pethier

Thanks. Well, the SCCA moves in mysterious ways. captain pabst, apparently your 420R on Yokohama 052 tires will be welcome in XU! I'd suggest those tires would be the best one-tire choice for street, autocross, and track. I'm not a big-track guy, but if you want to go faster on the big tracks, Hoosier A7, but I bet you already know all that. My further comments are at https://usa7s.net/ips/topic/15429-new-solo2-classes-for-7s/#comment-148809

OK, I am really surprised by this. I am an SCCA member, but I did not notice this in FastTrack or the reports on Nationals. Apparently, you can run stuff in XU that is not even legal in DM or EM. There, kit cars have to be allowed by name unless they are clones. I am reminded of an exchange on the old Prairie Home Companion radio show: GK: I'm told you have 13 children. Is that right? RM: No, but it's so. This actually would work for me in my local club, the Minnesota Autosports Club (MAC). We are not an SCCA Region, but we use SCCA classes. Every year, we send about 30 drivers to Nationals. Some are Land O' Lakes Region members and some are members of other regions. LOL does not run autocrosses in the Twin Cities, but has a sub-club or two in distant cities. The legendary Russ Wiles was thus technically a member of LOL, but I only remember him being in the Twin Cities once. I have been running in MAC's eXhibition class (for no trophies or MOWOG-series points) mainly for the reason that both my bone-stock Cayman and my Caterham are accepted there. When I had a Miata and a Caterham, I would run ether car in DM. Cayman is of course 900cc too big for DM. I think I am going to try XU this season. This also would work for me when I go on the road and stop off at SCCA events elsewhere. The autocross for the 2025 Lotus Owners Gathering in Texas used different classes of course, but if the XU/DM split had been in-place there, I would have been a close-second instead of a distant third. Both the Superperformance and my car would have been eligible for XU, and the winning 420R would have been DM due to its non-DOT hillclimb tires.

"Eligible vehicles: All production vehicles" I think you are going to run into problems with trying to run a Caterham in XU. The EM and DM rules seem to specify that Lotus 7 clones are not production vehicles and are specified as legal in EM and DM by designation. 18.1 MODIFIED PRODUCTION-BASED CARS A. Eligibility Modified classes D (DM) and E (EM) contain production-based cars which are permitted additional modifications beyond those allowed in Prepared classes CP through FP. Models must meet the requirements of Section 13 (first paragraph), [A Caterham is not going to skate as a car that was sold for regular street use in the USA] be specifically listed in Appendix A, [It's not] meet the specifications below, [See the "clones"] or be otherwise recognized by the SEB. [Nowhere I can find] 2. Clones Clones/replicas of SCCA®-recognized production cars are permitted to compete in DM and EM provided they comply with the following requirements: a. They are substantially similar to and recognizable as the original manufactured vehicle on which they are based. b. Their specifications do not violate any rule stated herein. c. A clone shall not benefit from kit car manufacturer “running changes” unless those changes have also been submitted and approved. I suggest if you want to continue this discussion, we ask that it be moved to the autocross area of the forum. The bottom line for the author of the thread is that as far as SCCA Solo events are concerned, a 420R is a D-Mod car regardless what kind of tires it wears. It can be run in DM with trick English hillclimb tyres, but those are not legal on the street in the USA. Same goes for Hoosier A7 tires, which won't heat in most autocross situations nearly as well as hillclimb tyres. I recommend Yokohama 052 tires, which will stick when they are cold and then heat nicely. They are legal for street use (and would be legal in XU, if the car was). I have Yokohama 052 tires on my Caterham, in a modest size to fit the Prisoner wheels.

Page Xtreme Street Unlimited (XU) High Performance vehicles with minimal restrictions • Eligible vehicles: All production vehicles using an automobile-based engine with seating for 2 or more adults • Windshield wipers are not required • In addition to the allowances earlier in these rules the following aspects of the vehicle are unrestricted: – Aero components – Interior modifications – Weight

I have a Cayman for chilly days and an F-150 for actual Minnesota cold. I use the top almost all the time. My Elise had a hardtop and I only took it off twice, to work on the interior.

They do make some noise. Getting the battery out of the line of fire can't hurt.

