R1 Seven

They should move up today, as one of the front runners dropped out last night due to an unfortunate encounter with a deer.

1310 lbs for mine with a 185 lb driver and 5 gallons of gas. I have a full cage and steel floors...so not an uber light BEC.

That figures to be just under 200 lbs. My R1 engine/transmission fully dressed weighs less than 150 lbs.

Denial is basic human nature.

Bummer. Thie Carlisle event conflicts with the date for the Southeast get together at VIR. Normally the event is the first weekend in May, but this year they had to move it to suit the track schedule.

Don't most folks that use the reversing box put them in the middle? Right were the center UJ is located now? Seems like it would be easier to do it that way.

That first Locost kit appears to be the same one that Keith Tanner built his car (and wrote his book) from. Those kits went for north of $9K before CMC went away. That could be the deal of the century depending on how much interest he gets. If that guy was smart he would throw in a copy of Keith's book for a build manual...

Cool shots there BEC buddy. Good to hear that your dad's car is coming along nicely. Can't wait to see it!

Fat chance buddy! I would spend that money on me first... IMO probably the best car based powerplant that I have seen for a Seven is WestTexasS2K's supercharged S2000 mill. Nice light 4-cylinder with PLENTY of power in a dead reliable Honda package. The 6-speed is nice too. You guys can call me a bastard if you like, but if I were to build again, I would be real tempted to do a Stalker with a supercharged S2000 drivetrain...

I'm hurt Mazda...really, I am. :cry: :jester:

There are plans in the works for a 2008 event in the Southeast at VIR in the spring. George Hilliard is kind of the head of the Southeast stuff IIRC, and we are working together (with a couple more folks) to make a nice regional gathering. It will cater to both track enthusiasts, and weekend getaways and drives for those not into the track driving. It will be centered around a vintage racing/alfa-romeo/HPDE weekend at the track. The vintage cars are cool. Last year there were two series 1 sevens racing along with an eleven or two. It is a really nice laid-back weekend that our cars would fit well in.

I would certainly soften the shocks in the rear. Really, the shocks should not be used to keep the suspension from bottoming anyways. Conversely, you may want to increase the damping on the front shocks as an experiment as well. You may have tried this already, but adjusting driving technique may help as well. I know in my car, I have to ease into the throttle gradually coming out of the turns to keep from spinning the tires as much. Our cars are so light, they get a little nervous at times. I am not sure if you have driven on the new pavement at Summit Point yet, but I did last weekend and it is nice and smooth with plenty more grip. The car will probably drive different just because of that.

Cool. I guess it is John that is making the big HP then. 269 with lots of torque can't be bad. Good job at the Run 'n Gun to you guys!

Thanks for sharing, Dennis. After seeing John at the GRM event, and some of your in-car, it makes me want to get behind the wheel of one of those 400hp sledgehammers. Good stuff!

That is what I built it for. I intend to wring every penny out of it.

Congrats to you Bruce! The car looks great! Looking forward to some driving reports.

http://www.project-seven.goof.com/videos/LCRock1007.wmv Here is some video from my Time Trial session on Saturday. The best lap time was a 1:05.3x which was good enough for 2nd fastest overall. That is an Ultima GTR (with about 600 hp) right in front of me getting off to a slow start. He went on to best me by about 2 seconds. Again...horsepower seems to make a difference.

Normal HPDE rules. I was running in the instructor group. I think it is funny that they said "hot racing!" when they showed my car. Maybe it was just assumed by the blinding speed... :jester:

Watch near the end for my 1 second of fame... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDh_zudVTXA

+1 I would not discount the instructor pool with that PCA group. Every club that I have instructed with has plenty of good instructors that could help you with your car. If you let them know ahead of time what your goals are for the weekend, then maybe they will know just who to put you with. Plenty of discussion goes on beforehand by the organizers. The "gross" stuff should not be hard to work on by anyone. The fine tuning is likely to take more than one weekend anyway. Sorry I can not come and help you myself. It is just a combination of bad timing and the long distance (mostly the distance).

Since my car is not street legal. All my videos are made on a closed course, and are titled as to the location. You will never catch me making "canyon run" videos. Those are boring anyways.

JBH - Sounds like we would have a good time running together with our Sevens. They seem like a very close match. I think that the aero "wall" hits us pretty hard in the Sevens. Getting much more than 130ish mph would take a good bit more power (and apparently gearing). I can tell as soon as I hit 6th gear that the car does not accelerate much for the second half of the straight despite being in the peak power range. The only reason that I can eek out more mph on the back straight is because of the nice downhill before the braking zone.

That could have something to do with it...

Yes. On some, it is the way that the starter engages with the starter ring. Of course you don't see it happen much...'cause the clutch pedal is right there where people instinctively hit it. :ack: It happens in racing and high speed spins, and it likely has to do with how mechinically sensitive the driver is as well. They even make starter savers for some dwarf car applications.

Agreed, that you could make the foot box larger with a BEC if you choose to go LHD. You could even do it if you went RHD because the engine would be best offset to the left more to counter the driver's weight and for better driveline angles. Another thing that the BEC affords is the ability to triangulate the engine bay more to increase the rigitidy due to the positioning and smaller size. Mazda - I have no desire to do a hand clutch. I have always driven with a clutch at my foot. My instincts are now set in stone...if I were to have a spin and need to put in the clutch...I am going for the floor. If a spin happens, the clutch needs to go in ASAP to prevent the engine from spinning backwards. On many of them spinning backwards will kill the starter.