jeffs

Throwing this out as an option... I registered mine first in Montana under a corporation. There are companies that will help you do this. It was painless and Montana does not require an inspection of any kind. I did it because NJ was inconsistent in how they applied the laws to kit cars. When I moved to Florida it was then super easy to register already having the Montana title and registration.... they walked out, checked the VIN and I was done.

Yeah, all is well here. Ended up being far enough outside the path that it wasn't much more than a couple of soggy/breezy days.

While I was absolutely terrified doing it, its not actually that hard to reclear the fenders so the spots don't come back. 1) Clean with wax/tar remover 2) Wet sand with 400-800 sandpaper (opinions vary, I mostly used 600) 3) Clean and clean and clean and clean some more with alcohol wipes 4) Spray with a good 2k clear coat (I used spraymax)

What % of the time is your idle warm up? If you let it idle for 10 min for a 15min drive (though I think that's a mythical thing in the bay area) I could see it having an impact. A 10 min idle for an hour of highway driving probably not more than a 1-2 mpg impact. Probably not an issue since your car is running well, but I recently had my mileage drop horribly. Turns out that one of the two coolant temp sensors has gone bad (one feeding the ECU not the dash) causing it to run really rich. I'm getting under 20mpg city now. Highway for me is typically a little over 4k rpm, also running dry sump (a little warmer but not much over yours), aero screen, roller-barrels, stock tune. Seems really weird your mileage would be so much worse than mine. The 500 came with a few extra aero bits but I can't imagine they make that much of a difference.

I'd say not typical, as my r500 (stock) gets close to 30mpg highway. Major difference could be that I'm running a 6-speed transmission. What is your cruising RPM?

Unfortunately I couldn't get an MBE cable (they are currently on backorder), so I'm pulling the data with an AIM SOLO DL. Oil temp, air temp, oil pressure and air pressure all looked reasonable during these runs. That said I could very well have a bad cable/connection as much as a bad sensor and will do some poking around.

Data makes life so much easier.... Sent my datalogger out to be fixed and just got it back. In the first run I noticed that the engine ran well for a while and then started to surge. Started at 140F which is when the lambda sensor kicks in and both rpm and lambda started a slow sin curve (or cos if you prefer). Disconnected the lambda and reset the ECU. Runs 2 and 3 just idling in the driveway, no surging and no stalling. Will add new lambda sensor to the shopping list. Kept the datalogger in for a run to the store. Things ran fine for a while and then the idle RPM dropped. Data shows the coolant temp dropped down to 20F (high was 170F). The stack dash did not show this so I'm assuming just a bad sensor. I also noticed some noise in the TPS at idle (equates to about 0.2% of full throttle). Temp sensor gave a reasonable reading for the first 5 minutes of the run and towards the end, but in the middle read as low as -5F and as high as 212F (fractions of a sec apart). Does anyone know if the standard Caterham map has a dependency on coolant temp? Just trying to determine if this is the culprit or if the whacky readings are the fault of something else.

Not at all. Shoot me a message and we'll see if we can set something up.

I'm in Ocala and have an S3. It's a bit of a drive, but you are welcome to check it out if you are in the area.

I think the weight gain in a lot of the smaller sportier cars isn't being put towards reliability as much as it is going to comfort. The great example I use for this is that the seat in my mini cooper weighs something like 70x what the seat does in the caterham. The number of people that want comfy seats and quiet rides vastly out numbers those that will sacrifice those comforts for better handling. Reliability is a tough thing to measure. Of all the fun small cars I've had (boxster, miatas, elise, caterham, minis) I've only had one breakdown and that was a fuel pump going on a mini. Maintenance on the other hand I've seen a vast difference in the cars. The elise for instance was good for a brand new set of brake pads every year and tires about every 18 months.

Depends on how many slower cars you get stuck behind My r500 Duratec ran about 90C on the track, but I'll see 100-105C on the streets if I'm stuck in traffic. My fan isn't programmed to kick in until 104 or 105C.

I really enjoyed the elise and the miata, but they aren't close enough to a 7. Without the 7 I would have wanted (ok, I still want) the BAC Mono, but probably would have settled for the Atom.

With a windscreen, doors and a top the inside of the car gets very warm... you wont even turn the heater on if you had one. I almost never use the top (even when I lived in NJ) and my winter setup is just the windshield and doors. I do have the factory heater and it does a little to keep the chill off, but it doesn't add all that much. That said I'll just wear a light sweatshirt down into the upper 40s. With actual winter gear I wouldn't hesitate to drive in much colder weather.

You might keep up with me if you put those double-wide slicks on the orange car... and then painted it yellow to make it faster Yeah, I miss going to the track with you guys, and I'm sure the car does too. There are days when I think that if I'm not going to track it I should sell it and get something a little (and only a little) more practical for the street and for Florida weather.

Stock RBTBs