I don't know how a Rotus is configured, but on my Caterham with the hood off, my heater is out in the open just staring at me. I figure I could remove the heater and move the battery aft into the area vacated by the heater. That would partially make up for the extra poundage of the Zetec.

Cool.

I seem to remember that PCA does not allow Sevens for big-track events because they consider them open-wheel. No matter. In your neck of the woods, I expect there are plenty of organizations that do track days. The 420R seems the sweet spot for someone who wants to road-drive and autocross a Seven. It is legal for SCCA DM class. It's not going to win Nationals, but may dominate local autocrosses. Transplanting a 2000cc Zetec into my car is what I foresee for me right now.

The most-important part of any sticker or the like is the URL: usa7s.net The "net" is important. URLs in the USA seem to be .com or .org so I think getting the .net in there would be a good idea. If a representation of a car profile is used, the bonnet angle is a trivial concern, IMHO.

OK. I own a Zetec. I don't have it here at my house. I bought all the gasoline equipment from a friend who took it all out of his Birkin and is going electric. He was kind-enough to keep all the stuff in the loft over his workshop. I am getting my waterfowl aligned to make the swap from 1700 Super Sprint to Zetec. I now have new motor-mounts from England. I have another friend who owns a British-car shop. His specialty is putting GM V6 engines in MGB cars. I expect that I will be able to move the ex-Birkin parts and my Caterham to his shop sometime in May. Thanks to this forum, I have seen the notes of someone who has made this exact swap. He stated that he needed to remove the safety shroud for the cam belt to clear the nose. I see that has been done to the Zetec in your video. He also said that the front of the cam cover also landed under the nose. To get the nose to fit, he needed to trim the lateral fin on the top front of the cam cover by about 1/4 inch. This has not been done to the Zetec in your video?

There is always Lexan.

IMHO, a question like that deserves its own thread.

Just what I need. Turbo lag. /s

Fly your flag at the front.

Which engine is this?

I plan on taking out my heater. My first Caterham, a 1979 model, had no heater and I never missed it. I am going to guess that the outside slots in this photo are the where the hot air gets to the people's legs. Is the big round hole in the middle how the cold air gets to the heater? Where does this cold air come from? I assume that if I remove the heater I need to cover up all of the holes with aluminum.

Bingo. I changed the thermostat on my Elise. The original thermostat had a stupid seal whose only function was to become dislodged and block the thermostat open. Since changing the thermostat on an Else is a lot of work compared to most cars, I didn't want to go there twice. I did the saucepan test on the new (no stupid useless seal) thermostat before jacking up the car, removing the right-rear wheel, removing the alternator and other bits, etc.

This does not seem to be the case with my Caterham. The heater control on my car is a water valve on the heater hose. When the heat is turned off, the line is schematically "capped", not "looped", so if the heater is removed, the lines should be capped. The question for the current thread becomes: What sort of heater control does, or did, the subject car have?

I have an AGM-type battery in my Caterham. I have a 3-amp charger/maintainer which has two settings: Lead-Acid and Lithium I am assuming that the Lithium setting is the kinder/gentler setting and can't harm an AGM battery. Am I safe in assuming this?

The power port certainly came in handy while I was in Texas for the Lotus Owners Gathering last fall. You see, the battery in my iPhone SE was past its prime. I just got an iPhone 16 Pro. As many of you know, Apple retired the Lightning connector in favor of USB-C. The most-logical cables to use seem to be USB-C/USB-C. So I picked up three car-chargers with USB-C ports: one for 74PHIL, one for KMAN 2.9 and one for the motorhome. (The F-150 has a USB-C port.) Plugged one into KMAN 2.9. Tiny pilot light lit. Cable charged phone. Plugged one into 74PHIL. No light. Cable did not charge phone. Checked 5A inline fuse on the car. Blown. Opened box for third car-charger. Measured both car-chargers with ohm meter. Unit three tested open, as it should. Unit two did not. Replaced fuse and tried unit three in 74PHIL. Works fine. Unit two is going back to Best Buy. It was obviously not the best buy.

Thanks.

Yow! I bet that's a light motor, since an entire Super Blackbird only weighs about 500 pounds. What kind of turbocharger? How's the turbo lag? What kind of transmission? have you had the entire car on a scale?