JohnK

Also take a look at Fibre Glast Developments Corporation http://www.fibreglast.com Got a catalog from them a while back. Very impressive across the board. (no affiliation)

Hi Steve, Maybe (and only maybe) I've recovered from my adventure of learning to tune cars with computer controlled engines. The result of the experience was that, when I finally bought my Se7en I got one whose engine I wouldn't have to tune, EVER !!! Steve has the most well developed tune (calibration) running on a "standard" webcon Zetec 2.0l setup. Steve's calibration was developed on an identically engine'd S1 a few years ago and I sent him a copy (burned a new chip). Nothing magic went on on my end, just many hours on a chassis dyno, lining up the fuel and spark to "where they should be". That other car's still around, but I can't recall who owns it now. I placed a post a while back when the owner joined this list giving the various relevant bits of info about the history of Webcon'd S1s. If you're interested, do a search on JohnK. It'll pop up somewhere. The S1/Webcon experience showed me that the S1 is the best buy (value for the money) out there in Se7en's land. The Webcon part of it showed me that just about ANY well-developed electronic engine management system can make the term "drivability" have meaning to you that you never dreamed of. The people whose cars I tuned never talk about how much HP they make, they talk about how well it behaves when you drive it. Like having an absolutely quiet engine when you're off throttle and instant instant throttle response as soon as you touch the pedal. Anyway. S1's offer an awful lot of the the money. If you have a Webcon system on the car you're interested in, and if it's setup is stock, it shouldn't be difficult to get someone to make a copy of the latest chip for you. If it's not running a Webcon, and if you really need better drivability out of the engine, find someone who has worked with your Engine Management System before and has a chassis dyno and be prepared to part with maybe $500. Best of luck!

While I agree with your very apt observation, IMHO, comparing products that on the surface seem quite similar, when one is from a research lab at MIT and the other from "research" conducted by Microsoft is like comparing a BMW M3 with a Checker cab. There's the concept, and then there's the implementation.

(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT researchers and designers are developing the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) - a new in-car personal robot that aims to change the way we interact with our car. The project is a collaboration between the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, MIT’s SENSEable City Lab and the Volkswagen Group of America’s Electronics Research Lab. http://www.physorg.com/news176294342.html Makes the i-phone seem pretty ho-hum.

Different Se7ens offer different initial attractions to the buyer. As you play with suspension settings to make your car "a treat to drive" you might find it useful to at least ride in or better yet spend time driving other makes if you can swing it. This'll give you a sense of perspective as you dial in your suspension. Personal experience in this, Kitcat took me for a ride in his Caterham on roads that I was very familiar with, but that were new to him. I was dumbfounded at how comfortable the ride was and yet the car was very nimble on some very challenging twisty bits. There's a post I added on this list a while back that describes the suspension development work that Caterham's done if you're into seeing how this is approached. Have fun.

Very nice Mondo ! Very trim, fits in with the car, looks "factory". What'd you use for the starting pieces?

Your Ford dealer should be helpful here. I got very good info from mine. I think that when the ECU went from EEC-IV to EEC-V and/or around 1996, there was a switch to OBD-II industry-wide. The Ford factory manual is a gold mine, but it may give you more info than you'd like to know. As for identifying your ECU, the largest font on the label is the identifier, and is called the "catch code". Yours is "DJK5". There can be very, very many of these for what seems to be one model. Each ECU/Catch Code has tables in it that describe the properties of each of the sensors/effectors that the engine uses and these can change mid-year, along with the connector design. For example, I found less-than-good running due to swapping out air inlet temperature sensors, so effort spent making sure that everything is absolutely stock pays off. I still find that design-wise, the Ford system is by far the most advanced in the market.

Is it just me, or is the car smiling?

