jimrankin

If you want to spend days of frustration surfing the web sites try to find a set with the right staggered widths, staggered offsets and the 5X100 pattern. I can find literally thousands of rims out there for my Camaro or MINI, have bought plenty for both with no problem. I almost did what RNR did and bought two "almost matching" front and rear wheels. With the different offsets you really don't notice that his don't match. I probably should have gone to narrower rims, found a lot of those, but wasn't sure about going to narrower tires as I had a set of 205's already and found them to be too narrow. I have a set of 6 1/2" rims they were on but 205 is about the tire limit for them.

Well, as usual I procrastinated until I was too late to wait any further so saw a Tire Rack "Sale" and just shopped. Haven't killed my NT-01's yet but have several track days coming up and wanted to save them as my year round street tires while they still had a fair amount of tread left and weren't heat cycled out. Tire Rack has the 17" Enkie Tengin Tuner wheel available and since I just haven't found any 5 X 100, 8"-9" X 15" wheels that will fit I broke down and ordered a set of the 17's. 8" -35 / 9" -45, so pretty close to what I have now with my Team Dynamics. Went with B.F.Goodrich R1-S slicks in 235 front, 255 back. 275 would probably fit but the 275 NT's are really close to the fender lip and I'm not exactly sure that the tire profile may be a bit more "square so better safe than sorry. Going to be a couple of weeks before I get the wheels and tires here and on the car so probably not in time for my next track day. As soon as I get them on and run a few sessions I'll post my own humble opinion of the tires and what I feel they have, or don't have, over the NT-01's, which I do like.

RSS, Did they give you a shipping method? What size wheels did you end up ordering? JR

I have noticed that a lot of newer cars come with PLASTIC centering rings that seem to only function as a place holder for the wheels until the lug nuts are torqued down. On something as light as a 7 I don't think any centering would ever be needed as the stress on the lug studs is going to be very limited unless you actually hit something, and then even a centering ring may not be of much help. A lot of the aftermarket cast wheels come with large center radius, probably so they fit a lot of different cars with the same bolt pattern but different center bores.

We tend to forget that our 7 clones are pretty much "gutted" cars with nothing that isn't needed for making it just run and meet legal requirements added. You can get as fast, or even faster, by buying a really beat Mustang/Camaro or other "performance" car and without spending gobs of cash make a 300-400 cubic inch American V8 into a gutted out well handling track monster. Having said that, I still prefer my S2K over a friends modified Z06 I have driven in the past. (REALLY good friend, told me quit driving it like a puss and go out and beat it, it can take it). Nice having the power keep coming on and almost no aero drag or lift at 100++ but it just doesn't have the 7's thrill of sitting where you can touch the track surface and feel like your part of the machine. But unless your 7 clone is really powerful it's hard to make up in the corners what you will lose to the V8's on the straights. It might be a problem with "correctly" remembering fun from my youth but some of the most fun I ever had in a car (including the 7) was racing friends late at night on hilly twisty back roads with my modified MGA 1600 in the late 60's/early 70's. Such a forgiving plain fun car for a young dumb driver.

The rear hubs have so little area for centering that they would not give any appreciable support. The front wildwood hubs are tapered cone with radius at the mating surface so machining to tolerance would be complicated if possible at all. I have a lot of track and road miles and worn through two sets of tires on my Team Dynamics wheels and have had no problems with lug centric centering. I was really pleased with the wheels but due to no "blanks" being available I had to wait months till the next casting cycle. After they were made they shipped by SLOW boat and took weeks to get to me. I was not asked if I wanted to pick a different shipping mode but could not believe that air was not used on a light fairly expensive product.

I have the stock exhaust system with the tip turned at 45 degrees (half way from straight down to straight out). The tip ends 10" from the rear fender and I have never had a complaint about fumes. Noise yes! Remember that as you turn it more out than down the car is going to get "louder". Could be a problem if the tracks you go to limit DB.

There was a previous thread "looking for a quick alternative", I believe, that shows a mount I made to get by a "fix-it-ticket" from a very uptight Fremont CA cop who stated "if I had my way none of these kit cars would be on the street". 45 minutes of going over the car and all he could find was no front plate. I'll see if I can find the post.

We get the same thing here in NorCal about October of every year. Go up into the lower Sierra for the really fun twisty back roads and they (tarantulas) are everywhere. Kind of adds an "autocross" event to the drive by missing them but hitting one of these "cones" cost more than a one second penalty when you go to clean up the car, messy little buggers!! I was told that the female tarantulas stay put their entire lives but when a male get to be fully mature he will go on a "walkabout", stop eating, start walking and just mate with as many females as he can come across until he drops dead. Not sure my informant had it right but if so they are obviously REALLY dedicated to preserving the species.

Motorcycle helmets are tested for a single impact only, autos for repeated impacts. I heard a story, probably not based in fact, more urban legend, about a guy looking at cheap helmets at a motorcycle bealer who knocked one off the shelf and it split cleanly in two at the badly mated center seam. Clerk looked at him and said, "guess it was dropped once already". I'll bet whoever he was it moved him up a few price catagories. LOL.

I find it amazing that they have been able to get the Detroit Iron to actually work that well on track. Most of them can stay in front if they get the high HP to the ground at the start (if they don't blow the first turn as boxologist noted). Since most "sporty" American cars (60's to '00 at least)started out with the design concept that to sell enough units it also has to be able to double as a "middle aged buyers grocery getter/kid hauler" your not starting with a great platform. The show sucks as a "show" but gets you some idea of the fun of a track day. Liked the face slap way of stating "race me but don't dent me". LOL

All I want to know is if that extra hour of sunlight is going to help our local XXX plants grow quicker (medicinal use only, I always try to feel as normal as possible, at least normal for the Bay area anyway, after use) If not I'll still keep the extra hour and use it for drive over the hill to the tasty waves. :-)

There are pictured of the dif brace in a thread titled "Ultralite impressions" on this site.

