Anaximander

Shane, It kind of reminds me of my astro buddy having to hang up his airline wings 6 months ago when he reached the magic 65. Man, did he ever experience some nostalgia. It was really tough to let Glen Minehart know today that I was planning to move and sell the car. Both Scott and Glen have been terrific supporters of their cars and I was discussing with Glen that not all 7's are particularly reliable. Of course it sort of helps when the car is built by the factory and the factory technician is sort of a perfectionist. BTW, anybody interested in the car can see more pictures I took this afternoon of the beast in my driveway on my Craigslist ad. Astro Bob

Croc, I resemble that remark about the lack of outer beauty for the owner. Wait until you get older, hehehe. Life can be cruel. At least the Storker is sexy, beautiful and above all, very fast and fun to drive. Bob

xcarguy, I bought the Stalker to cope with what I thought was going to be another 3 years in North Florida where we have tons of twisty country roads. We then switched gears (pun intended) and decided that my wife ought to retire and consider taking a part-time job with benefits to keep me off of Medicare. I have been a long-time medical consultant and work a limited amount of time. However, as we always do, I have complicated my life to a greater extent than I need to. In my entire life, I have never owned such a response 4-wheel vehicle. However, I have had a decade of riding high-performance motorcycles and was a professional pilot in another lifetime and so speed is not an unfamiliar friend. However, as it relates to the Storker, I am frankly too old and not skilled enough at this point to consider wheel to wheel racing like you have been demonstrating on U-Tube clips. I found that the amount of preparation was not worth 3-4 minutes of track time I was going to get in x-cross. I can see where it requires an enormous amount of concentration to do short-burst racing but the investment in time did not seem commensurate with the experience. I am too used to speed in a sense. However, if there were no cops looking for revenue and I was not concerned about ending up in jail, the Stalker is just an absolute blast to blat around in. It is an unbelievably intuitive car and responds with the least amount of effort imaginable for what it is capable of doing. Scott Minehart really sorted the suspension on these cars. A long time ago when I was in aviation, I did own a Lotus S2 Elan that I used to blat around in the SF Bay area of California. It was a fun car and reminds me of a less reliable Miata that borrowed liberally from its pioneering shape/performance. Bob

Croc, It is a miracle! I just found a 2012 factory-built M-Spec Stalker on Tallahassee's Craiglist. It comes with new Toyo R888's and has been completely freshened by Scott Minehart prior to taking delivery of it a few months ago. Unfortunately, the owner's wife has decided that we need to live at the beach which is not a serious compromise. My one and only autocross day along with exquisite blats in the North Florida/South Georgia countryside will never be forgotten. This car was the culmination of a dream following almost buying a 1962 Lotus that Chapman's group had built in England when I was in high school in the mid 1960's in Southern California. AstroBob

Croc, I suspect that in the next few minutes, there will be an ad for a 2012 Brunton Stalker on the Craigslist from Tallahassee, Florida that is fully registered/titled as a 1963 Lotus 7. My wife is retiring and we have decided to move to a South Florida beach community rather than visiting one periodically. I don't know how I will live without a 4-car garage but I guess downsizing as you get older is sometimes inevitable? The car is very well sorted and was built/designed by Scott Minehart and does not have any of the horror stories I have been hearing about by some home-built cars. There is definitely and advantage to having a good factory build and a very well sorted vehicle. The ride is surprisingly supple for a quick car and it makes horsepower in a way that is quite controllable. From what I have been reading on another forum here, reliability is not always built into some of these Lotus clones. Bob

Croc, You are usually right on the money about what is for sale but alas, there is a Brunton Stalker that has just come available for sale this very day. It is a 2012 M-Spec Stalker Serial #000 that was built by the designer/developer of the car. It is registered as a 1962 Lotus 7 here in Florida and is fully street legal in Florida. My wife and I have decided to move to a South Florida beach community and I will be giving up my 4-car garage home and moving to the beach. I will list the car for sale separately here in a few minutes. However, I cannot seem to post a new thread on the cars for sale Forum. Could an administrator please unlock or provide the necessary permission? Thanks AstroBob

