scannon

During the race I said it sounded like a long, drawn out fart but I like the blog's statement better "And what little noise there was sounded more like a herd of elephants with bad flatulence."

I'd like to have seen him getting into and out of the Caterham with the hardtop and the side intrusion bars.

I really like your grill badge treatment.

I have the same dash layout as Croc's original Seven except that I moved the ignition switch from under the dash on the steering column to the dash board between the water and gas gauges. It is just to the right of the curly cord coming down from the Escort radar detector. Much more convenient that way. http://usa7s.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=3850&d=1329621801

http://www.autoblog.com/2014/03/14/caterham-620-r-kobayashi-video/?a_dgi=aolshare_email

The title of the article is misleading, they are not going to turbo engines, just "turbocharging" the series to recover lost ticket sales.

http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=29617&utm_source=2014-3-12&utm_medium=email&utm_content=html&utm_campaign=newsletter

My SV came from the factory with 205/45-16 Avon tires mounted on the wagon wheels. I assume the cycle fenders are the larger of the two sizes offered at that time. The 205/50-15 R888s on my track wheels are a very tight fit. I had to bend one of the fender stays a bit as the inside of the LF tire would rub on hard turns. The 205/50-15 Dunlop Dirreza Star Spec tires on the street wheels have about 3/8" clearance at the same spot. Not all 205 tires are created equally. Both the street and track wheels are 7 x 15 and have the same offset. I run 225/40-16 Toyo T1Rs on my Miata and they are not quite as wide as the 205/50-15 R888s. They will not fit in the Caterham front fenders due to different offsets.

I did some hot weather tire pressure testing with R888s summer before last. I did two hot laps then pulled into the hot pit and had a friend measure tire temps with a pyrometer across the tread. I ran two more laps after that. I also recorded lap times. I started with 17 - 19 psi and worked up in 1 and 2 psi increments. I was running 205/50-15s on the front and 225/40/15s on the rear. I found the car to be very squirrley until I got to 22 - 24 psi. Lap times and control gradually improved until the tires were at that pressure. The temperature spread across the tires was most even at that pressure as well. More pressure decreased lap times but felt about the same to the butt g meter. I run the same cold pressures on the street. I also found that adding a passenger required 2 more psi to maintain nearly similar lap times and temperatures gradients.

I think he might be a little large for a Seven, he's gonna need a Six like this one:

Did you mean Turner Classic Movie (TCMHD) channel? I found the two movies but couldn't find the making of Grand Prix. Unfortunately Grand Prix conflicts with P1 of F1 and another program I regularly record. Thanks for the heads up.

:iagree: My Caterham sports the Caterham Super 7 badge it came with. If you get down on your knees and look really close the valve stem caps on my car do have a Lotus 7 logo which looks much like the Caterham logo.

I found a bushing in the shop, EM or PM me your shipping address and I will get it on the way tomorrow. Let me know if you need overnight, 2nd day or regular priority mail.

I haven't subscribed to the print copy for several years and was surprised when I got an email today with a link to the digital copy. The inside cover is an ad from Superformance on their assumption of the Caterham distributorship (Thrills, not Frills). There is also a short article on it inside but nothing we haven't seen before. There is an interesting article on a fellow in Sweden who re-engineered a Westfield. http://www.flipdocs.com/showbook.aspx?ID=10011589_385922

The bushings are available from Caterham and only a few dollars each. If you can't get one without waiting for delivery from across the pond I believe I have one or two on the shelf you can have. Not sure what you are getting at on the test fit. If you need to rotate the shaft to line up the steering wheel you can disconnect the U joint at the steering rack and move it a spline or two. Otherwise you can move it by adjusting the tie rod ends equally to move the shaft a bit.

If your car still has the under dash ignition switch/lock there is a lug on the shaft that will not pass through the bushing. The upper bushing will have to come out with the shaft. Use the slack and steering wheel as a slide hammer and the lug will bring the bushing with it. IIRC you also have to unbolt the switch/lock assembly from its mounts. I took that opportunity to move the ignition switch to the dashboard using a Chevrolet pickup ignition switch from the 70s. I was able to source a new one through NAPA. I got tired of fumbling under the dash to find the keyhole and having the fob and house key brushing my knee when moving from brake to throttle.

Thanks. More power has been on my mind from the beginning. The problem is space in the boot for it. I think around 25 - 35 HP would do the trick. I'd really like to find a four banger that would fit to get the sound right as well as the power level. A transmission would be nice. It has a centrifugal clutch and is a real dog getting moving.

I wish I had the skills for that but, no I didn't build it. There is a shop in Colorado Springs that is building a small run of them. Mine is #4 and Mighty Mike's is #3. What you see is how it was delivered to me. The paint estimate came in at $1,125 most of it going for finishing the aluminum body work prior to paint. Lots of ripples still in the hand formed aluminum.

Finally got the Baby 7 back yesterday. The rear frame has been repaired and strengthened (too much lightness for the mighty Predator 3.5 HP engine), a larger sprocket on the rear axle, a fuel pump since the engine had to be raised to clear the sprocket and a few other minor improvements. I have stripped it down and on the trailer ready to head to the paint shop this afternoon for a quote and hopefully new paint. It came with this full windshield. http://i1261.photobucket.com/albums/ii584/scannon929/Baby%207/Paint/DSCN5667_zpsf93c3e53.jpg I bought a single Brooklands Screen from a forum member and I will make provisions to mount it as well so I can choose whichever style suits my mood at the time. I have both for my full size 7 as well. http://i1261.photobucket.com/albums/ii584/scannon929/Baby%207/Paint/DSCN5666_zps1dd1a5ed.jpg The mighty Predator 3.5 HP engine. The builder claims a 32 mph top speed via a GPS check. Maybe there will be a turbo in the cars future. http://i1261.photobucket.com/albums/ii584/scannon929/Baby%207/Paint/DSCN5670_zps02aaa7c1.jpg The pedal box. http://i1261.photobucket.com/albums/ii584/scannon929/Baby%207/Paint/DSCN5669_zps07a5f14e.jpg

No, just lacking in experience.

Thanks! Here's the Caterham engine bay. There have been a few changes since this picture. The battery is now down along the frame rails where the windshield washer tank used to be, the Link ECU was replaced with a Hydra Nemesis unit and is inside the passenger footwell and a tank for the methanol/water injection system sits where those two used to be. All the nice ceramic coating burned off the turbo, manifold and downpipe in the first session at the track. It's now black high temp paint. A cruise control actuator now sits between the coolant pressure tank and the heater. http://www.britishv8.org/Other/SkipCannon/SkipCannon-BA.jpg

Nope, it gets cleaned up about twice a year. With all my other cars that one is only getting around 3k miles per year and rarely gets wet. The car currently has 133k miles on it. That's the 3rd of 4 engines in in the 17 years I've owned it. That 1.6 engine blew up and it and the turbo system got sold to a fellow in Canada. The current engine is a 1.8 bored to 1.9 with forged internals, head work and a larger turbo system. Last dyno was 288 WRHP and 265 torque. It looks like this: http://usa7s.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=3195&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1309874031

I have air horns on both the Caterham and the Miata. I don't have a picture of them on the Cat because they are mounted low and only visible from the bottom of the car. The horns have 15" and 12" trumpets and are very loud. These are not the typical high pitched fruity Italian air horns and they scare people when I demo them in the shop. A few years ago I was driving about 70 mph on a two lane in Western Colorado when an 18 wheeler pulled out from the trees in front of me. I hit the horn and the brakes and he locked up his brakes and shuttered to a stop leaving me about 2' of pavement on the other side of the road. I managed to keep two wheels on the pavement as I went by at about 50 mph. Another time I was sitting at a RR crossing and the engineer blasted his horn as he enter the intersection. I laid on mine and his head popped 90* with big wide eyes. I doubt he connected my little car with the horn blast.

Never heard any complaints about the bike. The neighbors were used to my noisy wheeled projects. What they complained about was my friends and I setting off various cherry bombs, M-80s and homemade explosives in the field behind the house so I guess a motorcycle engine, even with no mufflers was not such a big deal for them. Our favorite was the cherry bomb mortar. Stick a pipe in the ground at near vertical, light one cherry bomb, drop it in. Wait 2 seconds, light another cherry bomb and drop it on top of the other one. First explosion propels the second cherry bomb a hundred feet or so in the air where it makes a really loud bang.

When I worked for Thiokol (a solid rocket motor factory) in the 70s I was on a project to design and test early airbag actuators for cars. We put prototype air bag assemblies in junk cars and fed them through a car shredder much larger and quicker than this one to see if they would ignite during the shredding process. Of the 30 or so cars we sent through none of the airbags popped. It was a permanent installation at a scrap yard. It was amazing to watch a full size car get shredded in less than 20 seconds. Walk down the line and the various metals each came out on different conveyers and the plastics, glass and upholstery on others. It didn't even slow down when a V8 engine went through the teeth.