This works for S2K's and is simple. I don't have any experience with other 7 types but the same basic idea should work with any IRS as there is usually a frame rail just in front of the diff and through bolts or tabs to attach to.

Guess I'll try them again. Been involved in so many other projects that the poor S2K is still sitting on it's miss-matched tires and and I didn't get to a couple of other mods to it I had planned for this winter. Probably just going to track it the way it is and do my best to avoid any off tracks due to the understeer problem of very old tires in front and brand new in back. Went from snap oversteer to slight understeer when I put on the new rears. Fronts had a lot of tread left and felt really stuck till I changed the rears. Kind of liked the oversteer better. LOL.

If you print out the owners manual for an I-POD it runs 65 pages. Any guess on how many tons of paper the manual for all the systems on this would run? :-)

From track day experiences I can say that most of the basic four cylinder 7's seem to be fairly close in TRACK performance. A little gain with IRS over a traditional axle but that is more of an advantage on our poorly maintained back roads, not on most tracks unless your really using ALL of the available curb. Some advantage to having motors with more rounded HP and torque curves like the Ford motors.(Stupid Stupid Honda V-tech bothers me no end on the street but is easiier to deal with on the track, just keep it near the red line at all times LOL.) Has more to do with how much time and money you have to spend on trying different springs, shocks and tire/wheel combinations. I was at the latest Golden Gate lotus Club track day at Laguna Seca and rode in a fully sorted track only Birkin that made my S2K (street tires, cheap shocks, too stiff springs, hack driver) feel like a mini van. If you do all that sorting out on an S2K it would probably make a basic Birkin feel the same way. I think the consensus is that you are going to have to sit in them for fit and feel and if possible drive/ride with some current owners(at the track if possible since that is your objective) before you can really make an informed choice. Even then, what you get may be either better or worse than the same brand different motor/suspension tweaks. Keep in mind that you may buy it for the track and discover that you just can't get enough of it and start using it on the street even though it wasn't your original intent. Buying a 7 you can't get registered for street use may be something else to keep in the back of your mind with your final decision.

Been building motorcycles, cars, trucks and boats as hobbies ever since I figured out I didn't have the coins to pay someone else to do it and didn't always think that the ways I was seeing things done agreed with my own perspective. That said I also think some of the fab work I see on this forum is way above me, pretty ingenious and sometimes downright awsome.

When I bought it from Chad I took it home and started going through it and discovered a whole lot I wanted to do diferent. Ended up taking it apart more and more till I had it apart to where I could pretty much see what to put back as it was, what to put back for now and change later, what to change right away and what to think about for a while. Every car is different and everones idea of what they like is as individual as they are. I have hundreds of pictures of what I have been doing to pretty much everything but the basic kit parts and I'm still not close to through. It's cheaper to buy a car built by someone else as they aren't worth close to the price of the parts when you sell them and in most cases you get to see what works and what doesn't without doing it twice yourself.

The ones I used look like the picture you posted other than they have two mounting holes in the base rather than the single stud shown. Use two fasteners per post of your choice. Came with small stainless steel wood screws as they were also a boat supply based purchase. I used pop rivets with backers to attach the new bases. I drilled out the old pop-on base and since the new grommets were larger than the old snaps the damaged area where they had pulled through was replaces with the larger grommet. I am not in the top frame tube, just snugged it up as high as I could, the very short pop rivets are just touching the tube as it rolls away from the skin.

I called my snaps "directional" but what I meant was that they are the "turn one direction to lock and the other to release" twist post.

Those posted so here are a couple more. Fabed a light ga. aluminum stand offs and backer ring for the hatch cover pieces to mount on. The boot cover was getting a bit loose so I made mounting "brackets" at back and front and some lexan strips that are just long enough to want to bow up and kep the cover tight. No movement of the cover fabric that I can see, although I'm not looking "back" much at high speeds. LOL.

I had the pop-on round snaps and had a problem after a while with a couple of "harder to unsnap" ones starting to pull out of the fabric. I replaced them with the directional and no more problem and more secure. The big problem was alway having to unsnap to refuel, whick seems like ever few minutes at the track. I'll see if I can post pictures of my "final solution". The high strength plastic "hatch cover" from a boat supply store just twist off with 1/8 of turn and I have instant access to the fuel cell. While doing this I moved the cell all the way to the right side and added a zipper on the left for easy access to the new "luggage area".

Did they make him buy it? Back in my days as a youth the usual statement when some one wanted to drive the car you were selling "hard" it was "Ya break it, you bought it!. LOL.

I emailed Bogart about weights and cost for my S2K. Have not heard back yet but think they will be in the same range as other "custom" wheels. It's not impossible finding wheels for the 5X100 pattern and required off sets, it's finding a set that is at least "somewhat" light that is afordable. Lots of choices when your up around $400-$500 per wheel. Since most non-"racing" wheels are designed with enough strength to run on anything short of an HD truck and in more common offsets and patterns it does narrow the field. I'm running Team Dynamics wheels that were a bit heavy but pretty reasonable, however they did take over six months to actually arive, and then were not machined correctly for the center bore to fit the Wilwood hubs. Thankfully, it only took opening them up to the Wilwood size. Thanks for the tip, hope they come back with good weights and not too expensive to risk on "offs".