Blokko

I had a conversation on this subject with a kit car manufacturer at Stoneleigh kit car show. Was told that the Ford EcoBoost engine as used in the UK (1 litre 3 pot turbo, kicking out anything from 100bhp to 175bhp and beyond) is not suitable for 7 type vehicles as the engine is too tall. Not sure if the same would apply to this 2.3 unit being described by the original poster....

Purely by chance, there is a new thread on this topic on BlatChat today - http://blatchat.com/t.asp?id=244415

On BlatChat in the UK, Grubbster did his own wrap and said "never again" - thought this was probably more to do with the trouble he had with DiY application of the wrap than its suitability in such an application. I believe that the zip effect on the well known K2 RUM Caterham was a wrap (not sure if the whole car was wrapped). Arnie Webb is no longer on BC, but could be contacted via LinkedIn, FaceBook or PistonHeads if you wanted more details. http://thumbsnap.com/s/0hjL2NVC.jpg

Some of you Westie guys may know the owner of this car from the WSCC site. Spotted this post of his from earlier in the year - http://forum.wscc.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic/107905-electric-westfield-at-croft/ Looking at his time, he beat about half of the class 1 Caterham contingent and as it appears he is new to sprinting there are probably lower times to be had with a bit more experience. I'll miss Curborough when I'm in the US - a great (free) place to go and watch petrolheads hoon their cars around a tight little sprint circuit. It is a skill circuit rather than a power circuit and it is common for people at the top of a lower powered class to be faster than the middle of the field who are in a class or two above (as can be seen from the timesheet here - http://www.lotussevenclub.com/Portals/0/documents/CompetitorsKorner/Curborough/Curborough%202%202014.pdf ) Fast Caterham on the traditional circuit - Fast (slightly ragged) Westie from this weekend on the figure of eight -

No apology needed - I actually like posts that branch and meander I had motorsport in mind. I think in both the UK and US there is a steady uptake of hybrid technology for on-road use, but out and out battery power is some way off. So used to seeing hybrid internal combustion / battery technology on the roads - but it was a real "stop you in your tracks moment" (for me anyhow) to see an electric vehicle in competition with traditionally powered Sevens.

For the internal combustion engine. Turned up to my local sprint circuit today and there was an electric power Westfield competing With Formula E now in place, how long will it be before the sight of electrically powered vehicles at competition level will become commonplace, or is this just a flash in the pan? A few pics from the day here - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202467756724479.1073741849.1511311827&type=1&l=27d8dc0162

