CarlB

Everything Croc said is the way I would go. A plane ticket is cheap insurance, so you are happy with your dream. I am 5 foot 10 inches tall, and my shoes are 11 wide. I do not have any problem in my S3, but you have to have narrow shoes. I do not have lowered floors, and my seat is not all the way back. Having said that, lowered floors would be nice, so you aren't looking out of the top of the windshield.

Several years ago, the car manufacturers and turbo manufacturers spent a lot of time with electric turbos. The intent was to use the electric turbo until the regular turbo started making boost. The only thing that was being said was the electric turbo would eliminate lag and provide boost at a lower engine speed. I certainly agree that an electric drive would not be as efficient as an exhaust driven turbo or a belt driven centrifugal compressor with what I know today. Perhaps they only intend to use the electric turbo for short periods of acceleration. I will also point out that railroad locomotives use electric drive. The real advantage is the engine speed is not coupled to the wheels directly and motors make peak torque when they start. Locomotives have a lot to get moving. However, locomotive manufacturers talk about drive efficiency similar to direct gear drive. Maybe because of all the work on electric drive efficiency for electric cars Honda has something new. Maybe Honda is just experimenting. I think electric turbos could make it to production cars. The electric turbo could get the car moving quicker without lag and the regular turbo could have a larger exhaust housing. Engines like the Ford EcoBoost spin the turbos up at low engine speeds. The smaller exhaust housing needed to get the turbo working at low speeds cause backpressure at higher speeds. The backpressure reduces the engine efficiency. Having said that, the whole thing is a balancing act of cost. With modern automatic transmissions that have ten speeds and allow the engine to operate at very low speeds on the highway, would it be cost effective to add an electric turbo for the efficiency improvement at the higher engine speed?

Sorry I do not remember what the ground clearance is. I set the ride height with some droop in the lower control arm. Mike Beachman suggested that. Doing that gives more camber gain than having the control arm flat or pointed up. I would measure it for you, but the car is on stands with the engine out.

Here are some pictures of the skid plate on my car. The fist picture is under the car and shows the hose clamps used to attach it to the car in front. Not visible in the picture are two more hose clamps just before the skid plate bends down to go over the oil sump. The second picture shows the second set of hose clamps from the top, and the black part is what goes under the oil sump if the engine was in the car. The skid plate is made out of 1/8th or 3/16th aluminum diamond plate. From experience I can tell you it works. The last picture is the from the top and shows how the skid plate attaches to the front of the car. If anyone who has looked at my post on alignments is looking at this, look closely at the last picture. You will see a small hole located between the clamps holding the steering rack. That is the center point Arch Motors used when they built the frame.

Taller tires will have an effect on how quickly the car will turn, and they will also give a smoother ride. You might also consider putting a skid plate on the car. I am not familiar with your engine's sump, but I have a very simple skid plate on my car. It is nothing more than a piece of aluminum attached with hose clamps that goes under the front of my oil sump. Message me if you would like to see pictures.

New engine. I needed a rebuild. Quicksilver is doing some head work with bigger valves, and I am going there tomorrow to select new cams.

You have to check toe at ride height unless you know exactly what your bump steer is.

I have driven both the Elise and the 4C. The Elise is closer to the 7, but it is a lot more refined. Your wife will like the 4C better because there is more room, but you might not like the nannies. You can't turn off the vehicle stability or antilock brakes, and it defiantly limits the fun. The brakes start coming on in the middle of a corner.

I am looking forward to being there. New engine and hopefully much better reliability than the last time I was a NJMP. Thank you all for putting this together!!

