: Sunday, 1/31 -- the current forum will move unchanged to the new hoster at approximately 7am PT/10am ET. This process will result in the forum temporarily going offline, but we are doing preparatory work to keep this downtime to under 2 hours. However, if we are unlucky, it could be down for up to 24 hours. After this migration is completed, you should notice zero difference to the current forum experience. We will still be on vBulletin with the same look and feel. The software and data will simply be hosted elsewhere. Sunday, 2/28 – move the forum from vBulletin to Invision. Due to the issues described in this post, the forum will likely be down all day and that outage could be bleed into Monday if there are problems. When the new forum comes back online, all existing threads, attachments, galleries, links, PMs, and User Profiles should move over intact. The Invision platform gives us a number of benefits, including a Downloads area, where we will host a number of files from the now defunct Birkin and WCM Yahoo groups, as well as fascinating technical files on the original Lotus 7 donated by SENC. We also have an Articles section which I will preload with help guides on how to use the new forum. Change is never easy, and some people deal with it better than others. Given this group drives cars that are based on a design over 60 years old, it’s safe to say that collectively we are probably on the change adverse end of the spectrum. We’ll need to get over that. More to follow in the coming weeks… UPDATE (1/24) dates revised above. We also have set up a Twitter account. If the site goes offline much longer than planned, we'll Tweet out the status to keep everyone apprised: @usa7sclub UPDATE (1/28) the date and time for the first migration hop has been updated above. Once that migration completes successfully, I will update the date and time of the second migration to the new forum. UDATE (1/31) The Migration has completed! Some of you will be able to access it sooner than others due to DNS replication, but it's already working for me, which is a good sign. If you experience any new problems with the forum, please report them on this thread so we can track them. UPDATE (2/1) as per this post, I've updated the date for the second hop of the migration as well as the expected downtime. UPDATE (2/9) Although your avatars/profile photos should move over, the size has changed and it may no longer look right. In preparation for the move, I recommend updating your avatar so it is square (it will crop a rectangular photo to square, which will result in lopping off part of the long dimension). The new max dimensions are bigger than on vBulletin at 170 x 170px and 490kb. UPDATE (2/13) As per post #59, due to weather issues, we are delaying the migration to next Sunday the 21st. UPDATE (2/19) As per post #62, we are delaying the migration a week to Sunday the 28th. -John

Some other things that affect sound: The silencer material. Stainless steel, titanium, carbon fiber, and mild steel all sound different when they resonate. Cams. My Duratec has gone through three sets: stock, Kent DTEC10 and Kent DTEC20. The sound has changed each time. AFR. If the tune is on the richer end vs. leaner end, the sound tends to be a little more baritone. Even if the engines are identical down to the last detail, the recording and playback change will have an affect. In addition to microphone position as Croc points out, the microphone itself imparts a sonic signature, which is why many producers and musicians have their personal favorites. Also, try listening to the playback through your devices speakers then through high quality headphones. There will be a difference. Here is a Duratec with the DTEC20 cams and the microphone located near my left hip, so closer to the intake than the exhaust. And yes, crossflows do sound best :-) -John

Welcome back! The image issue is likely due to file size. Please see this how-to topic in the help section and PM me if that doesn't fix it. http://www.usa7s.net/vb/showthread.php?12996-Posting-photos-Process-amp-FAQ Thanks, John

Different people will have different opinions on this subject, so you need to go with whatever makes the most sense to you. Having owned two small cars in black (e36 M Coupe) and silver (NA Miata) and two very small cars in red (Westfield) and screaming yellow (Elan), I would never buy something in the latter category that wasn't close to eye searing in color. I've had more people do dumb things around the black and silver cars than around the red and yellow variants. I also find that I spot brightly colored cars more quickly when I'm behind the wheel. Now if there was quantitative data that a red or yellow car was measurably safer than a black or silver vehicle, I suspect my insurance company would have different rates based on the color. Since they don't, my assumption is the collision frequency difference isn't substantial. Regardless, I'm more comfortable in a small car when its color is anything but subtle. As lucky dawg writes, running with headlights at all times is a smart approach for any se7en. -John

The Westfield Mega S2000 and Superformance S1 are both pretty rare in the US, yet there is someone in AZ who owns both. He's put together this short comparison video and has promised more detailed reviews of each in the future. -John

Great video! I'd love to see some more photos of the car when you get a chance. -John

They look like the earlier version of the Intatrim Odyssey. Current model is very similarly shaped, but the slots for the harnesses are handled differently. -John

I just received a cease and desist order from his attorneys, so it looks like the deCrocification tool was a use-once piece of software. SENC, you have a PM incoming. -John

Kind of. It has a native de-Crocification tool that removes sarcasm, non PC comments, and obvious HR violations from his posts. As a test, we ran the initial version of what he wrote above through the tool which converted it to what you now see. I will admit, the original version was more amusing (and even mentioned you by name), but...well, progress. -John

Selfishly, I would like to see us using more modern software, with fewer bugs that leave me screaming at the computer "why the f&*# did that happen? why??" and that has a better interface for how people like to use the forum; easily upload photos to posts whether from an image hosting service or from your device, simple youtube uploads, a mobile interface that accommodates the much smaller screen size, far more intuitive galleries (how many of you even know we have galleries now?), places to host and manage articles, etc. It's not perfect, and some people will have a knee-jerk reaction that they don't like it simply because it's different, but I think this is a case, where different creates a significantly better user experience. I'll put together some simple user guides before launch to speed up the learning process and ease the transition. The new software even has a native support ticket system. Having an issue posting something or paying for club membership? Simply open a ticket in that relevant area and you immediately go into a queue where your issue is addressed. No more trying to figure out who to email or PM, or taking a tangent in an existing thread to express your understandable frustration with no clue if I've actually seen it. This will also provide analytics to highlight any problem areas we can address through feature changes, or how-to articles. It's a modern forum for old school car owners. BTW If anyone here uses the WSCC or OZClubbies forum, you are familiar with the Invision Platform. Prior to making the decision on which way to go, we did significant research on the major players and felt this option gives us the best package for the future. We hope to work through the migration timeline over the next couple of weeks and will give plenty of notice before the switch occurs. -John

I haven't come across that issue before in my research. Is it possible the lean running is due to the engine ingesting hot air, rather than injector location? Thanks, John

Another option is to use Torx or Torx Plus head fasteners. They take more torque and repetitive fastening without rounding than hex or Phillips head alternatives. -John