1) The 280 comes with 14" wheels, the 360 comes with 13" wheels, and the 480 comes with 15" wheels. What difference does it make and why would I prefer one set of wheels over the other? I've run 13's and 15's and I'd say that 13's give a much smoother road ride. In the UK you can get Yokohama A021's in 70 profile on 13's – great grip in the wet and cheap (£55 A corner). Not sure if there is an equivalent in the US? The 70 profile also gives you a bit more ride height to protect the sump. 2) I see having a 4-point harness as an option but not a 5-point harness. I think I'd much rather have a 5-point harness. Is it easy to add a 5th "point" or would it make sense to just by a 5-point harness aftermarket and skip the Caterham option? It is easy to add the 5th point (into to the buckle) – I did it on the car that I just sold. The chassis behind the seat should have 2 lugs for you to attach the belt to. A word of warning – if you have lowered floor you will also need an extra part to pack the gaps between said lugs in the chassis and the ali floor. 3) How important is having an LSD for non-racing road use? The Quaife ATB on my last car was lovely and quiet (much quieter than the standard Caterham diff) and when you did manage to put the mechanism into action it was nice and smooth. It would make the car easier to sell in the UK (it is an extra on the wish list of many potential buyers) but if / when I go for a car in the US I don't think I'd pay out the extra as I'm not into drifting / donuts. Had a conversation down the pub once where an 'expert' was telling me that an LSD made the car trickier to drive in the wet – not that I ever noticed, mind. 4) How important is the plumbed in fire extinguisher for a non-track car? Not worth it on a road car IMHO. 5) Why do I want a Master Battery Switch? Security is one point, but also allows you to run a gel battery without fear of flattening it whilst the car is not in use. 6) What are aerofoil wishbones and how much of a difference do they make? No idea 7) Their site lists 5 speed and 6 speed transmissions, but not the gear ratios. Any idea how they are set up? Any opinions as to which you think I should choose? Again IMHO, but there are only 2 applications for a 6 speed box – an out-and-out track machine and in an original 1400cc Rover K Series SuperSport installation. 6th in a 6 speed is equivalent to 4th in a 5 speed. For road use this means that you will be pulling extra revs for no gain elsewhere. 8) The cost of engine installation ($2,500) is more than the cost to build the car ($2,395). How hard is it to install the engine? If you opt for unassembled kit, does that also mean that you won't be getting the engine installation? It seems like it would be hard to install the engine in a kit. There are many people in the UK who have built Caterham's having never picked up a spanner in anger before. BlatChat is a great resource and people would help you through the build process. Could you find someone local if you get stuck? 9) When considering building it myself or paying to have it done, what should I consider? I have very little mechanical experience aside from changing my oil; should I even consider it or is that crazy? How much does self-building impact resale value? I really want to build my next 7 so that if anything goes wrong (particularly if I'm on tour at the time) then I'm hoping to have a fighting chance of being able to diagnose and maybe address any issues. A Caterham build should be much easier than any other kit out there I would have though (disclaimer - the UK kit may come in a state of build that goes beyond the US offering). In the UK a factory build will normally sell more easily than a home build - bit not necessarily for any more money. 10) Any advantage to painting the aluminum body aside from the look Cleaning bare ali is a pain. Not sure that wrapping has worked well for those who have tried. I would go for paint, but get a local spray shop to do the work. Colour co-ordinated rollbars look cool :-) Other - Heater. Don't bother - in warm weather the heat escapes into the cabin. Just got back from touring France and I ended up removing the heater from the cooling system as in temps of 30C+ it was just making the cabin unbearable (even though the valve was switched off). Conversely, in the cold weather you can barely feel the effect of the heater. Seats. I'm a big fan of Tillets, but I may be in a minority here. Leather looks nicer than cloth and tends to wear better - all depends on the price premium and whether you are prepared to pay it. Rollbar - go for an FIA rather than the Caterham standard Weather protection. See if you can purchase the doors without the full hood. Get a Soft Bits for Sevens Half Hood and shower cap instead. SV - having owned both an S3 and an SV I think I would struggle to go back to an S3. That extra bit of room makes all the difference - particularly shoulder room and pedal box space. In an SV you can drive with boots on, whereas in an S3 you need to have Puma Speedcats or similar.

Good to finally meet Norman after many years of seeing his posts on BlatChat and conversing with him off list on a couple of different topics. Staying at the former residence of Richard in France of Caterham related carbon fibre accessories fame. This is a nice way to end my Caterham ownership (for now). The 7 goes up for sale as soon as I get back home - who knows what I'll end up running as my weekend fun car when I get out to Boston........

Went to a Brit car day this weekend whilst on a visit to Boston - http://larzanderson.org/events/lawn-events/2014-lawn-event-list/british-car-day/ Good mix of cars - from lowly Mini's up to brand new Rollers. Quite a few Loti at the event - Elise's, Esprit's and also several of the new Evora. Some Series I and II Land Rovers that were in fresh-off-the-Brown's-Lane-production-line condition Very surprised to see 3 TVR Vixen's and a TVR Tasmin (didn't realise that they ever made LHD cars for the US market). Did get to see an MA registered Caterham SV at the event - which just goes to show that it can be done :-) Car belongs to a guy called Warren (who I believe posts on here from time to time). He has a write-up on his car screen that details a 'challenging' registration process!

Yep, seen video of that 'tank slapper' moment on Bray Hill before now. Car does look a bit pedestrian next to the bikes, mind :-) This video of 'Mad Sunday' on the IoM TT circuit may also be of interest to readers of this forum - A group of Lotus7 Club members do a trip to IoM each year and get to run the TT circuit (much of which is de-restricted speeds) in their 7's. Always planned to join them at some point - will have to wait for a few years now....

Great videos, Mike. The overlay of the telemetry from the gps logger works really well!