Talk about tires that were made for a car. I just did a nice blat on a warm Florida day (78 degrees) with my new Toyo R888 (255 40 ZR17) tires and the ride and handling were out of this world on my M-Spec Stalker. Per Glen's recommendation, I ran them with just over 19 pounds of pressure in each tire and they rode like I was on a magic carpet. The original Hankooks had simply hardened with heat cycles/age and the new Toyo's were ever so much more compliant and a bit softer riding. It's funny but I pulled into a gas station and this group of what looked like college girls asked if the M-Spec was a car. I told them that it was. I was wondering what sorority they may have been from to come up with that question? Running the Stalker on the street in traffic at the end of a country blat was so much fun because people seem to go nuts looking at it and wondering "What in the hell...?" I noticed that a fellow in a big jacked up pickup truck was taking pictures of me with his cell phone. That is certainly a first in my car ownership. If you have not tried a set of R888's, you are missing something pretty special IMHO. I do not have much to compare them to but they certainly seemed to perform magnificently. Bob S.

xcarguy, I HOPE that I am of sound mind AND body to enjoy the Skyscraper coaster in 2017. We are moving to Orland this coming year for work and it will be in my back yard in a manner of speaking. Thanks for the heads up! Astro Bob

Good on Jefferson and xcarguy for posting their experiences. There are always two sides to every story but the hesitancy to post negative experiences suggests that the two posters went out of their way to give Texas Motor Works the benefit of any doubt. The nice thing about the Internet is that it more rapidly allows others to get a sense of how people are operating and to be able to do their due diligence with as much information as possible. It is troubling to me that the owner who seems nice and helpful would allow a customer to be harmed as was described above. This is too small a community for those shenanigans to go on for very long. People have the ability to vote with their wallets. I know for sure that xcarguy is having a ball with his Storker and I think Jefferson is about at the end of a tedious journey where he will begin to enjoy the fruits of his labors in 2015. Thanks to both of you for sharing some painful memories that may help the next person who thinks about a particular vendor.

Toedrag, Wait until you try and hoist those 315's up onto the axles. You will be laughing even harder when you get a sense of their heft. I have to admit that they are beautifully made and can't wait to do a dry day blat with them. It has been raining for days here in North Florida and we are suppose to have really bad thunderstorms all day. I was awoken this morning at 4 a.m. to a loud crack of thunder just over the house. I can only imagine what it might be like to experience this weather with thunder snow? It is going to be a tough slog for holiday travelers in the NE for the next couple of days.

Well, the good news is that Toyo R888's (255 40 ZR17) on an M-Spec Stalker with 330 horsepower really allow the car to hook up for street tires. It was really interesting to obtain a set of four tires where they send you two sets of right/left specific tires. I had to carefully explain the rotational orientation to my tire installers and impress upon them that a car capable of going in excess of 150 mph requires exquisite balancing. They assured me that they would not rush the job and by the looks of the tape wheel weights, they really worked the problems/solutions to fine tune the wheels sets. The bad news is that having changed out the hardened Hankook's with sticky replacement Toyo's, I was not expecting the car to hook up so quickly as I scrubbed the tires in on my community's private streets to get the releasing compound off the tires. Let me tell you that I now know what a BB in a boxcar feels like. It was rather dumb of me to not tightly secure my 5-point harness when doing this. As I was driving back to the house, I noticed that my butt was sore as hell from banging on the sides of my race buckets:ack: Ah, the learning curves related to owning a high-performance car. You all have a very Merry Christmas this coming week and an even better New Year! Bob

