slowdude

Topic one: Frame mounts and rust. After the drive from the port of NJ, I threw it up on jack stands in my garage and noted some gunk on the rear frame mounts. Being ever cautious, I grabbed a wire wheel and some POR15.. thankfully a lot of the crud in the first picture was just that, crud. In the second photo, I was able to find good metal underneath.. which is a huge sigh of relief. My plans to track this car would result in a bigger amount of work to be done. So far I am cautiously optimistic! Goal is to get the rear suspension pieces and brakes and then start replacing bits.

Hey All, Figured I'd document some surprises and minor repairs. Saw some similar pages so I won't document some of the plans. Please give me direct feedback if I am doing something wrong etc. It can only help. Background on the car: GBP crashed in Sept, and I took about 15k out of the market in August, so this was my end of honeymoon/wedding gift to myself (came back in early September). I had been looking at cars in the US for almost two years, lurking on posts etc. I came across a de dion for an affordable price and shipped it over. In hindsight I'd probably have someone else check it, but I figured it couldn't be too bad. So far it has not been.

Do you know how much these usually run? I'd do a day or two that weekend. If someone wants a crew to wrench I'd be happy to help. I'm no master mechanic but simple things I can replace etc.

Thanks Dez, Was just going to post a winter build assistance thread. I figure if people need an extra set of hands to do work on their 7, a few minds are better than none on the complex tasks. Maybe we can start up something like that. I do know a coworker has an S4 7 that he needs help with the rear end on, so I may use the 2nd garage space at my place to do two rear ends at once. I've also got a parts list going to Rocky Mountain Caterham & Demon Tweaks so if anyone is looking to order parts, we can pool and save somewhat on shipping.

It's OK if it's an ex racer driven on the street! No one will look down on you for it.. honestly, leaving it as is and street driving it is more awesome -> you're honoring the car's past. I was able to track down the original owner of my car. He had a few stories and pictures of how he took it to the 24 hours of Lemans with 3 other 7 owners. These cars are so bizzare, they have taken on lives of their own, and that's OK. These cars acquire stories of their own, and will probably live past our lives when taken care of. Don't worry about judgement, as a fellow 7 owner, I'd be super happy seeing that on the road.

The people on this forum are awesome. They put up with my intensity / dumb questions constantly so don't feel bad. We are all learning. I went to staples today and printed out the assembly manual for the car.. that wouldn't have been possible without this group of people scanning and uploading etc.

YOURE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE! I'm far from an actuary, the only thing this is giving me so far is a run rate / average sale count / average listing. All I can illustrate with some certainty is buying season, ie when in theory a 7 should be listed. I started going through and looking at how long the cars are listed for until time of sale. Next step might be price sensitivity- x% or dollar drop until time of sale. Again, this is suuuper elementary compared to your knowledge. In suppose in theory we could look at per period average sale price. Part of the issue as you have noted is quality of data. How do I quantify I wanted a de-dion in green but has the 5 speed instead of a 6 speed? There still isn't enough data. Was my 16k k series worth it when I have some rust repair to do? Does a clean registration have more value? We will never get clean enough data. Look forward to catching up with yall at one of the events and learning from the forum. There is so much knowledge here.

Carvana/Carmax are big indicators for the used car market. If they're buying, the OEMs assume customer demand is strong. I've been keeping an eye on late model Lotus/German cars. Given the stock market performance, these two may be looking to jettison inventory they have bulked up on by lowering prices. Less inventory carrying costs = reduced margin erosion for these big brands. Customer demand has subsided due to interest rate hikes (no shock), so overall the broader market is cooling. Coming back to 7's-> they're very similar to the high end motorcycle market. They're unnecessary to the majority of the population, expensive and impractical. In theory, the buyers of 7s will remain hungry for these vehicles due to the niche nature of the vehicles. I can say that during the last recession, expensive motorcycle sales remained flat. I'd say the average 7's buyer has some form of higher education, thus being more financially successful in a "traditional" sense. Of course there are outliers, but the barrier to entry in the 7 community is quite high. I certainly wouldnt be in it if the GBP did not crash to historic lows, and I grabbed maybe 95% of what I had been looking for a year/year and a half. People who want 7's will buy them. If you have 35k cash to buy a 7, you're doing pretty good in my book to buy a 7. Using the comparison to the motorcycle market (niche, expensive, impractical, but a riot), there is definitely a seasonality curve to the 7 prices, bulk up of vehicles in spring, tapering of sales by sept/oct. I am trying to put together a financial model based off of BaT data, which in theory could predict the price variations we would see from seasonality. When I've got it to a point where it's ready to be tested I'll toss it to all of you. If sales struggle in spring of 2023, and the used car market unloads excess inventory, our 7's may not be worth as much as we'd hope to be able to resell them for.

