cheapracer

And when that happens they drink this beer to convey their feelings ...

Maybe Greg would know?

How many have you driven? and they are a dime a dozen in Australia, amazing how many have been imported and used for conversions. The engine comes from the Toyota Century as did the V8s before. Close friend is helping stick one in a club race Supra that already had 850hp from his 2JZ (documented hp).

Yes I did forgot that one; It's the Jaguar/Daimler 2.5 V8 and more common than you think, produced in the thousands for the Daimler 250 sedan (including America) although not exactly falling out of trees of course. It's not a lightweight or small engine either, cast iron block but very large bore spacing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimler_250 The Toyota 3V or 4V would be the choice, have rebuilt a few of them, aluminium, suprisingly lightweight, small, hi-cam hemi - similar to 2 x 'T' series engines stuck together. Don't know about USA but a number of them have been imported into Australia over the decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_V_engine http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/1658/mailgooglecom7702729.jpg

I had a Range Rover Evoque for a couple of weeks recently powered by it's little brother, the 240hp 2.0 Ecoboost and don't let the size or HP figures fool you, the torque is incredible - I actually thought it had the Range Rover Jaguar 5.0 V8 in it for the first few minutes. So I think the 2.3 is going to change a few minds.

Not by a long shot, Ferrari made plenty of 2.0 308s, Lambo 2.5 Urracos, 2.6 Alfa Montreal, 2.6 Toyota Century, Ferrari 308 and Lancia Thema 2.9 (shared but not internally identical engine), BMW 730 3.0, 3.0 Toyota Century. Even the Ford 3.4 Yamaha SHO. Those are the ones you can generally get your hands on and are desireable in one way or another, but theres quite a number of others such as a Tatra 2.5 air cooled.

That's what happened to Scannon apparently ....

If that was your objective then why not a 1.6?

My lady looked over my shoulder at the new cars and now wants to go to bed - what's that all about .....

Actually even though I don't like lag you can adjust and predict for it and there's no doubt about the power but until they get some throttle sensitivity and the general crudeness of "point and squirt", it's a "pass" from me.

Thanks for your ideas guys, and yes there's some experiments coming in those areas. The first 2 are pre-production cars to look at and see what I might change from there.

Lovely story, lovely guy. The build, even though truly amazing, I do take issue with the cams running at 1:1 therefore can not run as an engine per say and is apparently that way to be run on compressed air ..

It has clearance capability of 10" of arc travel if you needed to run the Baja 500 next year :-) . Why what?

Using a spread of 2", 1.5" and 1". The chassis as you see it so far is 45kgs.

Every now and then inbetween I play with the beginnings of the bodywork (I have 2 chassis underway so I can play with one while the other is worked on) and even added a roll bar ... Front suspension is underway, get some pictures up of that on the weekend!

Next step was to sort out the rear trailing arms, was unhappy with the first iteration of front mounting so as you can see I went for another simpler design ...

..add some pedals, please note the ample footroom even with my size 10 boots on!

...and end up looking something like this while checking out fitment and moving a few tubes around ...

Ok, so we need to start building them ... Need to get some tube together and start joining them!

Hi Guys, First thanks to Slngsht for letting me mention my things here. I am new here, have been reading for years and have been a member of Locost USA since 2008 and have about 3000 posts there hopefully helping and sharing where I can. Some of you may know me and some of my projects over that time. Anyway, now moving into production and thought you may be interested to see where I am going. The first couple of pre-production cars are underway now to have the bugs ironed out. Hoping to offer a very comprehensive rolling chassis kit at some of the World's most competitive prices. While it intrinsically looks like and hopefully retains the character of a Lotus/Locost 7, the design is considerably bigger and offers a massive 53" cabin width at the torso due to my unique Diamond layout. A Caterham 7 is 36" ~ 39" in comparison! Wheelbase will be closer to 97" compared to around 90" for a 7'ish and track width is considerably wider utilising around 62". Simply put, I wanted for myself and want to offer others a 7'ish car that 2 larger people can sit in with comfort with their arms inside the bodyline at all times. My friend is 6'5" and takes up 2/3rds of his Fraser's cabin and only a small child can ride with him! There's also the factor of road presense amongst some of the larger vehicles found on American roads, driving a 7'ish car can be quite an intimidating experience. Storage space will be improved and even room for cup holders! The larger size has also allowed me to position the fuel tanks in front of the rear axle line for improved safety and handling, along with massively increased trailing arm length at over 30", meaning prospective ride and handling chances are improved. It's not just bigger for the sake of it, there's a philosophy for it to be a base for 6 cylinder and V8 engines (and modern 4 turbos) designed to take the weight and torque larger engines offer, so for this the chassis design is aimed to achieve over 8000lbs per degree as the minimum target for torsion resistance and hopefully get more towards 10,000lbs per degree. That does not prevent one from using a 4 cylinder by any means but bear in mind this chassis will neccessarily be slightly heavier than a typical narrow and short 7'ish chassis. Certainly makes a sensible touring chassis option for a 4 though. It will only be a little larger and a little heavier car compared to a typical 7'ish unit but in reality and relative to standard cars, it is still very small and very light! Here's some of the 3D layout with comparisons in size to a F150 and a Caterham ... Note in picture 3D 4 the obvious comparison, A is a pair of 6' people in mine, B is the same pair the same distance apart in a typical 7'ish car and C is of course the same pair squeezed into the 7'ish ... FWIW I have nothing at all against a typical sized 7'ish, just think some people might want a larger alternate, I'm one of those people!