Well, the good news is that Toyo R888's (255 40 ZR17) on an M-Spec Stalker with 330 horsepower really allow the car to hook up for street tires. It was really interesting to obtain a set of four tires where they send you two sets of right/left specific tires. I had to carefully explain the rotational orientation to my tire installers and impress upon them that a car capable of going in excess of 150 mph requires exquisite balancing. They assured me that they would not rush the job and by the looks of the tape wheel weights, they really worked the problems/solutions to fine tune the wheels sets. The bad news is that having changed out the hardened Hankook's with sticky replacement Toyo's, I was not expecting the car to hook up so quickly as I scrubbed the tires in on my community's private streets to get the releasing compound off the tires. Let me tell you that I now know what a BB in a boxcar feels like. It was rather dumb of me to not tightly secure my 5-point harness when doing this. As I was driving back to the house, I noticed that my butt was sore as hell from banging on the sides of my race buckets:ack: Ah, the learning curves related to owning a high-performance car. You all have a very Merry Christmas this coming week and an even better New Year! Bob

Croc, That Mini looks like a job for Overhaulin'. If anybody can bring it back, Chip Foose and his gang are up for the task. As you well know, government types can at times capriciously make up their own rules and with the power of the government behind them, can enforce rather silly interpretations of those rules. I agree that the lack of uniformity in rule promulgation/enforcement is a likely culprit for some of the confusion. I am always a bit suspect of people trying to "protect" me. Where was NHTSA with the GM ignitions? How many years and lives did it take to get something done? Sheesh.

Daniel, Who in the heck do you think can afford some of these cars? It is us geezers that are propping up the market. If we left it to you young guys, sales would plummet because many of you young guys are raising families etc. instead of partying as much as us old guys/gals:cheers:

I lived in the San Fernando Valley where that seemed to have been filmed. There was an ad on one a bench in one of the scenes that mentioned Sherman Oaks which is in the SF Valley of Los Angeles. I too remember .32 gas.

xcarguy, It was all I could do to make sure I was securely buckled up for each run without having to worry about starting/stopping a GOPRO:willy_nilly: I did three ridealongs, and that combined with driving my own car x4 was enough of a workload for this rookie. However, I viewed your 19 minute video on that rainy/foggy day at COTA with your Stalker and I must say that I could feel adrenaline pulsing through my veins as I watched you pick off car after car. However, this grasshopper, in time, will hopefully be able to drive and chew gum at the same time. It is amazing how these large horsepower cars perform. I know that a large part of driving fast is really dependent on finesse rather than brute horsepower but when the course allows, having the extra ponies sure doesn't hurt. A GOPRO is definitely in my future. I am investing in Toyo R888's for the street today and maybe in a couple of months as I get things more sorted I will install a GOPRO. Astro Bob

The Allies silly. But only by one point. What a great group of folks with a terrific sense of humor.

