James A

You can buy fuel cell foam, here is a link : http://www.smileysracing.com/shopping/productDetails.aspx?i=7281&c=1276 I think a number of speed/race shops sell this kind of foam. I have used this particular brand as it is good with fuels containing alcohol.

There is no right answer here, how you set a car up is based on how the car is used and where it is used. Street only, track only, mixed use, autocross, lots of variation here. And then couple that with the nature of the track surface and there is a lot of variation in how a car should be set up.

Oh, Jon has always been very good with me, responsive and a wealth of information!

Bruce Beachman and Superformance, please, please, please, homologate a newer chassis and engine than the one we are stuck with in SCCA E Production! Not hard to do, but very much needed and oh, how about some sponsorship when we win races as it sells a lot of cars. Even if it is selling us parts for our race cars at dare I say cost?? There is aways a lot of curiosity and visitors to our paddock at every race. So much could be done to advance the brand in the USA yet nothing has been done since the cars were homologated in 2000. Jim

+1^

I do know that the 7 chassis can easily be lifted by two not very strong people, by that I mean me and my wife. The whole thing cannot weigh 80 pounds. I just don't see this as the place to focus as the car weighs 1260 pounds. I think the De Dion tube, gearbox, engine, and wheels are a better place to get weight out. In fact I think a little more triangulation (weight) would be a good thing for the S3 chassis.

On my LSD diffs (three of them, two on cars one as a spare) two are stamped with the LSD info and one has a metal tag attached to it with the LSD info. The two that are stamped had a small flat spot filed or ground on them and the info stamped, the metal tag is attached to one of the case bolts on the other one.

i have owned a GT3 and currently own a Cayenne S, Porsche service has always been very responsive and high quality, and friggin expensive! I have owned 5 BMWs and stopped buying them over the awful, arrogant service from that dealer network.

Yea those shoe laces were a big deal for my son! We still love the racing in SCCA but I totally get your comment about the rules, the GCRs getting fatter every year! We re getting close to trying out NASA also!

Yea, my son always ask why, before I started cars I'm working on, I would set a fire extinguisher next to me. He ask until one day we need it. Amen of the A/C comment!

For home use I find the Longacre Toe plates work great! Simple and easy to use. http://www.longacreracing.com/catalog/item.asp?id=152&catid=5 Shop around I see them listed for $56 - $109.

On the race car we bought -2 degree De Dion ears and set the front at -3 degrees. Tire wear is good and we like the way it handles. Oh we settled on front toe of 1/16 toe in, rear toe is 0 as set by the De Dion ears. The recommendations to corner weight the car is a very good one, do it! Jim

Well, finding a "deal" on a twin cam head you would want is going to be difficult. The heads that are still in good shape generally go for some serious coin. In addition, to put one on your Europa will require that you have the head and cam cover machined for the alternator drive that comes out the back of the head on the Europa and the front on the Elan. Not difficult at all most any automotive machine shop can do it. On the brakes what David said is spot on, a different master cylinder will be needed to get good brake feel. Enjoy your Europa, I regret ever selling mine!

Your point about fade is a good one, but we have never had any brake fade or issues at all on the EP race car and we are in Texas and have raced in 100 degree F weather. Now we do use Motul AP600 brake fluid and full race pads that can really tolerate the temperature.

Tom is right, save your money we are forced to run the two pot fronts and single pot rear Sierra calipers on the EP race car and have never had a brake issue at any race. The car is light enough that with the right pads there is just no braking issue.

Hey these cars are great in the rain!!!! It's only a matter of having the right tires for the rain, I don't know about snow though. Little kids love to use the muffler guard as a step and promptly bend it. When its parked people feel they have a right to reach in and flip switches and even sit in the car???? The top being up only changes where the water hits you If you didn't build your own car you missed 1/2 the fun!

Nice run!

Joachim, fantastic driving, my son and I race Caterhams in SCCA and we both loved watching your video. Your car has loads of HP, can you tell us what spec car you have and what engine and level of tune it has? Terrific driving, just terrific.

Really nice run and technique!

Fantastic!

Raceline, on their website has a dipstick "calibration" procedure, but I have found the stock dipstick to be pretty accurate in terms of the full and add marks. Now to Zetecs and oil leakage, if you overfill a Zetec oil will flow out of the block breather (especially in right hand turns), the one under the headers, and if that is venting to a catch can it will quickly fill the catch can depending on how it is plumbed. I get little or no carry over from the cam cover breather but at one point would leak a pint or two every 1/2 hour out of the block breather to the catch can. I re-plumbed the breather so the hose goes straight up and then over to the catch can so what ever flows in to the hose can flow back in to the block. But then, I bought a CFM breather that bolts in place of the PCV apparatus and plumbed that to the left side of the cam cover. So now any carry over goes in to the cam gallery and flows back to the block and the cam cover vents to the catch can. This set up works great!

I agree with the master cylinder thought, but other things that will give soft pedal; brake pad "knock-back" caused by a rotor not running true, very worn brake pads seem to give us a soft pedal, and I have heard of, but never experienced, a caliper leaking internally past the piston seals and the bellows containing the leaked fluid. The knock back can be caused by an un-true rotor, or stub axel in the process of failing (it is no longer running true) or has even failed (yes the brake caliper and disc will hold the wheel on until the caliper fails)

Yea, I use the Focus Fanatics forum and post there and know Tom Lesperance well (AKA TurboTom and 1TurboFocus) he in fact has both built engines and does the tuning on engines for me and two other Caterham race car owners here in Houston. And Tom does like to force feed Zetecs! Tom has the ability to tune remotely and that has been a big benefit to us in that we send him data runs and he e-mails tunes to us. He can also take over your computer while your car is on the dyno and look at all of the parameters and tune your engine remotely. It's a real nice service.

Oh, here is a good article on the Zetec SVT engine and all that was done to get 170 brake hp (I am using Bhp as crank shaft hp which is not exactly correct but works here) , not rear wheel hp, hp at the crank shaft. http://www.myfordfocus.com/svt/ Compression at 10.2:1, larger valves, much better intake manifold, cam lift of .431 intake and .388 exhaust, headers, larger intake ports, on and on. All this to get 170 brake hp which would translate to what at the rear wheels, 150hp? So taking a stock Zetec that has 145 brake hp and getting it to 200+ brake hp is no small feat. Of course the most common way to get hp is to use a very optimistic dyno, which a lot of tuners use to prove what a good job they did. First thing you should ask if you are trying to determine your real hp is when was the dyno last calibrated to SAE standards. Again, I see a lot of (hear about a lot of) Zetecs that have a claimed 200 hp, yet the engine has the stock bottom end with 9.6:1 compression ratio, stock valve size, mildly improved cams, and of course the nice Caterham headers, some have an improved intake manifold. 40% hp increases take some work, and on the Zetec the work is increased to get the reliability most of us expect. 100 hp/liter is not easy, look at the specs of normally aspirated engines that achieve this.

Klasik, so you dynoed 183 at the wheels and are racing SCCA, what E production? Can you share what your preparation is? compression, cams, ECU, etc.? That is some stout hp.