Alaskossie

cs3tcr, of course you are correct. I fear that I've slandered the wrong Lotus... Sorry, Colin!

Skip, wasn't the Lotus 30 known in period as a Lotus 20 with 10 more defects? i saw one race at Avon, CO on a vintage street course about 15 years ago.... wonder if it is the same car you secretly know about? I have a friend in Anchorage whose father in Oregon had a Lotus 19 with original 2.5 C-Climax engine and Lotus gearbox/diff, tucked away in a barn. I believe that he had been a midget racer, and somehow bought this Lotus 19 when it was just an old, obsolete race car, but as a 19 that had not been converted to GM aluminum V-8 power.. Inevitably, that car is now in a big West Coast collection I believe, and my friend's father had a big new motorhome with the profit.

Yes, the Seven, long known to have the aerodynamic qualities of a brick, will now be made up of a collection of bricks!

It was recently announced that the LEGO version of the Caterham Seven will, by popular demand, go into production. LEGO 7.pdf

I'm still up for exploring some carbon-fiber clams... The black-out under the clams looks really fine.

Metal ring; then carpet the tunnel.

MichaelD, My friend (and old-time Seven owner) Jeff Ball of Colorado told me about a very hard-core Seven owner in Aspen, Colorado who used his Seven as a daily driver. In the wintertime, he would leave a sleeping bag stuffed down the driver's-side footwell, and drive the Seven in his stocking feet!

MoPho -- Please, the "Executive Superlight," not the "executive 7 [sic]." (Thanks to Nathan Down for the ES moniker). I drove the Mojave Desert with goggles, bikini top and side curtains because the 110-degree heat and the wind were drying my eyeballs out.... I agree that a long-distance trip of any length in a Seven without minimal wind protection (windshield and side curtains or wind deflectors, or aero screens ad full face helmet) is self-inflicted torture -- so why do it, and then complain afterward? The answer is: to get a story beyond the ordinary, one with some reader interest. On my 6500-mile drive from Denver to Anchorage, the longest single day's drive was the last one: 550 miles from Beaver Creek, Yukon to Anchorage, via Delta Junction, Alaska. The real macho Seven owner/driver is Ross Robbins of Colorado, who drives his original Lotus Seven on long-distance trips all over the US, without any weather equipment.

I have been remiss in not contacting Terry for a formal update and announcement on the proposed 2016 PBB. I'm not sure what his personal situation is at present -- this was one of the factors that caused the one-year postponement. I drove the Alaska Highway in a Miata last August-September, and the condition of the last 100 miles of the road before the Canadian border is really deplorable -- no pavement at all. My Miata gained at least 35 lb. of mud that had to be power-washed once we crossed the border into Alaska. I'm not sure I could ask Seven drivers to endure that -- after all, at that point there is no turning back. Further the State of Alaska's budgetary situation is precarious due to the low price of oil, and this directly affects the cost and availability of the Alaska State Ferry System, which we were relying on to make three connections during and after the blat. The fares were increased 9.5 percent this year, and while the 2016 schedules have been announced, they may be subject to change or cancellation by the Legislature cutting ferry system funding during its up-coming session. So I will be writing Terry today to recommend that the 2016 PBB be cancelled, awaiting more favorable word and local conditions. Anyone who has a deposit with Terry should contact him for a refund we've got a great trip itinerary worked out, but it will just have to await better times.

When I built my S3 in 2007-2010, I was about to install the Cosworth 2.3 Duratec when I learned that my car had come by mistake from Caterham with the Zetec loom. I learned later that there are a number of functions that a Duratec-specific loom has, that are handled in a different way by the Zetec loom (I'm speaking in layman's terms). I did not want to completely disassemble the car to install the correct Duratec loom, so I took my mostly-assembled chassis to Nathan Down at Thomas Vintage Motors in Boulder, Colorado (40 miles away from where I was building my Seven). Nathan is a graduate engineer who developed the SV for Caterham, where he worked for several years. He was able to reverse-engineer my S3 to function with the Duratec engine and the Zetec loom. I lucked out, as there was probably no one else within tw thousand miles who could have got my car running correctly with the loom that Caterham had installed. Send me a PM and I'll send you Nathan's e-mail. He may be able to give you some quick answers about the engine and loom change that you are considering. ,

Jlumba81, You are a masochist to drive your Seven in Alaska in the winter. I have put mine to bed for the duration.

This item from the latest Low Flying:

Skip, Seriously, the Washington Redskins need to have a reality check in their belief that their team name does not offend a significant group of people. Why doesn't the team decide to change its name to the "Washington Darkies," and see how that flies?

Love the look of those clams!! I hope you had your sunglasses!

