southwind25

While our 7 will not be a trailer queen or show car..we figure before it starts getting it's wear and tear...we are going to take her to a few shows.. theres the british car show the first weekend in may in northeast ohio put on by the Austin Healey club. and Stan hywet mansion and gardens fathers day show. lots of fun to be had...the most is the drive to them and back.. (oh yeah carlisle too)

Wow , you sound almost exactly where we were about 5 months back. We are road racers (vintage) as well that wanted a car much like what your wanting. Heres what we decided upon and why: We found (or it found us?) a very low milage, 1999 chassis birkin with 1.6 x-flow. (i think considered series 2) We had the opportunity to drive a Caterham and Birkin both, both awesome cars with the ztech's. OHHhhh niiice!! They both seemed very well sorted out and surprised us in many ways besides the obvious handling and power. We found the Birkin seemed to have some cleaner design elements, but not by much. And the caterham might be a bit more robust in it's smaller details. We are somewhat traditionalists so the general concepts they held to...good and bad..appealed to us as well. We still like the aluminum over tube chassis. Yes the birkin has a solid rear axle, but it didnt seem to make a "significant" diffrence...(wish it was IRS though.) As well, we wish ours had the ztech..BUT since budget was a main concern, that was not to be. The xflow so far does a happy job...but whats better with these cars..ALL of them..is you can come in at an entry level, thrash them around a bit.. The x-flow gets out of it's own way very nicely..but dont expect the big performance here. Just big fun. It seems as if you are paying a bit for the nose badge on a caterham. But you can probably get specialty parts for it easier as well. since you have a shop probably not unlike ours..you can upgrade at a later time! you can put about any powerplant in one of these with some imagination (and money) you can go nuts with carbon fiber bits and roll bars and suspension upgrades, gearbox's wheels brakes...whatever...to your wallets desire. if i had my choice, and a bottomless wallet.. a caterham CSR superlight. second choice the new Birkin with IRS.

Anyone want to get together at the new Quaker steak and lube in north canton ohio? RK/MK

All parts falling off this car are of the finest british workmanship.

ok...thats just a tad overpriced for a birkin, even with the zetec. i wouldnt pay that for one..and didnt (even though mine is a 1600 x-flow) and mine is way cleaner 1t 1300miles on the odometer (shameful yes we will change that this year) as reference...he's selling a bugeye racecar for 15k.... looking at the state of preperation and options of his, i should have sold mine just recently for about 20k! not 12k. not bad cars, but yes his prices may be a bit high.

Winners Winners... Yes Box..thats a 3rd brake light on the roll bar! little thing about 3" X1/2"x1/2" it works great. Very petite weighs next to nothing, barley noticable till it's on. it's one of those LED lights the custom chopper guys use to light up bike frames. Good eye MHK, The wheels didnt come with a center cap so i made one up. polished an aluminum disc and put a swept ear knock off on each one. Ok this added a little weight and i wouldnt run them on the track, but they look nice for the street and appropriatly fit the funky quasi-spoke wheels i got with the car. need a new shifter knob, this one must weigh 5 pounds. Beers to you all if you visit my shop!:cheers: Solder, theres several versions of these. but they are used as liscense plate bolts. I figure it's a small car and anything that helps it be more visible but not look terribly gaudy cant hurt. http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/1380400590_led_bulletlt_ra.jpg

ok you got 4 out of the 7... new filler cap mirrors (soon to be changed to0) some red thing is a dont hit me reflector that fits in what was a missing spare wheel cap. and license plate with those little LED through bolts. oxidation? awwww...geee..i spent about 10 hrs on that immediate area polishing too! hmmm..guess i need to do better. you get a beer from the 1/2 empty case in the background.. OK several more missed items to go..

Ok, How many diffrences can you spot in the pictures from this weekends work? Since we are stranded looking at salty snowy rods, might as well work on some of the upgrades.http://usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/1619882551_MVC-067S.JPGhttp://usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/1302758347_IMGP2219.JPG answer there's 7 in the picture, what you dont see is the new oil filter heat sink-cooler.

Indeed you are correct! The UNI kit of 2 filters included a little filter element that you place in the vent passageway. Well we are not having the fun of driving it yet...darn ohio road salt. :nonod: But we are having the fun of screwing around with making things better/correct before we drive it! Last night i welded up a new offset brake pedal so that they are evenly spaced for my feet, and made a set of hub centers (hubcaps?) for the wheels since it only came with 2 . they are a knock off spinner looking deal now that fits in nice with the quasi spoke wheel the car came with. i would still rather have nice panasports on her..

As time goes on and if we get the opportunity. We will eventually put a windage tray and baffle-trap door the pan. Sure a dry sump would be great...but a bit of pan work is much cheaper. Maybe add a accusump-preoiler. anyways.. we also might play around with a possible hood scoop-air box plenum to cover the stacks..so it contains the mess. problem is making one so it doesnt look obnoxious yet fit the opening in a non destructive way, and still give room to breath.

blowback?http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/209114026_moss_stirling.jpg

Ok, count us in at a 90% possibility of showing up. If Mary's work schedule interferes it might only be one of us. :toetap: Looks like we will probably do this the old fun way, strap a tent and couple sleeping bags between the rollbars ,change of clothes and a toothbrush. Hope it doesnt rain. if the forcast is for rain, we might tow it in and rv it. hey,,why no beauty contest for this show?:toetap: guess the cars will be the beauties eh?