Also relevant to this topic, a while back IIRC Loren mentioned the value of fitting Shoulder or Stripper Bolts in place of the socket head cap screws that come with the kit/car. These are hardened and high tensile bolts which have a precision ground center section between the head and thread. Since the ground section fits very closely within the bore of the rod end, it keeps the rod end from beating itself to death prematurely by rattling around on its pivot. If you look at the socket head cap screws used to serve as the pivot for the rod ends, you'll see that there is no small amount of slop when you put a rod end on it - for any ordinary bolt, diameter at the thread is less than the diameter at the shoulder, and even the shoulder diameter isn't normally presicison. Rattle, rattle, rattle . . . and you've got your 'rod end death'. Also, there are two designs of rod ends: two piece and three piece. The three piece are very strong, expensive and called "high quality", but they have relatively limited misalignment capacity (range of motion at right angles to the pivot). The two piece, when installed with suitable spacers allow a large range of motion. These are naturally weaker than the three piece, but some mfgs like FK and Aurora have started supplying them with chrome molly housings, and these are strong enough. Also, there's a rod end pattern called "high misalignment" which saves you the bother of putting spacers on either end of the rod end in order to get full motion. These are very strong, but a bit costly. They're particularly useful at the Steering Arm - Tie rod joint. Happy engineering.

This sort of thing is why people (who originally came from good families) become scientists. Those who study nervous system Anatomy know that you've got more nerve cells on the right side of your body than you do on your left. When you walk, you naturally swing your right arm and left leg together - which is called the cross-stepping reflex, and which makes the contemporary motorcycle shift and brake setup contrary to how your nervous system is wired (the 'original' motorcycles which made neurological sense, had the front and rear brakes operated by the right hand and left foot - and shifting was done with the other diagonal). For a cure to the "circling foot and '6' drawing hand" glitch, figure out how to accomplish the following. Hold your right and left index fingers out in front of you and pointing at each other. By rotating your wrists, describe circles simultaneously with both index fingers in a 'forward' direction. Then describe circles simultaneously with both index fingers in the opposite direction. And then describe circles in which the sense of the circles are opposite to one another (your choice as to direction of rotation). Evolution never needed for us to know how to do this, but, hey, we're humans, we're adaptable! (at least some of us). After this, insight into how to move your limbs independently will be yours. (I'll bet that EvilRomeo knows all about this.)

I think that this investment by Caterham is just one of several, and, to me, shows that Caterham knows the value of investment in development. I remember a flyer from years ago (1996) bragging that the latest frame had a 30% increase in stiffness, so they seem to have been at this for a while. Hank, The hub on your Megabusa looks like a nice piece of hardware. Single-shear notwithstanding, I think that, beyond what we generally accept as 'good practice', some things need a Finite Element Analysis applied to them before they get a thumbs-down. Which is way beyond my skills (or budget).

Briefly, my interest in "a Seven" lies in how this type of car behaves when you drive it. I know from some experience that creating a vehicle that is a revelation to drive takes a gifted designer and considerable investment in development of the design. Or said another way, building something out of contemporary hardware that looks like a Seven is not the same thing as building a car that is as thrilling to drive as a car that deserves the name "Seven". A while back I had the pleasure of riding over some very choice roads in an 'ordinary' Caterham, driven by someone who was very comfortable piloting said vehicle at as good a clip as you would like to drive on public roads. I was struck by two things. First was that, even as a passenger, the combination of nimbleness and stability of the vehicle was very evident, very surprising, and very impressive. I found myself thinking, "I bet you could do ANYTHING in this car". Secondly, it was really comfortable. And this made me recall all the posts I've read about people driving hundreds of miles in such a tiny car and enjoying the whole trip. Being a terminally curious person, I've wondered "How did such a car come to be?" One thing I know about is the value of investment in development, and I can offer a data point for those who feel similarly. This info was on the Caterham site a while back and is obviously a promo for the vendor who did the work. I grabbed it for my files. Technically, much of it is quite a bit over my head, but it's clear that Caterham invested quite a bundle to make their product behave even more like it's something magical. And this is a relatively recent investment - the Caterham Seven already had a reputation as worthy of the name "Seven". If you want to own a Seven, add this info to the collection of stuff you think about when you're making your purchase decisions. Here is the article: https://www.dropbox.com/s/edccxybb5nq2pgr/oconnell.pdf?dl=0 And then there's the implementation Dec, 2010 http://www.caterham.co.uk/assets/html/technical/chassis.html

The Ultralites I know of are fitted with steel disks/rotors. Talking to Wilwood a while back, and noting that they list their steel rotors for use in drag racers, I was told that street use of steel rotors causes the rotors to become bell shaped over time (as in Bellville washers). Exactly what symptoms this produces I don't know, but I doubt that it's desirable. If I remember correctly the word "spongy" was used by Wilwood tech. Cast iron has very favorable properties for the kind of circumstances faced by rotors in street or road racing usage. Re-fitting with such would take some work. Bedding in new pads is a little involved (mostly from the problem of finding suitable space in which to do it) and I haven't read of many people going through the procedure, but AFAIK improperly bedded pads only give less-than-optimal stopping. Check out the Wilwood site for instructions. I seem to recall that going over the rotors with garnet paper gets rid of glazing so you can start over.

I think that this is one of those needs that makes you think twice about what you're asking for. A really trim car with great visibility doesn't give you much dash for your instruments. My car has a pretty tall engine and hence has a pretty expansive dash. Consequently it came with huge tach and speedo (which took no small amount of work fitting). This is great for readability, but comes at the expense of good road visibility.- (see USA7s > General > General Sevens Discussion> what steering wheels do you use? Page 5.) Alternatively, I remember talking to a girl years ago who mentioned she rode a motocross bike. When I asked about how she kept her power where she wanted it when she didn't have a tach to refer to (being sexist at the time and thinking 'A GIRL riding an MX bike! C'mon now...). She said, "It's easy , you just wind it out 'till the power begins to fall off and then you shift." (I shoulda asked her out!).

There are a number different calibrations out there for the Webcon fitted to the Superformance S1 / Zetec stock engine. These are burned onto an ordinary memory chip and plugged into the ECU Many are awful, a few are pretty reasonable and a last generation could be called pretty darn good, considering the engine is stock. Maybe 6 or 8 cars out there have the first one developed (by a now-nameless and long-since-disappeard tuner) at Performance Engineering (reasonable performance) , and several have a second generation tune (pretty darn good performance). The results of these attempts created very good "drivability", rather than simply maximum wide-open-throttle horsepower You might reference S1Steve as someone who's had experience with both calibrations as to how well they perform. I would not start over with a different brand of ECU until you've spent a bit of time getting familiar with what you have. I'm certain that, with a bit of searching you could find someone who's running the final generation Performance Engineering tune and get a copy of the calibration that you could plug into your system and get good performance. For an electronics guy, it's a no-brainer to copy a chip, and there are no copyright issues here. Your idle problem, if you're running the original Superformance-fitted calibration, may be the calibration. Alternatively there could well be something as simple as a loose wire. If it goes away when it warms up, it may well be the calibration. I'd be inclined to ignore it If you work at it, you could spend a ton of money and accumulate even more frustration and a bad-attitude to boot. ECU's in general are complicated and there are not many people (in my own humble experience) who understand them well enough to be really useful to you. I spoke with Webcon in England (who were very nice and knowledgeable) and they never came up with a good explanation as to why the calibration for the Zetec supplied to the Superformance in Cincinnati that ran fine in England on the identical engine would run so awful on the same Zetec in the USA. Best of luck. I still have always felt that the Superformance S1 is the best overall deal for the money out there Cheers,

Yes indeed, thanx for rubbing salt in many wounds you @$%$^*($%$$!$^& @$%&&*$%&( @$^%!@#$% bleep, bleep bleep! ;-) For the rest of us looking for warm clothing try www.aerostich.com. Motorcycle people are highly experienced at dealing with cold and wind and still being able to manipulate controls (and they manage to do so while staying upright on slippery roads).

Quoting from the Woodward catalog: "Once the ratio [ the steering ratio determined by rack and pinion ratio and steering arm length] has been established, the actual distance your hands move can be adjusted somewhat by changing he diameter of the steering wheel. Contrary to a persistent belief, the size of the steering wheel has no influence on the ratio - 90 degrees is 90 degrees, whatever its diameter - but it does determine the linear distance your arm must extend during the movement. The wheel's radius is also the input lever for the steering, but with power assist the leverage of the wheel doesn't matter. Probably the most important feature of a steering wheel is how its diameter causes your arms to align with your shoulders, and how efficiently the resulting posture utilizes your upper body musculature. It's not a substitute for having the right steering ratio, but it will help you extract the best performance from your equipment." Note the mention of "power assist". Having really quick steering allows you to toss your car around like the pros, but it wears you out in the process, as lowflyer points out. The guys who are real champions when it comes to tossing their car around are the Dirt Trackers and they have unbelievably quick steering - and it's power assisted. This giving any of you Autocross guys ideas?

Well . . . I'll offer a goal I've come up with after spending way too much time trying to understand suspensions. The tire wants pretty much to be flat on the road when it's keeping the car in a turn, if it's gonna give you maximum traction. The suspension changes, among other things, the camber when the chassis moves. Make a guess based on what you figure might be the lateral G that your car can generate when in a turn and then jiggle things around so that the change in camber that the suspension produces for that condition winds up giving zero camber. E.g., I know that my car at .8 G will generate around 1 degree of roll at neutral throttle while in a corner. Therefore , I set my alignment so that, for a chassis roll of 1 degree the camber gain from the suspension movement results in 0 degrees of camber - at 0.8 G the tire's flat on the ground (at least with respect to camber). That gets you from one particular suspension configuration to where to set the alignment. To see the advantage of a different suspension configuration (different chassis pick-up points) repeat, looking for the smallest change in camber in the neighbourhood of where you want to be driving. And then there's scrub and caster. I used Wm. C Mitchell's WinGeo3 for doing suspension geometry and a companion program called WAN31 by a guy named Warren Rowley which allows you to calculate load transfer. (If anyone know of a good 12-step program for people in my condition, I'd appreciate them passing it on.) PS. Very general rules for Se7en-type cars: The front roll center should be somewhere around 5-6 inches off the ground, the rear roll center can be on the ground (parallel A-arms), a front anti-roll bar makes things work a lot better but can be difficult to fit and tune. Best of luck.

Mine is STILL on its jackstands (Careful what you ask for ... as the Chinese say). BUT, I am in the throes of the LAST significant re-engineering/re-design/implementation effort that the car (IMHO) needs to be dragged into the 21st century as something that the good Mr. Chapman would admire - it's steering system. And boy is it a challenge. I sure am glad there are all those Dirt Track specialty shops out there with their collective insights into how cars work.

Hi Mike, My experiences may be of interest to you. A few years ago, as a consultant, I developed production-grade wiring harness for a Se7en (Superfomance S1) running a current (2000-) ZX3 Zetec EEC-IV system. I also developed a process to create this install and construct the harness in quantity (completely documented build documents). This work duplicated the engine management system that Ford had developed, but with the harness fitted properly to fit an in-line installation cleanly. The second step of this was to provide for tuning of the ECU using the EEC-Tuner of Erick Goehl. I reverse engineered enough of the EEC-IV Zetec manual engine binary so that I could locate the code to update the MAF calibration table and the injector size - i.e., enough to setup an engine that would work with output greater than could be supplied with the stock injectors. Other circumstances and the scope of the work overwhelmed me and I was never able to carry it forward to the extent I wanted. (sitting in my garage is a complete Zetec engine system, PATS and ignition key, harness down to the air-bag controller, ... completely dissected from a rolled 2000 ZX3). Anyway, as I learned early on and as you must know, the Ford system is simply the most advanced and sophisticated engine management system out there by miles, and offers tuning capabilities that can't be touched by any other system. I'd really like to at least pass on my learnings (and maybe even sell my engine system). Beyond all of that, it's great to know that there's someone else out there who knows what I'm talking about! :-)

One radiator that was supplied with the WCM S2K is/was Griffin's Sirroco replacement/drag race item. Griffin's tech departments indicated that for an engine with the power output of a stock Honda S2000 engine, the core depth and surface area is a reasonable fit - not too big, not too small. This item is in the wrong orientation for the WCM so it is mounted upside-down in that kit. In order to do this, the mounts are sawed off and the existing fan shroud mounts are used to attach it to the chassis. Be careful about bottoming the bolts here. There was a mfg problem with at least two of these that I have first-hand experience with (self and Kevin Boultin) in that a baffle between the upper and lower tanks was mistakenly installed on the far side as well as the near/input side. This limited flow and hence cooling. It took me a while to convince Griffin that I wasn't just some dummy who had screwed up his cooling system and was trying to blame their radiator, but once that happened they were more than responsible in fixing the problem - made me an entirely new radiator, along with duplicating some welding I had already done on it. Mistakes happen and, overall, they were great to deal with. Griffin's welding is held up as an example of really fine aluminum work in at least one welding manual I've seen. Plumbed as per Carroll Smith's example, it works fine in this self-bleeding configuration.

On the early Foci I have info on (2000 - ) it's for a noise suppression capacitor, so that the electronics in this subsystem don't make their presence known to the radio. Nice technology, small, light, space saving. What all did you change to make it work?

Couple of thoughts. There's a company in Cincinnati named "Sunshine Foam" who supply good quality foam to the upholstery industry. When you walk in and ask for some foam, they guide you over to an ordinary wooden chair that's next to a rack filled with maybe 20 pieces of foam (they also probably are sizing up the width of your butt). They have you sit on a range of pieces and judge which feels the best and ask you what the foam is going to be a part of. It's never as simple as it seems. Secondly, in the process of developing my attempt at a Se7en, I made it a point to fabricate the seat mounts for the Ultrashield seats that came with the kit with trapped rubber washers. Grainger and Reid have some nice ones which put a significant amount of rubber between the connecting pieces. While these don't seem to do much at first glance, they do filter out high frequency vibrations which are a non-obvious source of discomfort/damage to the joints. For details search the General Discussion section and "WCM ultralite seat mounting" topic. There's also a bit about trimming the side supporting wings on these seats so your elbows don't get banged up. Current open-wheel race cars have the seat in its own separate suspension system.

The driving sensation. I still vividly remember as a 20-year-old, my very first ride in what became my 1957 MGA - I felt like I had my hands on the road the feeling of connectedness was so profound. 1964 Ducati Diana Mk III - same thing but with more control subtleties and lots more power, along with incredible agility. My Se7en is a pursuit of the same sensations after 45 years of gaining experience and better understanding of how to get what I want, gaining some understanding of the principles that make a race car work, and skill in creating the pieces that constitute such things (from the length of my build you can tell I'm enjoying the latter part way too much).

I took my half-shafts to a local Subaru dealer and had a mechanic I felt knew his stuff check them out. I was certain something was amiss from the amount of free play I felt in them, being suspicious about how the flange for mounting the inboard disk had been welded to the inboard CV joint carrier (seals had been melted when I looked inside the diff where the output shaft fitted). But, he was thorough in his checking and said they were fine. Major items in the rear end assy (diff, hub, half-shafts) are from a Subaru WRX which has been around forever and, from what I know, is big in the rally and off-road world - so perhaps that's just the way that setup runs. I'll be interested when it gets on the road to see what it feels like. Can you say "drive-line snatch" ?