southwind25

Walt, i really like what you did with the bolt, will have to remember this for future reference..cool. We had the same problem the original birkins seemed of little use. we took the original birkin motorcycle stalks and simply mounted the bullet mirrors to them! couldnt be easier, then put a convex lens in them. ((Things in your mirror are uglier than they appear))...but they work really well and have a quaint vintage look about them. not heavy either since the bullet housings are just spun aluminum.

We knew about the given name of "GO"...but we didnt know the last name was MiFune even though we realized the helmet, and car emblem was an "M"... Blue sky drive in in wadsworth ohio will be playing speed racer friday night...we will be there in the se7en..front row center.

Speed Racer, the movie starts friday... How many are going to take their se7en's and drive them to the theaters to watch our childhood hero in action? Yeah...i saw the previews too..and have mixed feelings about it all. We have also seen the "new generation" animated comic...((quiet sigh)) The movie will never meet our imaginations of what the movie should or could be. But..it's one of the things that probably led us to having the se7en we do anyways. So if only to honor and respect the good name of the Racer family, and because we all own our own piece of the Mach 5..we will be going for better or worse. Go Speed racer Go...............:7fume:

What an awesome day, the sun came out, dried up the tarmac and made everyones faces a bit more red by the end of the day. The Lotus marque was popuated by 2 europa's, an elise and, 4 se7ens!. Franks' new and old cars, Mike and Jen's pretty yellow ride and ours. Lots of people seemed to enjoy asking dozens of questions during the day....lots of fun. We balanced the day out with a blat between us and a few freinds with original Mini's ending up at "Gasoline Alley" in north-west Akron then on through some undiscovered twists while on the way to Medina. Now..on to carlisle..and more Ohio backroad fun! Mike: we found our darned camera in my coat pocket!! :banghead: :banghead: fwd any cool pics please.

A note if your flat towing...you might consider detaching the driveshaft, i was always told by others that the tranny having a reverse load on it for an extended period isnt so healthy.

Wow it seems like the caterham was dirtracked around the course. is this simple power oversteer?, or terrible unbalance? i wasnt driving it but it looked like a handful including his spin. better invest in spare rear tires. Maybe it's me, but when i was racing, sideways was never the quick way around the corner. yeah it did seem like the caterham excited him more..but without knowing german, not sure if this was good or bad.. i would love to have seen time vs time around the course. the 211 has got to be a awesome track car. well...both would be awesome track cars! As much as i have come to adore my se7en....if someone wanted to trade even up for a lotus 211......i wouldnt think twice. I'll take it in yellow please. keep the Tonig.. :ack: i'll keep my se7en even with it's briggs and stratton x-flow

Our webasto top Mini had "BE TPLSS" on it. (sold the mini 2 years back). My workcar has "SKYCLAD" on it.. (i'll let you look that one up) We found that both "SE7EN" and "lOTUS 7" are available in ohio yet.. ** ok now dont nobody go stealing either till we get our plates this month ok???...please??**

At the moment, it all depends on what's in store for the next few days....I have found by trial error the last couple months "mothers" products seems to make some of the better polish-waxes. We had tried an aircraft polish but it wasnt giving that optical mirror quality. Yes we wash the exposed aluminum like everything else, but thats because it has about 3 coats of mothers wax on it. Before a show or such, after washing and drying,we do a quick repolish with the mothers metal polish and a very soft rag. then do a coat of wax on top. Yes the webers spit all down the side and rear wings-fenders so that seems to need the most attention. We can use the polish on the exhaust as well, and wax the suspension-wheels-lights-radiator etc.. we are sure most people use an easier method, but i need the excersize and time spent polishing-waxing has a theraputic value to me. and it's more fun that watching TV.

this might be cool!! http://cgi.ebay.com/Scalextric-Caterham-Cup-set-with-extra-track-USA-power_W0QQitemZ230247755997QQihZ013QQcategoryZ4781QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem "The Caterham cars are fast and easy to drive." Of course they are they are se7ens!!! there are scratches on the drivers' helmets where they flew off the track, hopefully not like the real thing! yikes! Thought someone might be interested in this..unfortunatly we need the money for our real scale one! http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/1497073407_scale1.jpg

Cool, we will see you there! Oh, and perhaps M/J should consider a corporate sponsor for their unique 7? As we followed them the car had a very aromatic quality about it..http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/119326435_drschollsspecial.jpg

Sears auto and tire dept. has falken 615's for 88 $ apiece!

brrr indeed...we deeply contimplated taking ours this morning, but at 33 degrees and with ice on the yard we have a 24 mile trip and we chickened out....forgive us.

Brit car show this weekend sponsored by the Austin healey club. Usually about 200 cars show up, and a dozen loti of various types. We will be there. Just gotta get all the grime off her from last weekend. then we will be anxious to get it dusty and dirty again soon!

We cant exactly tell how he enjoyed driving it...the darn thing was so fast all we could see on any given road was a blur blasting past!.. Then again he had the huge grin on his face when we met at the crossroads as he waited for us.. We think he loves the car!! he still had his wrist-event bands on from the track days he ran this year. the car is quick...he has more in the cosworth..than we have in our whole car and it shows..it's awesome. fantastic ride..and he loves pushing it hard too!! good for him he's using it for what it was built for. ((we had the itty bitty engine car in the group and it felt like we had a briggs and straton lawnmower engine in ours compared to the "big boys" )) They are seriously looking to sell the other car.

Thank you to everyone who came along and made this a great Day! Mike and Jen (cat 7), Frank and Pat (csr 7) Gary and Jackie (birkin 7), Jenny and kyle (original mini) and the europa and Miata (drats i am bad with names..) We found out RT 164 is AWESOME! Thanks to frank and gary we found some devilishly fun twisties off of the route as well in the town of berkholz and new cumberland rd. oh and we decided to not get the elvis burger (hamburger with peanut butter and bananas?) at the chrome Diner in lisbon. During the begining of one backroad adventure we missed a turn in our se7en and what i thought was the road ended up being an off road dustbowl. Jen (mike and jen) was going for her extinguisher to put us out because what was a cloud of solid dust looked like the car was engulfed in smoke! So we add another 175 miles onto our total. Damn that was fun!! Lets do this some more!! theres a few other little mishaps but those belong to the drivers to tell. thanks for the pics mike, you beat me to the post! heres a couple others. http://usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/126714788_a.jpghttp://usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/144041226_c.jpg

Gary great!..see you about 10:30 great to have you along! 330-714-3740 my damn cell phone is on the fritz

We have 2 cars now Mike and jen's yellow caterham and ours. We are starting from our place in akron at 10:00, which means arriving at the start point about 10:30...if that helps gary? any others? robert/mary 330-714-3740

Heck bring the grandson! you could be the coolest grandpa ever..of course he probably already thinks that.

We figure meet at 9:00, +/- an hour depending on who might be comming. we let the cleveland lotus guys we are going out to play. We have not run these roads yet...so using google maps theres a few parking lots on rt 800 (cleveland avenue) between 30th and 32nd just south of the rt 800 exit from rt77. We could meet there we would guess. just look for the yellow lotus autocross sounds great too!! However at the moment, we want to get a little more time on the car before we start knocking cones down mid summer.

Possible weekend Blat ahead Looks like we will have the car back together for the weekend..so lets see if the tranny seal is fixed! lets go a-blatting! We are shooting for perhaps a long 1 day drive this sunday. We will be comming from our hometown of akron. The run will sorta officially start in canton on RT 800, travel down to rt212, around atwood lake a bit (a favorite sailing lake for us). We will pick up rt 164 around leesville and take it east by north east to lisbon. maybe a bite to eat and then take 172 to canton. anyone want to join? we have a couple overnight ohio trips planned as well...as the summer allows using such routes as 800, 26, 564, 78, 7, 666, 555, 541 and 62.

Ok,,,filling the gearbox through the gearshift opening,,does NOT work very well on this T9. :skep: So we ended up with the shortened allen wrench method.. we got as much out of the tranny through the same opening.. old tranny fluid tastes terrible:ack: dont ask me how i know. While we have this all apart, we are going to fabricate a driveshaft safety loop as well in the tunnel.

Thanks.. couldnt find the "carlos" pics... i used to fill my sprite ribcase box through the gearshift and that worked pretty well.

We got the tunnel off and the rear tranny seal off last night. UGH what a chore that was! hopefully a new seal will solve the leak, however we are a bit concerened thhere might be a bit too much play in the output shaft. We are going to try and put a "speedi-sleeve" on the yoke to provide a little better sealing surface and tighten up the seal backspring a few hairs..see if that works. looks like we are going to have to provide an access cover-hole in the tranny tunnel as well.. we cant see another way to get to the drain-fill plug on the side without removing the whole darn assembly!

budlight/bruce...wow thanks for ther awesome info...that was great! yeah,,,that Taylor quaife is sure pretty....i dont think i'll be buying a complete one anytime soon. (hack) :shocked: no bottom drain plug i can see...just a plug in the side,,,which seems kinda low for a fill plug.

pretty slickity...was there a reason you choose wood over perhaps aluminum tube and walls? or fiberglass/composite walls? price?...how did the weight turn out?