Well, anyone looking for a very radically performing yet comfortable seven type car needs to look no further than St. Petersburg, Florida and the Stalker factory. About two months ago, I purchased a used street legal 2012 M-Spec (Brunton) Stalker from Glen Minehart, father of builder Scott Minehart who designs, builds, and races Stalkers. In fact, the whole family is into racing with Glen's wife Krista always giving Glen a run for his money and sometimes trading the podium in the E Modified Solo events when Scott is not there. Scott's brother just had a Stalker AXR version with the ultra wide rear tires built for him and Scott's young son is racing a cart. The AXR accommodates 14" wide rear wheels and Formula Atlantic rear tires without making the car any wider than a standard M-Spec version with 10" wide tires and wheels and is what Glen and Krista's car is. I attended my second only SCCA solo event (separated by more than 6 years) today and Glen and Krista were in attendance with their bright pearl orange AXR (autocross version). Glen reigned victorious today but Krista put in a very hot lap time that included a 360 spin (cold day with difficulty getting the tires warm) while staying on the course. The enthusiasm that the entire family shares for this marque is without question and makes them very exciting cars to consider. I am becoming a geezer at 65 but when placed in the M-Spec Stalker with racing slicks, the years simply melted away. Of course my driving techniques need to improve but I was steadily improving my times with each lap except the last where I pretty much tied my fastest lap. The Stalker's suspension made traversing the course at South Georgia Motorsports Park a breeze and I could feel in the seat of my pants a lot more potential with the 330 ponies under the beautifully crafted fiberglass nose. The people at the park were likely expecting some hot laps out of my Stalker but alas, being a novice, this was not to be. It did not seem like anybody was disappointed but very supportive and I think wishing me continued success in the new sport. Speaking about suspensions, one of the aspects of the M-spec Stalker that I favor very much is the fact that it is quite comfortable on the street but also significantly taut enough on the track to inspire confidence. I will likely spend 60% of my time on the street enjoying the qualities of a seven car (you all know how much fun these are) and the open air of North Florida/South Georgia roads but at the same time have a great time trying to improve my driving skills during the other 40% where I am doing x-cross events. If I was into an ultra luxury package, I would consider upgrading to their new XL version which is 4" wider than my car and has a 105" wheelbase as opposed to my 95" wheelbase. The XL sports 315 width tires as opposed to my 255's. The overall width of the XL is 76" and is a great road and track car from what I have heard. I also want to provide a large shoutout to Glen and Krista who were incredibly helpful in getting me oriented to the whole event and walking the course a couple of times with me to explain racing strategy. I really cannot say enough good things about this car. I am going to be ordering some new Toyo R888's for the street and continue to enjoy the sheer thrill of speed on racing slicks when at the track. Astro Bob

However, I haven't heard of Birkin not paying their bills? Just say'n. BTW, I love Caterhams. The F1 debacle is a sad story that hopefully will get turned around.

Xcarguy, I have GOT to get Scott Minehart to put in four wheel drive in my V8 Stalker. Heck, I grew up in L.A., maybe some of those smog genes are still in me and I can drive like that?

It has been sold. They had a "hold" for a few days and it now says "sold".

No, I have Scott/Glenn's Blue/Black Stalker. You can see the tiny pic in my Avatar standing next to the Storker (Scott is going to kick my butt for morphing the name as you so aptly have taught me xcarguy). The only cosmetic change I have made to the car is that I cut off the rear diffuser so it would fit on my utility trailer for hauling to x-cross events with racing tires/wheels. I have no plans to ever do wheel-to-wheel racing and will not be getting the car up to track speeds that I have seen it do on videos at Sebring.

Thanks Slomove. With 50K on the clock, that is a pretty clear indication that the car is a nice ride. I saw on your link that you got it with 600 miles so with all of those trips you have taken, it must be a sweet ride. I guess the reports of them being a bit tight are fairly accurate. Luckily, I have shrunk to 5'7" and 170 lbs. so would find the cockpit pretty comfy. Even the wider Storker benefits from narrow shoes for the pedals so that is not a big deal.

Hey, a Storker delivered me a Stalker last month. It was the M-Spec prototype #00 designed by Scott Meinhart that morphed into the XL that is up for sale. Mine is not a track only car and provides tons of smiles going down country roads. Plan to x-cross it for the first time this coming Sunday if the weather holds. Having a novice like me in a Stalker should makes those cones quiver with fear and not to mention the smiles I hope do not break out on the spectators faces if I behave like a fool. Yesterday, I gave a buddy of a mine a spirited ride who has several years of background in autocrossing. He commented how sorted and taut the suspension seemed but how surprisingly not punishing the ride was in a car that seemed so well sorted. I gave him a rudimentary explanation of the video that Scott has on the Stalker website about how he came up with the front/back independent suspensions. I have not ridden in other 7's for a long time (45 years) and so have no experience to compare the street ride comfort aspects? That white/black Stalker is a beauty! BTW, I was looking at the 2009 Birkin S3 that is for sale in my home state of Florida and it is a beaut!. How comfortable are those cars to drive on the street? In reading various threads, I had gotten a sense that they are a pretty tight fit and may ride somewhat harshly? Are any of these observations accurate? Bob S.

+ 1 :toetap05: