Anaximander

I am cranking up the wattage on my ebike to a 1 gigawatt motor and decided I needed better tires for traction. Just need to figure out how to mount them on the spoked wheels? The rumor that Goodyear was buying Cooper Tires and reportedly shuttering Avon is told in the sticker that came on my Avons. There are also rumors that someone else may buy the Avon brand from Goodyear and continue to produce race tires. Supposedly, Goodyear has notified Avon Tyres in the UK that they will be discontinuing production at the end of this year. I hope this is not the case because I really like they way they work on my Stalker AXR.

DanM said, " Looks like I may have to replace the new crank seal that came with my Boundary oil pump." First thing that comes to mind is that the "new" crank seal may not have been the proper one for your YM Miata engine. The second thing that everybody warns about is not putting any scratches on the crankshaft when messing with the front seal. If there are scratches on the crank, some have suggested that you cannot get a good seal. As I mentioned before, this is an amazing opportunity to learn the nuances of the engine you rebuilt. Few people can say that they really know what internals they have in their engines. You will not be one of those people.

DanM, I am glad that you called Megasquirt. Unfortunately, the forums can sometimes lead you in the wrong direction and most people do not know as much generally about the system as the manufacturer. Congrats as JohnCh said on getting fire to that beautiful build you are doing. Keep remembering that you have joined a relatively small group of people that have brought a whole new car to life. That is quite an accomplishment and you now get to glow (for a few minutes) before you continue the hard work of finishing the project. Then, you get to actually DRIVE your creation. What fun! Anaximander

Dan, I experienced a niggling problem with my FiTech system and had to make several calls to the manufacturer and talk with their technical help desk. Even after numerous calls, there was one last element to perfection that had eluded me and so I re-read the installation manual and found a partial sentence that I thought might be explaining the problem. I called the FiTech help desk and they advised that switching the O2 sensors leads could not lead to any problems for my rich/lean condition. When I did this, my AFR's almost instantly reached stoichiometric balance and the car has been running beautifully and the ECU continues to learn my driving habits and the engine is a dream. You may have to call Megasquirt and find out if you have the correct parameters (firmware) set into your ECU to match up with your model year engine? Much good luck on this interesting journey.

Dan, Did you ship your wife and family to a boarding school arrangement so that you could work on your project day and night? With beer if necessary??? In the day, craft beers made wrenching seem more worthwhile. Where are we at in the process? What have you ruled out so far? Curious but bored minds would like to know

DanM, When I had a 1992 Miata, I found that I had to take off the valve cover and replace the valve cover gasket to properly re-install the Cam Angle Sensor. The reason for this was that the two flat ends of the sensor are square and the ends are not chamfered at all and I had a devil of a time getting the Cam Angle Sensor with square tangs into the cam shaft female part that is also square and not chamfered/bevelled at the end of the cam shaft. In some YouTube videos, they suggest that you can do it by feel but there was only one video where the installer actually was able to do it with the valve cover in place. All the other videos paused as they figured out how to get that darn thing back in. Maybe you will be one of the lucky ones that can get it in without having to remove the valve cover on the Miata engine?

DanM, Your post shows that you definitely have your priorities straight in that you took care of your family as the top priority yesterday. Now, send them off to a boarding school along with the wife and work feverishly on that car day/night until it is ready to race (Just kidding!). Having helped build my Stalker AXR last year, I completely understand how much emotional energy it takes to get over the last humps after all of the hard and excellent work you have put into the car. When you get first fire, I assure you that most of the memories of pain and suffering will quickly evaporate. It is amazing how few ever get to experience what you, myself and others have gained from putting a car together that did not exist. It is quite a feat and you are getting closer by each attempt. Keep up the good work and if possible, enjoy the thrills of your current challenges and the satisfaction of knowing that YOU have almost built a running custom made car!

Sir Spinsalot, Thanks for not thinking of my excitement about this very comprehensive assessment as over the top. Job well done! It's folks like you that make this forum one of the best and the knowledge base about these cars is superb! This looks like a very nice car for the money. If I didn't have a Stalker AXR that I built for autox, I would be all over this if Cueball1 isn't interested. It is not often that someone can get such a great "look-see" from an experienced seven owner/builder. The lack of side curtains and top is not in the least a show stopper for me. These cars were meant to be out in the elements and to have your hair (I don't have much left personally) in the wind for fun blats.

I can't stand the suspense! Kitcat, get your butt over to that Birkin in Cincy and let us and Cueball1 know what you find. It is like an Easter egg hunt on a grand scale. BTW, Cueball1 gets first dibs on the car. He has been patiently waiting for a good se7en and we all as fellow forum members need to give him this shot if he decides to take it. Please don't bid against our fellow enthusiast.

Mike, All you have to do is click on the pink Reply box in the upper left hand corner of the ad in the link and it gives a Craigslist email contact. You copy (to copy, use your mouse and highlight the email address, then right click on your mouse button to Copy, then go to your email account, go to the address line, right click again and Paste the email address) and tell the seller in your email that you would like to get their phone number and that you will give them a call to arrange and inspection for an interested fellow enthusiast. Let them known that your a se7en owner yourself.

wdb, I looked closely at the pictures and what I see is a car that has likely been sitting in the seller's garage. There is a patina of dust on the seats, wheels and a few other places but I do not get a sense of the car being "beat on"? As Bruce suggested, getting a compression check, log of maintenance and a look over by and experienced se7en owner would be a good way to go. I have seen numerous se7ens that were not garage queens but had been well sorted and were not immaculate. Bruce's example that he sold, is frequently not the norm and was reportedly specifically designed to show well to others. As others have said, just about any of these cars require some level of constant fettling and that is supposedly some of their charm. If one wants a bullet proof little roadster, then get a newer Miata

Croc, Glad I live in Florida. We just offer the technician a case of of Lite beer rather than a Moal and they are willing to consider working for much less pay per hour. As we say around here, "Dadgummit, that there is ridicalus Noooo Yorky prices!" Bob aka boB because my mama was worried I might suffer a brain injury if I was to be so stupid as to pay $500/hour for an oil change and might spell my name backwards. She also gave me a protective helmet that is far better than my Sparco Kevlar race helmet to ward off stupid!

Well, If you felt compelled to spend $58.5k, you too could have had a shot at bidding on it. The fellow, JK, who built it has done some work for Moal Coachworks in California. I looked up Moal and they reportedly pay their coach builders $229-299/hour. Can you imagine how many hours went into the making of this one-off car??? Yipes! I guess with the lack of garage space and bank account numbers, I am likely NEVER going to be a client of Moal's (sob).

John, For some, 10mm or almost half and inch is no big deal. However, for some of us, it does not give us that snug "locked in" feeling that we need to feel comfortable slinging the car around and dealing with centripetal forces. You might want to try some of that dense closed cell foam with the stickum' backing in key critical areas and see if it makes you feel more locked in on the driver's seat. I did just that on my Summit racing seats and the lateral motion I was experiencing in the seat while autocrossing has been significantly reduced. It is always a trial and error effort but I think well worth it given that I was able to use the patterns of the existing seat covers that were designed for the seats and tightened myself around my upper back which was critical for feeling more "locked" in place.

John, If you need to tighten up certain parts of those seats which is what I had to do with my Kirkey style seats from Summit Racing, this product will do the trick and comes in a bunch of different thicknesses with adhesive already on the back of the super dense foam. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081PM21ZD?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

John, I feel your pain as I had that weird FiTech fuel injection issue where my primary O2 sensor is the passenger sensor and you have to hook up the driver's side wire harness connector to the passenger O2 for proper ECU operation and vice-versa. What your patience and thread shows all of us is that building exotic cars can at times be EXASPERATING. However, I am here to tell you that after this past weekend of my car's engine finally running perfectly, all of your hassles will be well worth it for all of the pleasure you will be getting in the near future. Trust me, it is WORTH IT! Especially as beautiful a car as you have in that exotic Caterham. OTOH, I will never, ever, put a kit together with or without help, hehehe. I lack some fundamental patience when I compare my limits to some others' limits of patience. Besides, building a kit was a bucket list event and I am closing in on kicking that bucket much sooner than some of our younger members

The Stalker AXR now runs faster than a cat on a hot tin roof! Ever since the build, there was one niggling problem that I couldn't seem to resolve which was that the engine ran rich on the driver's side and lean on the passenger side (it reminds me of JohnCh's AFR challenges with his 520 build in this section). The ECU attempted to balance the Air Fuel Ratios but had a difficult time keeping both sides of the engine properly fed with fuel. I went back to the initial installation instructions of the FiTech 70001 installation instructions and there was a partial sentence about midway through the 16 or so pages of instructions that stated and I am paraphrasing, "if the O2 sensors are wired incorrectly, then you will experience a rich/lean situation". They did not denote what specifically they were referencing because I had hooked up the driver's side O2 wiring to the driver's side and the passenger's wire to the passenger O2 sensor. Well, I continued to try and figure out what was going on and hooked up the factory supplied ECU computer that gives real-time data on a plethora of things on the computer's dashboard and the AFR readings were widely divergent. I called FiTech and asked them if swapping the wires might clear up the problem? They said it wouldn't hurt anything and that the Model 70001 was designed for a single O2 sensor and that was to be on the passenger side. So, long story shortened, I swapped the sensor wires and the rich/lean condition went away and the FiTech computer shows me that the self-learning ECU has both AFR's almost identical and no rich/lean running condition. Yesterday, I took the car to an autocross after having what I think was finally making things work and had done about 10 miles in my private community driving around looking at the handheld as I was putting around quietly not trying to get my neighbors riled up with the sound of the twin side pipes. At the autocross yesterday, if it were not for one errant cone that jumped out in front of me and grazed my rear fender, I would have taken first place in the E-Modified category. I had hoped to do better but the way this Stalker is running, I now expect to get MUCH better even as I age out and start taking some firsts and maybe, just one day before my last breath, get close to a FTD if there are a bunch of slower people that day. As someone pointed out, sevenesque cars are a journey rather than a destination and they need to be fettled with from time-to-time.

Cueball1, The prices for cars on BAT and some other sites have frankly gotten kind of silly. I would keep my powder dry and if things turn really sour from a national/world standpoint, cars that are overpriced right now will come back to Earth and you will find just what you are looking for in a sale where someone is no longer interested or capable of having an expensive toy.

DOH, I see the price listed on the top of the ad. Probably help to imbed it also at the bottom so dumb bunnies like myself are less easily confused

The steering rack is definitely S-10! That is why Stalker on their M-Spec cars went to Coleman racing steering racks that have ratio adjustable guts. Additionally, on most new M-Spec cars, Scott uses a proportional steering power assist that make steering wonderful even at walking pace speeds. As Croc pointed out, some track enthusiasts in Stalkers like the XL prefer not to have the steering power assist because they feel it can add twitchiness and/or take away a bit of the actual tire to steering wheel interface. I have had two Stalker XL's, one with power assist and one without and I prefer the power assist but I am also not tracking them in the sense that autocross has different steering demand characteristics. The suspension on the M-Spec cars are lightyears better than the original Brunton Stalkers IMHO.

One thing I forgot to mention on the older classics is that there is a front suspension upgrade that is critical to the safety of the original Brunton Stalkers. If this bracket is missing, you would certainly want to take it to Scott and have it installed. Secondarily, it would be worth the money to have Scott fully inspect the car and check all of the connections so that you know that the car is properly assembled. Some folks did not accurately follow the build instructions and so they are less safe/reliable than if everything was adhered to. Brunton Stalkers also came with a build DVD that you might want to look at if the owner has it in their possession.

I went to the S-10 forum and found the answer you are looking for. Remember, Google is your friend "The fill hole is on the passenger side of the differential halfway between top and bottom. It is recessed so it isn't plainly obvious unless you're looking at it. Use a 3/8" square socket to get it out. Do not try to use a wobble socket and avoid just using a ratchet if you don't want to chance rounding it off." Unless you want to remove all of the bolts to drain the diff, just get a suction device and pull out all that you can through the fill hole and you should be good to go. Rince and repeat with a fill to the overflow hole and you're done!

xcarguy knows a lot about flying airplanes and Stalkers. What he says is true about Dennis Brunton using inexpensive USA sourced parts from relatively inexpensive cars to create kits that were both cost effective and performed surprisingly well. Stalkercars.com is an entity that is still in business although they did have a reported rough patch where they had to declare bankruptcy at one time which has already been mentioned. Scott Minehart is the owner and designs all of what are called M-Spec cars which is shorthand for Minehart spec'd cars. Scott and his entire family (parents, child, brothers) are all involved in high-performance automotive activities. Scott a couple of years ago participated in one regional weekend qualifying event for Nationals and then went to Nationals and was fourth fastest in E-Modified in SCCA Solo racing that year with only two days of competitive driving that year. His brother Jason, is generally considered the second fastest driver in that class nationally and drives a Stalker AXR. I recently completed a partially completed kit that Scott and his father Glen provided significant technical assistance to help me complete the car. It is now running quite well and I placed in the top quartile of a local 100 person autox event with my Stalker AXR which I had never hoped to do before driving this very easy to drive car that I have. Scott knows more about Dennis Brunton's original designs than anyone in the country because he worked as the chassis fabricator and eventually bought the business. He has a shop in Central Florida where you can get him to rehab older classic Stalkers or to fabricate from basic kit to completed cars, one of 4 designs he is currently manufacturing when an order is placed. He reportedly is working on an updated website to facilitate an easier buying process for prospective customers. Something like what other specialty car companies do. I have included a picture of Scott (above with me in the car) coming to my home with his digital corner weight scales to setup my Stalker AXR. I also included a picture of me with my most successful performance to date in the completed car.

John, I had a wire burn out on a heavy duty turbo fan I run on Stalkers and it was 16 awg. I was advised to used 12 awg but opted for a ridiculous 10 awg on a separate switch so I would never have to worry about transient spikes. I did a Google search on 12 awg and 10 amps and this is the response I got: "While a 16 gauge wire can technically handle about 10 amps at 12 volts, it is still advised to not go over 8 amps. This is due to the reason that over a longer distance, your 16 gauge wire may have a non-uniform construction.Feb 23, 2023" I personally do not like having things that are critical to performance and running constantly to be "underwired". Given what I found here and the concerns I have for certain critical components such as a fuel pump and in my case, a relatively small radiator cooling an LS3/480 that I owned, my personal choice would be to run 12 gauge wire and not have to ever worry about the potential lack of uniformity in the existing thinner strands of wire. I suspect that the run of your 16 gauge from the fuel tank to the main bus is likely the longest run of wire you have other than the tail lights which don't have that kind of amp draw.

John, Your build thread and in particular, this most recent challenge has had me thinking about all of the complex variables that go into building a car. I thought that the challenges I had with the FiTech FI system were challenging until I read your recent trouble shooting woes. I had read about 50/50 acceptance of the FiTech self-learning ECU and some of its gremlins that some people have hated and some have loved. It really emphasizes the point that building race-bred cars is not necessarily for the faint of heart. It certainly taught me a level of patience throughout my build that I barely had enough to spare. There were times when I felt like throwing up my hands or just plain throwing up thinking that I was hitting barriers that were thwarting the successful outcome of a build. However, as I seem to maybe have come to the end of most of the challenges, the feeling of accomplishment is worth the tough journey IMHO. Glad that Holley had some seemingly good insights for your potential problems. We are all expecting to be seeing a blur pass by in the form of a Caterham 520R in the near future!