Okey dokey! So I decide to sneakily follow Mike out on track for his instructor session so that I could pick up his lines. We joined the circuit at The Banking hairpin, then it’s a short straight into Church - which is a long 90 degree right hander that you can carry a lot of speed through. The next ‘proper’ corner is Rocket, but between Church and Rocket the tarmac is never actually straight – a gentle right hand curve that sharpens a bit just at the point where you might want to think about hitting the anchors. At this stage (when I got things right) I was approaching the sharp left hander of Rocket at 110. Braking here is helped by the fact that there is a steep incline on the approach to Rocket, which enables you to scrub a lot of the speed that has built up. Except on this first lap Mike didn’t manage to scrub enough speed and he watched the apex fly by as he headed towards the infield. Fortunately he managed to make the turn before running out of tarmac – thus saving the embarrassment of going grass cutting with an instructor on board J

Met up with Mike (croc) last Friday at Donington Park track. Good to meet a USA7'er - looking forward to meeting more 7 owning folk when I get over to the States! Didn't manage to get on track on the Friday (which was a good thing as it turned out). A week before the event there were 18 places available. When I came to book on the Monday morning all the slots had gone. There was a lot of fast, expensive metal / carbon / fibreglass on track (Ferrari's, BAC Mono's, an Aston, some quick 7's) and the track etiquette wasn't the best. Several red flags for various incidents and (unusually for this track day organiser) there was a lot of queuing to get on track. Here is one of the reasons behind one of the stoppages - Here is a pic of Mike navigating Redgate - In contrast Sunday at Anglesey was a great day (and this time I did get on track, albeit for only half a day due to work commitments). Weather was great and there were only about 30 cars on track (all behaving well). Got a lot of track time in on this brilliant circuit. A lot of time was spent either chasing or leading Mike - both of which were good fun. Had to come in after a few laps as I had a bit of a problem with the expansion bottle top losing pressure and because my tyres lost grip once they reached a certain temperature (understeering out of Church at 90mph was 'interesting' to say the least). Here are a couple of low res shots from Anglesey (Mike in background of the one shot) So, a great weekend of track action. All being well I'll be joining some of you in 2015 on the New Jersey track weekend (in my own 7 if all goes to plan)....

This very nearly happened to my car when I took it to work one day. I was stood in the boardroom (2nd floor) trying to point out my car to a colleague. It had gone 9 and there was a conference on site that day, so the carpark was already full. Someone (presumably late for work) came barrelling into the carpark, thinking they had found a spot and swung into the space where my 7 was parked. Sudden application of brakes and I assumed there had been contact. Dashed down to the car, by which time the driver had cleared off - fortunately no contact had been made with the Cat. So now I always drive into a parking bay forwards and leave the back end sticking out as much as I can. With a long bonnet, coming out of a bay backwards is also a much better idea....

Stripped the heater matrix apart today and it looks like the O-rings have been leaking for some time. Filed down the flaking paint and rust and replaced the O-rings, so hopefully we will have a working, watertight heater matrix for our holibops :-)

Well, as expected I got a soaking picking the car up. Whilst the quality of the repair work and the spraying is very good, unfortunately the colour match isn't great. I was warned by my buddy who recommended the paint shop (who also happens to have been a paint tech in previous employment) that it would be a difficult colour to match, especially given the different materials on the panels and wings. Could have done with being a shade or two darker but, hey ho, there we go. It does at least look better than having bubbling paintwork.

Hi Mike Blatmail received - I'll ping you a reply shortly. I'm hoping to turn up at Donny on the Friday, even if I don't have a track spot. Will be good to catch up with you ahead of my move out to The Commonwealth. This event http://blatchat.com/t.asp?id=240314 is running next Saturday - not sure if that is of any interest to you? I was thinking of popping along for a couple of hours. There will be a spare seat in the 7 if you are interested -