Best chance might be to watch the running for sale posts. I watched for over a year until I was able to find one I wanted. https://usa7s.net/ips/topic/9351-ebaycraigslisthemmingsmarketplaceetc-ads-lots-of-sevens-for-sale/page/169/#comments

Feels like this to me too. If you had a way for it to be inspected locally to verify it- would help (I'd be surprised if it existed etc). Did you check with the lotus 7 register? If that # is truly out there etc. Would debunk it further if it was crashed/written off.

Probably pretty well. The Cortina perhana had a V6 and I believe the Taunus is also structurally similar. Might go Barra I6 as they're pretty cheap.

If you want to go really crazy, check put the Ineos Grenadier. If I had 80k to burn I'd go that way. Fun X7 Fact- it is the same architecture as the Rolls Royce Cullinan. @Croc you really lucked out with the I6 vs the V8. Especially regarding residual. The V8s can be a typical British Car Experience (weeping oil etc).

Here is what got me into British Cars, my 1969 Cortina GT. Growing up in a household which didn't have spare income for classic / sports cars (or anything really), really pushed me into those "everyday hero" types of car. The econo-boxes that were put out there to race and be a bit of a marketing message. The aspirational, affordable, fun but practical and sporty car. It led me to the MK1 Cortina's, which are not cheap. So then I started doing some research and saw that the MK2's are pitifully cheap (and ugly some might say). I also liked their backbone for a lot of the British Sports car industry. Seeing the crossflow in the 7 etc. I found this car in Louisiana. It was in the Bay area for around 30 years (last registration was in 1994). I have the original title + blue plates from I think 73 or so. I knew it would be a long, slow slog, and be something my father and I could take time together to get it back together. I picked it up for cheap, almost too cheap, but here we are. At first I thought I would be able to do a mechanical refresh and get it back on the road and driving. That turned into tearing out the interior, then seeing the floors needed attention. So I need to put floors in, do the pinch weld around the windshield. Part of the rockers (and whatever else I find, I'm sure I will find some more). When taking out the interior, I noticed some of the wiring was shot, and decided to just tear it all the way down. Thankfully the car is super simple and parts are fairly affordable. I picked it up around 8 years ago and life happened (bought a house, got married) etc. I had to finish another project (77 CB750 given to me for free in parts), before I could take the time for the Cortina, as it needs some time. Fast forward to 2022, the CB750 is finished and running/riding... it's time to do some brief work on the 7 and then off to the races with the Cortina. I've been slowly accumulating tools over the past few years, picked up a cheap welder for sale, so I am going to try and get it into the garage, strip it further and start the metal work. I am a bit weary of this because I can tackle mechanical, but metal work seems to be a completely different beast. I look forward to it - working with my hands is a good way to get my mind off of excel and SAP. Engine is a Crossflow 1600, with the 4 speed and a 3.92 rear end. It turns a little bit, I'm expecting to tear into it. If its really bad i'll swap it for a Zetec or something. If I do, I'd let the crossflow go to someone here for their car. It wears its original (but faded) paint (Ermine white) and a red Interior. I'll strip it, clean it up, then repaint it (step above drivers quality - no concours ambitions here). If it's really bad I'll throw a cage in it and turn it into a track car. I'm excited to tear into this in 2023.. it's been waiting very patiently.

Wow, fantastic collection of cars from everyone here. I'm seeing a theme of RWD cars / great driving cars and then having a daily which isn't too mundane. I was fortunate to baby sit a 2020 Z4M40i for two years as my daily. Absolutely fantastic car / very slept on. Put about 25k miles on it before it needed to go to its next owner. It was a dealer reject, and someone at work reached out about putting some miles on it before sending it to auction... I wound up keeping it for two and a half years. I had an M340i before this, but the short wheelbase of the Z and rwd was always a treat. When it came to winter, I'd either work remote or borrow the the wife's Macan (also a fantastic car). I took the Z on a cannonball run to Florida one year, did northern NJ to Orlando in about 14 hours and it was surprisingly comfortable. The steering was a bit numb compared to a 7, and the wife's macan definitely has a better steering feel, but the Z was made to be a bit of a swan song to the roadsters for BMW. My understanding is that it was the pet project of an outgoing board member who wanted to have one of the last BMW roadsters be something truly great. I was sad to see it go, but I needed to pick up something a little more practical (4cyl 330i) to offset picking up the 7. Car got around 30mpg average and would light up the rear end, fantastic fantastic car, truly underrated. Zero reliability issues in the time I had it, no tire issues etc. I was really bummed the Z's are made in Austria and thus cannot get Individual colors.. otherwise I'd order this car in a dark green on cognac and have stuffed it in the garage. I miss this one. I have another longer term project car that I'll post in another post. It will be getting some love this spring after I pull apart the rear suspension on the 7 and deal with some minor rust issues (to be expected on a British car).

I'd stay away from the motorcycle comms unless you're wearing a helmet. I have a Cardo for my offroad / adventure riding and a sena for my touring bike. The Sena was fine for touring around Europe, I probably did close to 2k miles in three months and while it was louder on the bikes (BMW GS/RT), they both had pretty good wind protection which kept noises down. Honestly though, my sena setup is more quiet due to the helmet quality. Phone calls / music were pretty easy, and volume controls externally are a big plus. For the Adventure bike I have a more open/enduro helmet and the Cardo does alright. I went down to Tennessee and came back up through mostly offroad at 45 mph or so and it was pretty loud. I picked up a pair of nicer earplugs off Amazon for use under this helmet which helped a lot. Again, the bike at the time was a GS with a good amount of wind protection. I was able to take calls and play music, but the speakers were at their max and did not sound as good as the Sena with the Schuberth helmet. The Cardo speakers were definitely of lesser quality than the Sena, at least when I bought 3 or 4 years ago. It may have changed. Pivoting to the 7, the airflow is very different from a motorcycle - I find more side swirling in the 7 with the doors off, so road noise/air noise / car noise is more audible. To be honest I should probably test the motorcycle helmet with the comms and report back this spring. I should try a pair of over the ear headphones with a noise canceling microphone, but I think the air swirling in the cockpit may negate / tax the noise canceling microphone. On my drives to work I have worn eargasm earplugs ($15 or so on amazon), so I can still hear what the car is doing (etc what's that noise in the back etc). It cuts down on the wind noise and buffering. I fear that trying to go for as close to complete silence as possible may miss some of the things that draw us to the car. That being said, a motorcycle helmet with a comms system + ear plugs may work. You have Bluetooth / wireless mesh systems for talking to passenger (Sena and Cardo sometimes do not communicate well together, so stick with one brand if you do this). Shooting muffs are also a good option, I use them for leaf blowing and it helps a lot, plus no batteries to worry about. Could couple ear plugs with this and be fine / not worry about batteries. I hope some of this helps, as I am new to the 7 world, but perhaps the motorcycle comms may give you some direction on which way to go.

Hey All, Doing my semi-frequent pilgrimage up to Rhode Island from New Jersey. Does anyone need parts transported up or down? Probably leaving from Northern NJ tomorrow, and be back in about a week. Can go up to the Boston Area if needed. Willing to make stops along I95 in CT as well.

Welcome! Hope houses keep selling to give you money for the Lotus & the Caterham!

Love the leather hood strap. What color is it? Dark blue? It's fantastic!

Shame I can't comment on the original post. Looked like a fantastic trip. Turn 10 always catches me in simulators with its decrease. Do you have any advice for it? Pre-pandemic I was spending a decent amount of time in Europe for work and had the opportunity to do a few laps on the ring... a 7 at Spa is now higher on the list than it was. Great write up!

This is why I love this group of car people. Real world exeperience + pragmatism. I would imagine the parts are expensive for them. I was interested in the cage and plumbed in factory fire suppression. Good to know they're unpredictable/inconsistent. Absolutely not worth the effort.

My shipping quotes via my broker were roughly $1,700 for ro-ro, while container prices were still high, figure $15,000 for a container with maybe 2 cars in it. The hardest part I have had so far was the VIN check. The DMV was looking for 2 VINs, and I could only find the one. However, I have the original caterham invoice and build sheet from 95 which the local PD said was OK for the VIN check. I'd say if it was overseas and you had it built as a kit it may be harder? Funny you post a Ginetta. When the G40R's become available for import, I think that will be the next one for me.

Just did this. Bought at 1.07 - all in with insurance, shipping and brokerage fees I was under 20k. I used Inbound Motorsports in the NJ/NYC area. Highly recommend as they're bringing cars in constantly (over 25 years of course). RHD hasn't been a problem for the 120 miles I've done so far. Registration through RI hasn't had any hiccups. @Croc recommended that I did not register in NJ due to their RHD concerns, so definitely check the state. Any questions feel free to PM or we can hop on a call.

It finally came in. Going through the registration process now. Pardon the mess in the garage, and compared to the 3er daily, tiny. You know the 7 is tiny when even my daily is considered small.

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Gorgeous. The Lola's are supposed to be transcendent to drive. Please stick around the forum!