xflow7

Gert said: Well you said your Escort's on engine number 2. What exactly is your definition of break down? http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/images/emoticons/biggrin5.gif I keeed...I keeed... (I can poke fun because I put a new engine in my 318ti 2 years ago)xflow72006-09-02 10:46:04

I just changed tin-tops from a '97 318ti to an '06 A3 2.0. The A3 is a ball to drive although I had two run-ins with VAG quality control in my first week of ownership. The glovebox latch was flakey from day 1 (fixed with a new glovebox assembly) and the seatbelt warning light/chime operates backwards for the passenger seat (pax leaves their belt off, no warning; buckles up and warning comes on). New seat sensor module to be installed next week hope that fixes it. The new 3-series is really nice. I was pretty close to getting a 330i Sport, but finally decided I wanted to stay under 30k. Interesting you mention the Fit, Al. I was actually thinking about going that route and didn't for no particular reason; didn't even go drive one, but they look like a pretty reasonable daily driver if you have something fun tucked away in the garage.

Hi Steve, Thanks for the response. Don't think the picture worked (at least I can't see it here). I'll PM you with an email address you can send the pic to. Thanks, Dave P.S. Go Red Interiors! http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/images/emoticons/hurray.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle"> xflow72006-08-31 17:20:59

(possibly only live axle cars). Since my car was repaired and they re-installed the inner panels in the cockpit the driver side panel edge overlaps on the outisde of the aluminum foot box as seen here: >http://tinyurl.com/ko53n You can see the unused holes at the very forward edge. There do not appear to be holes behind these that it would have been fastened to (presumably why they did not rivet that edge. I can't remember for certain how it was pre-repair, but I have a hunch the interior side panel should be between the aluminum footbox and the frame. It's not too big a deal, but my foot occasionally catches the exposed edge as I come off the clutch and I don't ever remember that happening before. Can one of you kind souls have a peek down in your Caterham's footbox and tell me which way it should be? Cheers, Dave xflow72006-08-31 04:55:04

I haven't gotten one in the Seven. I did have a near miss where I came zooming around a corner on a rural road around here only to see a state trooper's car coming the other direction as I exited. "Oh no, I'm hosed!" I thought. But he just put his arm out the window and gave the universal sign for "take it easy" as he drove past. http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/images/emoticons/hurray.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle">

Wow. That's a cool story, especially how you ended up buying the very car that first attracted you. I love stories like that. So, another FSAE grad here, huh. I was Cornell '95 and '96. Can't believe the hours I put in then while managing a full class-load. Embarassingly, I now live in Ann Arbor, but haven't been over to visit the competition since I've lived here. That's on the agenda for next year. Dave

Major league long shot here, but does anyone happen to have a redundant FIA roll bar for a Caterham live axle (L/C) chassis, perhaps from conversion to a cage? xflow72006-08-25 18:14:35

http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/images/emoticons/biggrin5.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle"> Fabulous. This has to go on Cherik's Anecdotes page: http://my.voyager.net/~quadrant19/anecdotes.html Dave

I'm a Mechanical Engineer by background (although I'm playing an EE on the TV show known as Work right now.) http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/images/emoticons/wink5.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle"> I was 13 or so when I first became aware of Sevens. Car and Driver had a feature on kit cars with a Caterham SuperSprint along with an AC Mk IV (V?) a Beck 550 Spyder and I think something else. The Caterham was my instant fave. The fact that it was so cool-looking, so quick, so blessedly simple and the cheapest of the lot to boot was too much for me. I was in love. Anytime any magazine had an article about a Caterham I'd read it almost daily for a month. At some point in college or shortly thereafter I was home visiting the folks and caught the briefest glimpse of a Caterham or Lotus 7 zipping away from a traffic light. My first spotted! Right after college and starting work I got in touch with the then-distributor down in Georgia (can't remember the name now) and got them to send me all the information they could. I was going to have one, dammit! Of course I couldn't afford it at the time. I asked a couple of banks about financing one. You can guess the responses. So I waited 5 or 6 more years and in the meantime moved to Canada for a couple of years for work. I was single, no kids, getting a 5% premium for international assignment and benefitting from a friendly exchange rate and a generous tax adjustment from my employer. Though not a goal at the beginning, towards the end of my 2 years there in 2001 I realized I had put away enough cash to buy a Caterham (a cheap one at least). I got my first ride (and soiled trousers) when I flew to Nebraska to look at one (funny the things you'll do for these cars), nearly bought a SuperSprint Classic that Dave LeBrun had built, though he sold it before I made a decision, and finally made arrangements to buy a Live Axle kit from Autocourse and a 1700 XFlow from Marcovicci-Wenz Engineering. Kit was delivered October 22, which was both my mother and g/f at the time's birthday. G/f was understanding about having her b-day dinner a day early so I could focus on figuring out how to transport the boxes through my apartment complex when they arrived the next day among a bunch of cars on a full-size transporter. (Her remark upon seeing the kit partially unpacked in my garage was "You paid money for this?!" Didn't disclose how much http://www.usa7s.com/aspnetforum/images/emoticons/biggrin5.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle">) I built the car over the winter and had my dream car at age 27, 14 years after the beginning of the affair. I haven't racked up the miles that some have, but my 7200 miles or so have brought me all kinds of fun and excitement (some not requested; read deer). OT a little, I'm really looking forward to the prospect of a bona fide Sevens club in the US. I have a good friend who's also a car guy and has been with me to the USGP gathering a couple of times and he's said on several occasions how impressed he was by the camaraderie and inclusiveness among the Seven owners there when compared with other owners groups he's come across in the past. Sorry that went so long! I can also be a loquacious SOB sometimes! Dave

Disclaimer: I am not an expert As far as I'm aware, the general consensus is that absolute values from a compression test don't indicate much of anything due to variation between gauges and the fact that the compression test is done at cranking speed and so doesn't account for the fact that different spec engines are tuned for different rev ranges, etc. For example, a really highly tuned engine might have a silly amount of valve overlap leading to low-ish absolute numbers at cranking speed. Having said that, for the same engine, at the same spec, with the same gauge, at the same atmospheric conditions it probably stands to reason that if all the numbers are equal, but 20 psi lower than they were the last time it might be an indication of the engine going off a bit. As for diagnosing the problem, it might behoove you to do a leak-down test with which you can much better pinpoint whether a loss of compression is a valve problem or a ring problem. Dave

I like locostV8's LSiS definition as well. I read the Limited Membership Required statement to mean only that in order to benefit from the club, one must be a paying member; not that there needs to be any particular requirement that must be satisfied in order to become a member. But I may be wrong about that. Dave

Admin Edit: Moved part about the links page to: >http://www.usa7s.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=153&PN=1 As for the other issue on the table, count me among those in favor of keeping the club inclusive. For me personally, as a Caterham owner, there is maybe a benefit to being formally affiliated with L7CGB for access to Blatchat and the resources of an additional established base of owners for Caterham-specific issues. Having said that I do view the attitudes of some members over there towards other similar vehicles with some distaste and am completely in favor of making it a standing principle of a US club (be it affiliated or not with L7CGB) that it would not be brand specific from a membership or event participation perspective.I very much like Al's concept of the LSIS (or whoever coined that) for the purposes of establishing the boundaries of the club. Sure, there may come a point in time when additional clarification is needed to determine what is an LSIS and what isn't, but it seems to me that at the moment that it is fairly clear. It's sort of in that category of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" and I've a feeling that most of us, shown a bunch of pictures of little sportscars, would point to the same ones as LSIS's.Logistically, I think there is an argument for some division by marque for Tech Forums (at least once participation really picks up), although with the number of different types of LSIS it becomes difficult to not end up with some silly number of categories. But maybe something like:Birkin TechCaterham TechLocost TechUltralite TechWestfield Tech(don't be offended if I forgot your LSIS)Powertrain Tech (given that many of us, irrespective of chassis, are running the same lumps, gearboxes, and maybe diffs).I will also stay out of the show discussion as that's not really my thing.Daveslngsht38933.8230787037

Personally, I think this would be a very good idea for 3 reasons: 1) In my experience some specialty car insurance companies and state DMV's like to see formal club membership as a sort of a "check" on the validity of a person's claim that their car is special and deserving of being treated as a collector or specialty vehicle. I think having a recognized US or NA club that a new owner could join and point to might ease the registration and insurance procedures depending on where they live. 2) Having a formal(-ish) club might open up additional opportunities for group discounts and such and ease organization of group trackdays, tours, etc (although it appears the reception of the 7-7-7 gathering has been very good even without a formal club affiliation). Anyhow, I believe these sort of benefits would entice more people on this side of the pond to join the Lotus 7 Club who can't quite justify paying full membership only for Low Flying and BC access. 3) Currently there are several good US Seven-related web sites and forums, not to mention the e-mail list, but as a new owner, or one not previously engaged with the online community it can be difficult to become aware of all of them. Now, I wouldn't necessarily advocate that they all be merged and lose their identity or anything like that, but I think having some kind of a central "official" US club site and forum (either stand-alone, or as part of the mothership) would help to further build on the community of Seven owners over here. Individual local sites could be accessed from the US chapter site for region-specific stuff, but the central site would provide a ready, "one-stop-shopping" resource for current, new and prospective owners. It would be a logical place for US-specific Seven-ing FAQ's and such. All just MHO of course. Dave