Sat here waiting for the rain to stop (it really is persisting it down at the moment) and for the remnants of last nights alcohol to dissipate from my body. Apropos of nothing, here is a summary of what's currently going on in my head :-) At some point today I have to brave the elements to pick up my Cat from the body shop. Many of the early SV's have bubbling paintwork on the back panel where water has been trapped by the spare wheel – my car had a particularly bad case of this. My car has a 1.8 Rover K Series engine. Recently fitted a new Radtec radiator – the original had gone porous, which was allowing air back into the system as the rad cooled. I've temporarily bypassed the heater as I was having trouble bleeding the system and my suspicion is that the heater matrix has also gone porous in sympathy with the main rad (getting small wisps of steam out of one corner of the matrix). The job this afternoon is to investigate whether the heater matrix needs replacing – apparently sometimes they just need a new O-ring. Off to France at the start of July (to visit Norman Verona and to spend a few days afterwards exploring the Normandy beaches) and the bread knife has informed me that I need to have a working heater by then. We are doing the transits between home and Folkestone at night, so it can get a bit parky on a long motorway slog. I've spent the morning looking through the Flyin' Miata Westfield build blog as well as reading Dan's build post on here. I'm in two minds whether to go down the Westie route. Though I've done simple things on my 7 (replacing fluids, rad change, thermostat, new DeDion tube amongst others) I'm wondering whether a Westie build is right for me from a skill and also a time commitment point of view. Going for a Westie certainly has its plus points – should be possible to register it with a pre '97 Miata engine in Massachusetts and I get the comfort of knowing the history of the car (with the exception of the drivetrain, of course). $30k is about my budget (but there could be some elastic in there for the right car) and I've always wanted to take on some sort of build (but was always thinking of a simpler Caterham build). I'm still not discounting the second hand route – particularly if I can get a Caterham SV (again, comes back to the whole registration issue). If my Canadian Client can get their budget sorted I'll be training in TO week of 16 June and then I'll stop off in Boston between 20-25 June. Planning to take this opportunity to visit Mass RMV to talk about kit cars and what my options are. Trawled through the website of the RMV and got confirmation of my earlier query – 6.25% sales tax on car purchase payable to Mass rather than the state where I purchased from. Noticed that there is also an online query form, so I might try my kit car query via that route first. In other news.... By the time my company sanctioned my holiday request all of the places at Donington had filled up. This is my last weekend to get a trackday in before selling the 7 (as soon as I get back from France). I'm first on the reserve list, with a backup position of doing Anglesey on the Sunday instead. As I've done Donny a few times already, maybe Anglesey would be the better option (but further for me to travel). Anglesey was the first trackday I ever did. I was new to 7 ownership and I just wasn't comfortable on track with lots of other 7 wizzing all around me. It was wet, slippy and I'd driven the car there – and so really needed it to be in one piece by the end of the day so I could drive back home! Either way, I hope to catch up with Mike of this parish at one or the other track. Maybe I should use Friday to visit Simon at Westfield for a test drive (I live less than 15 miles from the factory).

Oh how I'd love to have this as my weekend car for my stay in the US. Presuming that registration in MA would have all the same issues as discussed in my earlier threads....

Where the car is registered rather than where the car is sold (i.e. the Dealers location)? I'm working in Boston mid June - going to be looking into the feasibility of a daily commute from NH - which would help on the tax and registration front :-) Back closer to the original topic - I need to do a bit more digging into this subject, but it appears to me that the differential between a US and UK Westie price versus a US and UK Caterham price is quite a bit lower in the case of the Westie. In the UK I can get a factory built Westie with all new parts (inc. engine and gearbox) for less that I'd pay for a US kit with an old Miata engine and gearbox (which I'd then have to bolt together). I think this might be a premium worth paying to have a sevenesque car for the duration of my stay - though as Mike (croc) and others have pointed out, a used Cat might still be a better bet if I can source and register one.

Mmmmmm.... My assumption from previous threads and other investigations I've done is that a new kit with a '96 or earlier engine and transmission would be ok. If I've got that wrong then maybe I should do what several people have recommended and get some American metal instead (a Corvette maybe )

My current car in the foreground. Does this answer your question, Tom :-)

Skip, I'm in the process of relocating from the UK to Boston, MA. I'm on a 3-5 year assignment and having owned a Caterham for the last 7 years I dearly want to own a sevenesque car for my stay in the US - assuming I can purchase within my budget limitations, I can get accommodation with a garage and can overcome any registration issues!

I might be looking at a Westie running a Flyin' Miata refreshed engine then. More in my price bracket, and presumably easier to register in MA? I don't have the brand issue that a lot of Brit Caterham owners have (touring with the Se7ens List knocks that out of you ). My only issue with the Westie is that the cabin isn't as big as the Caterham SV that I've got used to....

Help me here, guys. The order form off the US website is showing $41k for the base rolling chassis. That's £25k without engine and gearbox Would that price be inclusive of taxes, or would they be added on top? I've had a mooch around the website and I can't see any info about tax....