Kitcat

I should add that anytime I am in my Seven, I wear foam ear plugs AND a protective set of noise reducing ear-muffs-purchased at the local hardware store. Like you might use if operating a power saw/lawnmower, etc.

What a car! 80 hours on the wiring alone? I am exhausted just reading about it. It has obviously been a labor of love. The engine bay is amazingly tidy. My Crossflow's looks like an industrial dump by comparison. Amazing power too. How do the relatively skinny 205 tires (same as on my mighty 100 hp Crossflow) put down so much hp? I assume wheelspin is an issue in the first 3 gears? How'd she do at the track?

The exhaust on my Caterham runs along the side of the car and under the rear axle and out the back. Other cars' exhausts end at the driver's left elbow, like the Birkin pictured just above this post. Maybe that makes a difference with the intensity of the sound?

Skittishness over bumps seems to be a Caterham/Birkin trademark. I don't think the weight of the car would cause it. My theory is it is stiff (track oriented) springs or stiff (track oriented) shock valving, or both. I assume the springs can be replaced with something softer, I am sure the Birkin experts here will know. The shocks can be re-valved to your liking. Places like Predatormotorsport.com will do it for about $100-$150 per shock, as I recall. They work on about everything. If you have Koni's, Koni of N America can re-valve (as can Predator, et al)

The only car I ever saw roll at an auto-x (without hitting anything) was a Datsun 2000 roadster with a "trick" suspension. Unfortunately, it was so trick that it went solid under hard cornering on sticky auto-x tires and over she went, right in the middle of the parking lot, 1/2 thru a hard right hander.

When I was a pup at the U of Ill, I was friends with an enginering professor whose specialty was concrete (Not much of a life). He said if we banned trucks, roads would last 1000 years.

We paid about $7.00 gallon last year for diesel in Italy. Our little Opel minivan got abt 35-38 mpg. As long as gas is, relatively, cheap at $3.00 gallon, the best selling vehicles will remain the Ford & Chevy pickups which seem to average about 12-14 mpg on a good day.Bump the price of gas to $4-5 a gallon and the diesel mini-van may make sense here too. BTW, the extra money for gas will be going to our buddies in OPEC, not for healthcare.

Yes Sevens v. bikers was big fun at our Sevens gathering at the Dragon last July. My little Crossflow was pretty competitive, at least until the throttle linkage broke:(. BTW, since we have been remiss at welcoming the newbies-Welcome aboard! Special shout-out to those 60+ year old dudes, like me, who haven't forgotten that life can still be pretty thrilling sometimes (Having a Seven definitely helps). I have owned mine for about 9 months so am still a newbie myself.

So I see the RA1's on my car should have been removed and stored inside for the winter. Yikes! Since I did not do that, I will report about any cracking/failure issues this next year.

Ford 109E, 1340cc? Perhaps prep'd by Cosworth? Described by"Lotus Seven and the Independents" as having an impressively short lifespan:). Or Ford 116E, a 1498 cc engine. Or almost anything. Some of the Lotus Seven gurus will have to speak up.

Do we even have an official greeter? I have to say I almost never look at that part of the Forum. Guys, it's not personal, I am generally just looking at the Sevens stuff that seems to relate to my car. My hunch is any questions you post in other sections here will be answered promptly, politely and enthusiastically.

Is it April 1 already? I understand the gas guage isn't 100% accurate, so I hope you are prepared to deeply discount the price.

Looks like the drive shaft from the aft motors to the forward propeller has to pass thru the cockpit. As in right thru the pilot. How does that work?

Slngsht: You know, they sell this stuff called"paint". Once all the deconstruction of your car has occurred, you could, at the risk of destroying your car's current "patina", slap some black stuff on and change it from Franklin to Darth!

Maybe it depends on the suspension design? (Are some more prone to spin the unloaded rear wheel?). I know a battle raged on the Elise-talk site for years because Lotus did not offer LSD on the Elise and buyers wanted the option. Lotus's defense was they had tried cars both ways and the ones w/o LSD were faster on road courses (less weight). The buyers finally prevailed and LSD is now an option (The customer is always right). Lotus still maintains that in a road course application, LSD makes the car slower.

Deman makes a good point, IMHO. What is amazing to me is how expensive many of these vehicles are. Especially when you realize how basic and stripped down they are. If you figured the cost, per pound, of a new run-of-the mill Caterham, it's in Ferrari territory.

My dad removed trees for a living. During high school and college, I was his feckless assistant. We had no episodes quite that bone headed tho we did knock out our share of wires, transformers, etc. We also used the old "pull it with the truck" technique. I recall one incident where he tied into the top of a tree, made his cut in the trunk and then jumped in the truck to tug the tree the right way. I watched in horror as he let off the brake, let out the clutch and then was dragged, backwards in the wrong direction by the humongus tree. It took us all day to get out of that one.

Ian 7: Do you untighten first, then re torque to spec? Or, do you put the T-wrench on it and if it clicks, leave it where it is? My concern is that if you don't loosen it first, you mite not notice any nuts that are over-torqued. But maybe that's not really an issue?

Thanks all. I have that old Archie Bell and the Drells record from '67 ready to play.

Last winter an identical car sold for $32K on Elise Talk (I shudda bought it!).

Vary clever Martin! You wouldn't happen to have a diagram showing the location of all those bolts would you? I know I can just follow my nose but am afraid I will miss something. (eg, wouldn't have thot of the steering system bolts).

OK, it's my first Spring w/my Caterham and I want to tighten up all those nuts in the chassis/suspension/elsewhere that might have worked loose a little. Anyone have a handy diagram showing the likeliest culprits, along with the recommended torque settings?

550 hp, $230K, yes its a bit over the top. How much of that power could this lightweight car ever put to the road? Seems like a lot of money for on-demand wheel spin.

Great concept as long as you have a GPS, like a Garmin. I did 2 weeks in Italy this year and never figured out the signs-But w/our polite, english speaking Garmin tellling me where to turn, etc., it was no problem, or, as we like to say in Italy, non problema.

Not as interesting as Mazda's picture of Franklin's reincarnation, which looks like a grenade went off in a pipe factory. I do like the white ghost of a Seven floating watchfully over head in your shop!