New UNI filter socks installed. they seem to fit great, and the installation was easy, lightweight and the product well made. I'm happy with these. http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/1964293606_IMGP2213.JPGhttp://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/1143021319_IMGP2214.JPG

questions: We have never been to carlisle before, but over the years have heard it's a great show. It's about 5 hr's away from us as the 7 flies, we are curious, is there tent camping on site? is their a place to clean up a bit? if we do this we suspect we will have to do it on a budget. Do they have RV camping on site? thats another option for us. oh..also..is the show fun?..since our history is racing events, in the past we have found ourselves bored silly at car shows.. whats it like?

Do what we did... Sit down with a piece of paper, and list in detail, what your looking for. list what your needs are, your wants, time available, mechanical and fabrication skill sets, how it will be used, by who, how often, and budget. Then look around for kind souls who may give you a test ride or 2. consider other production cars as well. for us, a "7 " was all bang for the buck. We started off wanting a completely different car, we ultimatly couldnt afford. Then found one that did 95% of what that one would that we could afford. We ended up with a pre-built like new Birkin S3 that needed some TLC. and with the money we didnt spend will go on to eventually restore an example of that car we couldnt afford anyways.

Got the spark plug wires rerouted and properly spaced. Thanks! have a new rocker assembly on the way too, to replace that broken #1 adj. screw. We want to get this car such that as soon as nice weather returns, it's on the road. Dave, did you replace your front suspension with the wide track one? and does anyone know what kind of sealer was originally used in the rear boot-trunk area between the fiberglass moulded insert and structure? thanks.

driving legally?? e-check..oh yeah that...well uhh..uhh...we havnt quiet been down that road yet. (insert rogue biker music theme here) First we got to get this thing ready for getting an "assembled car" title. oh boy.:ack: then if all goes well we are planning on registering it as a collectors car with collectors plates. if we can pull that one off we wont have to do e-check. if this doesnt all work;. Ummm well we havnt quiet figured that one out yet. except, we have this set of historical plates we got for the healey sprite and for the moment, that has worked ok. Yes officer this car was made by Austin of england, cant you tell it's a bug-eye?. As far as polish...it would be about as easy doing that DC-3! First i am sanding the aluminum with some 600 wet-dry and soapy water. then using some stuff i have left over from restoring the finish on our boat. It's pretty much a good quality polishing compound. I do this with a orbital buffer until it wont do any better. (or looks like when i started) Then i use some of the stuff Mike R suggested here called "top of the line". It's supposed to be "aircraft " quality and works pretty well. But i can't get that mirror finish he does with it. I even change the buffing pad and have tried a foam one too. I work an area with that a couple times, and wash it off between tries. Next i use Mothers brand metal polish...by hand. (wax on wax off) This pretty much does the trick and gives me that optical hubble telescope mirror finish. But,,this IS ohio and i will be driving it! So i finish off by using a mothers carnuba wax-cleaner. This dulls the results ever so slightly but i hope protects the work. Is it worth the effort?...well...i would rather be polishing the car drinking a homebrew than watching football anyways. It's worth it to me. 185 ponies..OH YAY! :7fume:

I would only hope..it wouldnt turn into another venue for NASCAR.

Most of the chain auto stores (auto zone- federated-NAPA etc) have cork gasket material in rolls. I have used it successfully.

just fwiw..heres what we will be doing when not driving the 7. yes she's ours..http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/upload/1538056598_CORSAIR%2031%20GALLERY%2002.jpg

ae9b1rk1nw1ab1017. I found a great workout plan..it's called the 7 polish plan. i figure after we are done trying to make the aluminum look as nice as the others here, i will have met my new years eve promise of workimg out more this year. dang! even with this top of the line stuff, it's quiet challenge!

We joined the birkin group. will look closely at the lower ball joints and try to either post a pic, or try and figure out if they are the bad ones or not. thanks for everything guys, this all really helps.

Way cool concept! better watch how you mount your seats though! BZZZzzzt! :crazy: hmm...maybe put a playing card in the spokes so it makes a sound? seriously, it would be great to see more of this as time goes on. And yes i would own one. perhaps my grandkids will be converting our Birkin to this someday! isnt it great, that these cars are so flexible such that new technologies can be applied to them? Seriously..you couldnt do this with other makes ! sorta makes you proud to own something that is being brought into the future.

We think we are going with the individual stack socks type. they have a lot of flexibility as far as mounting goes. UNI filter looks like they make some good ones used for moto-x that will work for us. they have a good solid mounting scenario, we dont want to just tie wrap something on. we might even screw around with making a little neat air scoop, but thats way down the list.

this is not a bad idea.. just give a location and a time and whoever shows up shows up...and who doesnt doesnt..but they might next time. hmm.