Black Hole

Here are a few of the displays at the Barber. Great collection and some fun ways to display the cars. And the motorcycle collection is much larger than the Lotus collection..

In the sate of CT (which is a difficult state for registration) I was able to register my car as a Lotus 7 Replica and was allowed to select the year of the car it replicates. So my 2009 7 is registered as a 1967. Perfectly legal in CT and being registered as over 25 years old results in a tax valuation of $500 and essentially waives the high property tax we pay on cars.

I will post the info when spring rolls around. You are quite convenient to the track.

Yes, the group still exists and is active. We meet once a month on a Saturday or Sunday from April through November. Most start at Lime Rock Park. Where in CT are you located? Sorry, but no specific mechanic recommendations as I have done my own maintenance to date. I think one person on this forum has used GMT racing (Danbury area?) and I believe someone in my area has used Motorcars Incorporated in Plainville that is a Jaguar specialist. I have no knowledge either positive or negative of either one.

This popped up when I was in YouTube. No specific mention of Caterham tires in the video:

Thank you. Parts on order to address these issues.

I have owned the car since new so this did not happen. No problem with the brakes til now. I have 13K miles on the pads with about 8 track days and maybe a similar number of autocross. Not sure how fast this wear happened. I probably have about 1500 street miles (no track and maybe one autocross) since I last bled the brakes and would have looked at them. Don't recall it being uneven at that time (but I may have just confirmed I had adequate pad thickness and not noticed the uneven wear).

From what I have gathered it appears splitting them is not a big deal as long as you get the crossfeed gasket that is not in the rebuild ki.

Thanks for the confirmation

My front left brake has experienced very uneven brake pad wear. I would suspect this is a sticky caliper that needs a rebuild. My car is a 2009 SV with the standard brakes. Can I confirm these are Girling type 14 brakes as used on Spitfire MKIII (and perhaps some Elan and Europa?) I don't see any obvious leakage, I plan to order a rebuild kit from Moss Any recommendations on brake pads. Car is primarily street driven with some AutoX and occasional track day. Moss Motors sells a pad made by Classic Gold and is listed as ceramic for the Spitfire. What are the pads Beachem sells (they areabout twice the price) Any comment on the cupping of the thin pad as shown in the picture

Thanks, I was thinking of just going that route

One more question is they have made coolant quite confusing with all the different colors (formulations). My car has a 2005 duratec and I currently have the orange type coolant. I found a Motorcraft document that says for 2004-8 focus they use yellow coolant. They switch to orange in 2012. What is the recommendation, and does it matter as our cars do not have the OEM radiators and other components. And can you mix? I will drain the coolant and put in new coolant but I was not planning on doing a thorough flush.

Thank you, I was thinking you may need to loosen the pulley belts before removing the belt. It appears to be coming from behind the water pump pulley so I am pretty sure that is where th problem is. When I looked on line it appears some may have metal impellers. See if you have one in stock

I have developed a coolant leak that is likely from the water pump. Is the yellow circled item in the picture the belt tensioner? If so, do I l just loosen the nut to allow belt removal? Do I need to set the tension on the belt after assembly or is it pressure fed and automatic? A quick search found lots of water pumps at all sorts of prices, any recommendations or are they all pretty similar (or are the cheap ones plastic impellers and some metal?) Thanks Jay

I probably will not be able to make it this year, but still TBD.

Unfortunately I am still a no go, Your timing I impeccable. The first weekend was my moms 90th birthday weekend and she will be at our house. The new dates are when we will be in Europe celebrating her birthday! See you next year

Paul and i were supposed to autox tomorrow but that has been scuttled by the weather. Looks like tomorrow will be a good day to stay home and catch up on some indoor tasks that have been patiently waiting to get done. cheers jay

So much for a nice supple hand on the wheel . Thanks for getting these posted. Jay

Thanks for the info. Very impressive resume.

Thanks, I would welcome the meet up and drive. This year Paul (wemtd) and myself were "spotted" by a friend of Blake's somewhere between Waterbury and Danbury on our drive

Thanks to all for making this a great event, and especially Croc and Tom for the herculean effort they put into preparing for it . We couldn't have gotten better weather and the double stints on Monday gave us great track time and tested our endurance. And spotting a Brabham out of the corner of my eye entering a turn certainly was a wake up call. Even from a 7 it is not easy to spot a formula car coming up on you. And the F1000 was simply flying. By the time I got home to Hartford yesterday I was thoroughly burn't out (even though it was a nice drive home).

Thanks, this reminded me and I am now registered. See you all in a few weeks. Just completed my car prep to get ready and everything is good to go (right now!).

Josh has a good summary but to answer a couple of your questions - I have the cloth standard seats, which would be similar to the leather for belt routing. I sit on them and just store them under the seat when not in use. And the sub belts do not attach to the lap belt mounting location. There are tabs at the very back of the cockpit at the bottom of the rear bulkhead.

I use this Schroth system in my car https://www.hmsmotorsport.com/item/profi-ii-asm/fia-4-point and I added the sub belts for use at the track. The (Schroth claimed / theoretical) advantage is it is designed to be used as a four point system and has built in stretch to prevent submarining.) They are available from HMS in MA and they were very good to work with. If you go this route one caution is the original sub belts they sent me were not long enough to reach the Caterham mounting points at the back of the cockpit (at least for me - I am short and have an SV so it is a long reach). they had no issue providing longer sub belts with plenty of reach.

I plan to attend. And since I have covid now, I should be pretty well protected in 8 weeks