Doing an alignment is critical to optimizing the handling of the car. The first thing you want to do is get the car level and at ride height. You can use floor tiles to level the car, and don't forget to check the tire air pressures. you might want to add some wax paper between the floor times to help set caster. Some racers check the diameter of the tires. Next thing to do is center the steering rack, see below. If you are going to scale the car, you should do that next. This should be done with you in the car and the fuel tank at a level that you use every time you scale the car. Next you want to make sure the rear axle and the front axle are in line. The string alignment box and a measurement of the wheelbase on both sides will give you that information. I like to use a square tube for the front and rear point to pull the string over. I think it is easier to get the measurements. The point of the string is to set up a box that is parallel to the axles. The string is parallel when these requirements a met: When the distance from the front tube to the rear tube is the same on both sides When the distance from the string to the rear axle is the same on both sides When the distance from the string to both sides of the front axle is the same, but it does not have to be the same as the rear. When the distance between the strings on both tubes are the same. You can speed up the process by measuring from the wheels back to the tube and making the measurement the same when you are setting everything up. The strings are now in the way to set camber if you want to use the strings to set toe. Camber gets done next, then caster. After the caster is set go back and check camber. I don't set toe with strings. It is difficult to get measurements, you are trying to measure very small angles and wheel diameter makes the measurements very small. Keeping the ruler level makes a difference. I use a Dunlop gauge; it multiplies the measurement. But the toe plates talked about above work well. Tires have an overlapping splice done in the construction. You need to make sure the toe plates are not on the splice. There is a slight bulge on the splice. It would be better to measure with the toe plate in contact with the wheel and not the tire. The measurements are taken about 3 feet apart. You are trying to measure an angle, and the measurement is easier to make 36 inches apart than 13 inches apart. The problem is that you are measuring total toe, and you want individual wheel toe. If you use strings or toe plates the first thing you have to do is center the steering rack. I have a mark on my rack where the shaft from the steering wheel goes in the rack so I can center the rack. When you do a string alignment this is important for centering the steering wheel, but it is more important for bump steer. If you use toe plates you have to do it if you want to get the toe set the same on both wheels. If you look down on the steering rack it is clamped to the chassis. In the center of the rack look down on the chassis and at least on my car there is a small hole. That hole is the center of the chassis. On my car the clamps that hold the rack are equal distance from the center line. I use a very thin tape to measure from the brackets to the nut on the steering arm. They have to be equal. If you want to adjust bump steer you need bump steer measurement equipment. You can make it or buy it. It is two rectangle pieces hinged together. One sits on the ground the other is in contact with the wheel. You need a flat plate attached to the wheel and the rectangle has a bolt and a dial indicator in contact with the plate on the wheel. You set the car at ride height and remove the coil over. Put a jack under the A arm and set the suspension to ride height. Then you zero the dial indicator with the bolt in contact with the wheel. You use a jack to move the wheel through its travel and record the readings. The readings produce a curve of the toe changes as the wheel travels up and down. You can change the toe change by shimming the rack or if you change to rod ends for the steering arms changing the height of the connections to the spindle.

You will need to check to see if the inspection station will accept this method, but it is the simple solution. If you look on Speedway Motors web site, they have a hydraulic valve you can put in the rear brake line and it keeps the rear brakes locked. Wilwood also makes add on parking brake caliper. With those you need to make your own brackets. The other thing to look at is some late model cars use electric parking brakes.

You will have a very difficult time bleeding the AP rear brakes. I highly recommend using a pressure bleeder that pushes the brake fluid. You need to have the calipers loose and rotate them. The point is to move the trapped air to the bleed screws. I have no idea if this would pass a state safety inspection, but what I am using is a Speedway Motors Speedway Park-Lok Universal Hydraulic parking brake. I made a small bracket and attached it, so it comes out where the normal parking brake handle is located. Here is a picture of my brake valve. My car is apart now but the bracket the proportioning valve is mounted on goes on top of and uses the same screws as the pedal cover. I am thinking about moving it to my dashboard. If I do that, I will use flexible lines front to back. Fabricating metal brake lines is very time consuming, and I think the flexible ones work fine. Pegasus will make up any length you want. I do not remember the details, but I had an issue with the way the rear sway bar attached with the new brackets that hold the calipers, but it was minor to fix it.

I have the Rear AP brakes on my car and mounted a proportioning valve up close to the master cylinder. I didn't want to be messing with it and trying to drive. Here are my observations. I would make sure you get in the car and see if your leg will interfere with where the proportioning valve is mounted in the picture. Making brake line flairs takes some practice. I have done a lot of brake lines, and it is easy to make mistakes. If you want to make your own flares buy good tools. If you look at the Eastwood web site, they have a number of different types. Eastwood is not the only company selling these tools, but they have a good collection. The biggest mistake is how much of the tube you flare, or the amount of tube gets squeezed into the die to create the flare. AN flares are easier to make and fittings an easy to get. Pegasus has what you need. I installed a hydraulic parking brake on my car. My car was plumbed with DIN brake flares and when I got everything together and tested the system, I had a leak on one of the parking brake fittings. I did not want to move my parking brake or disassemble the entire rear suspension to run a hard line so I used a flexible line. On my car when I looked at the fitting where the flexible line attaches to the two hard lines that run out to the calipers it appeared to be a AN fitting. It wasn't. Take the line off and verify what it is. I would suggest you look at all your connections and determine what type of fitting each connection uses. You will need some adapter fittings to connect everything with AN fittings. My AP master cylinder uses DIN fittings.

I live in Virginia, but I got my car from a Guy in Maryland.You want to register the car as a replica. It is a replica of a 1962 Lotus. That is the way my car was titled. The advantage is the same as having a classic or 25 year old car. The disadvantage is a 5000 mile per year limit on mileage.

The clams they run are better than stock ones but are not as good as cycle fenders. The engine is about 200 HP. They have to use the stock intake manifold on a regular not the SVO Zetec. They are not allowed to do anything in front of or to the rear fenders. The 2.8 l BMW engine I would guess at 300 HP or more.