Christopher smith

For even more info , If you have not already, you might want to check with Bean Engineering about sourcing all sorts of info and parts. The catalogs are great.

For sure we had some great times at the old Marlboro track. I attended various SCCA races, some drivers schools and pit crewed a couple of times. I also ran autocross there in my outrageous full sized Ford wagon with a 406 engine I installed plus suspension tweaks. I think the guys in the Corvettes were very shocked when they compared times with me. I did not beat them all however.

Lots of interest and input since I started this about a Lotus exhibit-thanks. Has anyone been to the Barber Museum, I think near Birmigham AL? It apparently has lots of Lotus cars along with motorcycles. I don't think it has anything to do with Skip Barber. I visited his garage in Philadelphia with a mutual friend after he acquired a new, really fast 23 around 1964. That would have been a start of a great Lotus collection of course but I think Skip went another route forming a race training school. Another great museum is the Revs Institute in Florida that I can recommend. Loads of famous and rare road race examples.

I guess that Mk1 GT running gear has a lot in common with some of the Series 2 Super 7s like the 1500 pre-crossflow (minus 2x40 DCOE and Cosworth cam originally anyway) 4 into 2 into 1 exhaust and same gearbox. Is yours an early one with the early rope seal rear crankshaft set-up?

I sure remember the early days when the team was racing lotus cortina. Jim Clark of course was driving one but there was another fellow I saw I think it Watkins Glen that was really impressive. They certainly lifted a wheel very high going through the corners. But they somehow kept the cars upright at least most of the time. I think that driver was Sir John whitmore. Lots of great memories with the early lotus cars and now having a seven helps relive some of that although not on the track as I'm getting a bit old for that sort of thing

The 30 certainly was a great looking car. I don't think it had a great deal of success in Can-Am since it was up against McLaren and the Lola t70s but I still like it. The lotus 19 was in on the ground floor before Can-Am when it was called us rrc and people started putting V8 engines in the back instead of the Coventry climax. The lotus 23 at the exhibit was a tremendous success and lots of people tried to copy it.

Nice exhibit .They have examples of 6,7,9,11,23 Elan ,Elite , Europa and all sorts of more recent Lotus varieties and a couple of formula cars ( F5000 looked great) Plus in the permanent collection real treasures from Maserati, Ferrari, Alfa, Ford GT, Daytona coup, 917, lightweight Corvette, Cunningham, Jaguar 120, C and D type etc, etc. Definitely go if you can.

I hope the weather guys are correct that the snow will hold off until very late in the afternoon but who knows. I live close enough so I'm not too worried. Hope to see everybody there who can make it

Looks like the Simeone Museum will be having a pretty big Lotus event this Saturday. It is very near PHL airport. and worth going at any time but this Saturday may be special with a number of 7s and lots of other Lotus models along with a great bunch of historic race cars you might want to see. Worth the trip if you can make it.

It is the rectangular 8 gallon ATL sports cell like we always used for SCCA in other cars. But it is too big to fit in usual 7 place so we mounted it above the axle. Higher center of gravity of course. I think the custom ones can go behind axle but they are even more pricey. I was setting up to go D production racing but it took so long I felt too old for serious racing. Almost 80 now.

That is why I have an ATL fuel cell with internal bladder and foam.

For sure the Escort Mk1 was a great car. After experiencing many , many really boring USA rental cars on domestic business trips and a really scary one with a Lincoln Town Car on mountain roads, I sure appreciated the handling of UK based rental cars. I drove an MR2 Toyota all over England in the rain and then a basic rental variety MK1 Escort. Not huge on power, but still loads of fun on back roads for business of course but also side trips to find up race car parts and even a trip to Caterham Hill. If there was such a thing as a reasonably priced upgraded Escort (not the lame front drive ones we had here) I would go for it.

For sure I would use them only for mid-longer term reliability. I guess I missed some of the Toyota issues but was never in the market for one anyway. And maybe from now on I will only note models that look really bad and avoid them. But as a guide on reliability in the past, my experience found them useful.

For sure it is tricky to get long term reliability based on single inputs. That is why I have found the April Consumer Reports used car survey so useful. They survey actual a large amount of owners of each model and year of quite a few vehicles and run the statistics on around about 10 different reliability areas such as engine, brakes, transmission etc.. That is where I see a huge history of doing it right for virtually all Toyota models and a few others that do not seem to get anything right.

I am sold as well. I snatched the last Forester stick shift made as a special order 6-speed from Japan. Now they all have an automatic with variable ratios that nobody likes. I think some of their other models are still available in stick shift however. The Impreza a 2018 is a little more fun to drive then the Forester but it is a five-speed so I have to be careful not shifting it into sixth which is actually reverse. That could get pretty noisy. But an awful lot of people have grown up now with really lame handling front-wheel drive cars so it is no wonder that there are less enthusiasts around anymore. I'll stick to my seven for fun. But I do like the idea of the BRZ so if the Impreza ever has to go I might get one of those