My last blat was actually on Sept. 23. Snow was forecast — so I took the Seven for a quick sunny afternoon drive, up the 10-mile narrow paved road to Eklutna Lake in Chugach State Park, north of Anchorage. The fall colors were at their peak, and traffic was fairly light, with only a few leaf-peepers on the road (and some of them pulled over for me!). I made two runs up and down the road before the fuel gauge gave me pause. This is my favorite Seven-driving road in the local area — lots of turns and elevation changes, few side-driveways, usually light traffic except on summer weekends, a dead-end road, double-yellow center lines all the way, very few pullouts and no turn-arounds, posted speed limit of 30 mph, but with a Seven — what, me worry? That is Bold Peak (7522’) with its summit in the clouds; it stands at the head of the lake, which is not visible from this vantage point. The summit is about as tall as the highest cloud that appears in front of it.

Jim, Just don't show your wife this note! Reminds me of an older fellow on Antiques Roadshow last week. He told the appraiser that he had brought to the the show the only antique he had in the house -- "except my wife, of course.."

A friend in Colorado (BTW, he's the former owner of one of the two Lotus Seven SS Twin-Cams that made it to the USA), has a good plate on his daily driver: CUL8RBY

That looks like the plate on the late Graham Nearn's Super Seven SS Twin-Cam (the grille bars look like his SS, but the headlamp brackets should be curved, and a bit lower, I think). One of 13 or 14 Twin-Cam SS's, the rarest Seven variant.

Love the rear diffuser on the trailer! Never seen that before.....

2007 Caterham Series 3 "Executive Superlight" with 250 hp 2.3 Cosworth Duratec and 6-speed transmission: 1380 lb. without gasoline. (Nathan Down didn't dub it the "Executive Superlight" for nuthin').

Skip, Very sorry to hear that Ross is planning to move on from his Seven -- he and this car are both icons. Once he gets an idea of a fair price to ask, I expect to see this car featured on Bring a Trailer. (Ross is a frequent commenter on Lotus cars listed on that site).

I particularly like the way that Skip has rendered the roll bar on the Baby 7 a functionally useless appendage.

Scannon asked me to cross-post this write-up on USA7s. Some of you may know that I was having a turnkey 2004 Mazda Miata V-8 built up at Fyin' Miata in Palisade, CO for about 4 years now. It's finally completed, and now at home in Anchorage. The Q-Ship’s build process at Flyin’ Miata has proceeded in fits and starts since I bought the car in Colorado in the fall 2011, and had it stored at FM (see details in the build diary on FM’s website). I was in no particular hurry to have the car completed, and waited while some crucial decisions were being tried and parts obtained along the way. In addition, I was accumulating the $$ needed to pay for the conversion. Jeremy Ferber at FM was in charge of the project, and Eric Anderson was the chief wrench. My wife Jane and I picked up the Q-Ship from Flyin’ Miata on August 28, 2015, for the long drive home to Alaska, up the Alaska Highway. Ten days and 3,575 miles later we arrived in Anchorage. The Garmin (which for one day would not turn on) recorded a driving time of 70 hours and 58 minutes, at an average speed of 60 mph, which is a pretty remarkable average. The car is not quiet, and chip-sealed highways and wide tires conspired to raise the noise level in the cockpit. A booming sound set in (only with the top up) at speeds above 85 mph, but these speeds were not common through Canada or on the Alaska Highway. With the top down, the noise level is actually lower at higher speeds. And having 525 hp under the command of your right foot can be addictive. The Q-Ship was very reliable throughout the trip, with only a couple of minor electrical glitches with the Dakota Digital speedo and sensors posing any problem, and these were made to go away by turning the engine off, and then on again. I’m somewhat sorry to see this build project come to an end, though the driving part is obviously the end game. Having FM build the Q-Ship was a decision that I do not regret at all. If I had attempted to do the build in my own garage, I’d still have a pile of parts, and I’m not getting any younger (I’m 72). I need to preserve the remaining years when I’ve still got all of my faculties and my reaction time to driving – not to endless fabricating and assembling. It was a great trip, a perfect conclusion to the Q-Ship odyssey at FM.

How many of these considerations for bum protection should apply to a street-driven Seven that is not expected to be subjected to the kinds of complicated vertical acceleration/deceleration incidents that might occur in racing?

Gert, A great solution to a perennial Seven problem! I may have posted this before, but here goes again. I tackled the same luggage problem, with the added considerations of carrying a spare tire, and preserving visibility to the rear. I built my luggage rack out of aluminum tubing, pop-riveted at some joints, and sleeved with inner ferrules (to allow disassembly) at others. The rack frame slips over the spare tire mount posts (the mount is cut off, and then re- attached with inner sleeves). The top of the frame is tied to the rear roll-over bar braces with nylon straps. So the weight of the luggage is carried by the spare tire mount posts. I use three nylon ski-boot bags as my luggage, with a waterproof cover over each, tied with a drawstring at the bottom. They are held onto the rack with nylon straps and buckles, positioned by footman loops on the rack. I built the rack so that the two side-racks can be detached and left at home, and just use the center rack with its drop-down floor, or with the floor hinged up if no luggage is being carried. I do have to remove the right-hand bag to re-fuel the tank. When used in conjunction with a SBFS rear bag over the boot area of the Seven, i have enough capacity for a really long trip -- I used this combo on my 6100-mile drive from Colorado to Alaska in 2010.