rnr

That is a v v nice trailer - if I didnt have one already I'd be all over it.

Are you sure the stall was due to low oil pressure? I had my oil pressure gauge crap out on me and it scared the hell out of me when I saw zero oil pressure at T2 at Sears Point. Immediately pitted and checked the car only to find out that the gauge was going bad and thus was producing faulty readings.

Here you go: http://usa7s.com/vb/album.php?albumid=12

Get lots of video and data logs

JimRankin counted input shaft bolts while I turned the rear wheels. One rear wheel rotation was 15 bolts which at 4 bolts on the shaft equates to 3.75-4 so we guessed it was 3.9. It is possible that it could be a 3.7 I guess. I just drove the car and verified that 70 mph (GPS) is 4100 rpm and 50 mph is just over 2800 rpm. I assume my gearbox is an AP1 as the original engine was an AP1.

I'm at 4k RPM at 70 as well which is interesting - I'll see if I can go out later today and remeasure just to be sure. My Elise is at 4k rpm at 75 as well so I dont have a problem with staying higher in the rev range on the street. My issue with going higher would actually be around using it on track - I'm already in 5th gear down the front straight and dont really want to have even more shifting. It would IMHO also be harder to optimize on track as well as you'd have to keep deciding which gear to take the corner as the vtech band wont cover long turns in the same gear. But I guess being data-intensive about that is what racing is all about.

Jim and I just measured the one in my car and its a 3.9. Seeing that I'm already revving high on street and track I'm not sure how people live with a 4.44 unless they have larger diameter wheels. The 4.11 would be as high as I would go personally.

Great price for the car. And it looks like the cage has a removable front hoop as well.

Thats is around what I'm at with 275/40ZR-17 rears. No idea what my rear end is but might just jack it up and find out when jim_rankin comes over tomorrow.

I went to school in Atlanta so I'm quite familiar with the area. You'll have a great time driving the Dragon

Congrats - where are you based? If you are going to track the car the car you should consider putting a diff brace in the back just to be safe.

Not sure what the final drive is but it is quite a bit quicker than the one jim_rankin has on his. 275/40/17 rears.

GPS verified 125 mph at ~8k rpm in 5th gear. This was over multiple (15+) laps on the front straight at Pacific Raceway. I wanted to do a few runs in 6th but had a mechanical before I could get around to it. I do have a cage and a full halo seat which will affect aero but I'd be very curious to see what other folks are getting.

Not a levante - it was a regular caterham that the owner put the RST V8 in. There is a NA V8 CSR under construction in San Diego right now, the owner expects to put down 400 hp.

I am not knocking the WCM S2K - just stating my opinion that the S2K will need non-trivial addition of power before it is as fast as an R500. My S2K tops out at 125 and will likely need another 40-50 hp to reach the R500s supposed top speed of 150. That kind of NA power increase in an F20C will be hugely expensive and that is discounting the other chassis items you may(will?) have to re-engineer to get to a fast and reliable track car. The WCM is cheaper and a great bargain but IMHO the R500 is also an excellent bargain for the relative "out of the box" performance it can acheive. To put it in computer terms I would say the S2K is Linux to the R500s OS X - it is cheaper and more customizable if your time is free.

Not even close. The S2K is a fat pig compared to an R500 and is not going to keep up without significant power additions and thats discounting the aero advantages of the Caterham. I've tracked my S2K against an R500 and its pretty demoralizing to see how it pulls away on the straights. A lot of the pricing of the Caterham is due to the additional engineering and support that goes into it compared to the other kits. This is not to say that the other kits are badly built but Caterham just has more resources and a larger install base to find, fix and amortize problems.

Moving to TN????????

Spare car Jim?

I like a shot that captures the front wheel as it shows both shock movement and slip angle.

Burnout vid? :-)

You might find that its quite a bit slower :-) My Seven is the "fastest" car I own but with the tiny fuel tank, noise and vibration I find that I stop much more frequently (~100 miles) which makes it also the slowest car that I own. When I drove SF-Seattle it took me ~13 hours to cover just 600 miles on day 1. In comparison when I drove the Elise I made the entire 800 mile trip in less than 12 hrs. Either way you'll have a fun trip and will really know the car well by the time you get home

AAA membership, impact rated sunglasses, lots of sunscreen, dont trust the gas gauge esp initially. If its really hot I'd suggest a cool suit but that is something that needs planning.

Just the enclosed wheels and suspension alone will create massively better aerodynamics. It may have slightly greater frontal area than a Seven but its coefficient of drag will be miles better.

Looks like the Aston CC100 concept but much uglier http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2810/9813354654_7f736179d0.jpg http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7311/9467846137_9f175f4721.jpg

A previous owner put very large shocks on my car and the left rear spring did originally touch the drive shaft at high load right handers. We were running the track in a new configuration and I attributed the resulting high speed jerk to a bad bump and only realised the problem when I got home. The point of this being that you will see wear marks on the driveshaft if there is interference and from experience I can say that minor rubbing did not cause the specific failure Jim had.