jimrankin

Hi WT, Unless I missed it somehow everyone seems to have avoided the question we all probably wanted to ask, "and how much did this set you back"? It always seems to go back to the old adage, "If you want to outrun the guy with more cubic inches you'll have to spend more cubic dollars".

I have the same props and they have been fine.

Things could have been worse if it were a "7" as we sit even closer to our fuel supply, cell or tank, it's right behind your head. Lets face it, any even slightly modern design puts the fuel tank as buried inside the crash zone as possible just to keep the impacts to the car from rupturing it. Our cars put "us" in that zone so getting the tank as far away from the motor is about all that's left from a safety standpoint. Our cars being "light' is the only advantage we have. The lack of mass makes it easier for our cars to be "pushed away" from the impacting cars mass without as much crush to the body. I elected to have my cell up against the passenger compartment barrier so I have at least a few inches to crush before it gets to the cell. I've seen several different 7's that use the lower area behind the differential for their cell, or worse, fuel tank. gives you more trunk space but it really puts the tank as the very first crush zone. As far as carrying an extinguisher goes, great for keeping a small electrical of even a small engine fire from spreading but if the cell ruptures forget it. Part of the 7 trade off for fast fun. Won't stop me from driving but I do know there are drawbacks ;-).

Back in the '80's I was worried that all our local manufacturing was leaving for Japan and a few other smaller Asian countries. When I mentioned this at a project meeting with the principal of a large silicone valley company he said " Don't worry about Japan, they have honor and laws. China is going to be the problem because they have neither and no concern for their own common people, much less anyone or anything else". Seems he was pretty spot on. I have watched two friends businesses go down the drain from having exact duplicate products, made in China, take away all their foreign sales. They can spend a lot of time and money fighting the imports to the USA but obtaining foreign patents for every country you are selling to is too expensive and time consuming and you usually cant stop the imports while your fighting them to quit. My entire extended family decided to quit giving Christmas gifts (except to the younger children) quite some time ago, basically because we had a hard time finding ANYTHING that wasn't made in China. You even have to be careful when buying Christmas cards, even the expensive ones are most often made in China. Blame whoever you want, lawyers, big business, liberals, conservatives, welfare, you name it, but the real truth is that we bought it and wouldn't spend the extra few percent it would cost to make it here. Now that we can't make so much of what we want here anymore were stuck with buying Chinese's or going without, ad we all know how the average American feels about going without.

In the early 1980's a fellow sub contractor got stuck unpaid by a fly by night home builder. When he was contacted by the guys wife about signing off on his mechanics lien on the houses she offered him a gullwing as payment so she could sell the houses as they were. He looked at it and it was in good shape but he didn't go for it because she didn't know "if it ran or not" and the battery was dead. He ended up with zero dollars out of the bankruptcy and is still kicking himself in the butt every time someone mentions one.

Wind is free fuel to make electricity for our future electric 7's! If that's your Hobie 18 in the avatar you can understand just how powerful a bit of wind can be. Raced my 18 #4582 for years but unfortunately I'm not any better with a rudder than I am with a steering wheel so nothing in the trophy case but dusty space ;-(.

It's not that I haven't had my share of power tools with blades type injuries, I just wanted to add a new dimension, air hoses!! I happened to bend down over a portable compressor I was using to move it out of my way when "WHAP", the air hose with 125Lbs. of air in it popped out of the cheap Chinese quick disconnect and whipped me across the face. BTW, I have a portable compressor for sale cheap, only a couple of dozen ball peen hammer marks on it.

SOMEBODY BUY THIS CAR!!!! Sorry to hear you have to sell. You should find a way to link this site to your ebay add so lookers could get an idea of what these cars are all about. If I didn't already have one I would have been on it in a second at the original 25K. I almost missed buying the one I have and in retrospect missing it would have been a bigger loss than I could possibly have imagined at the time. I have now and have in the past had some really fun cars but this one "takes the cake" by a mile. The WCM's have probably the highest powered stock, lowest maintenance and most bullet proof drive trains of any 7 clone on the market. Four years of track (the car is so much better than I can drive it and were still fast as all hell) and street driving mine and I'm still looking for any excuse to get in it and grin away.

Just rent a car trailer, cheap and easy if your not going to make this a more than once in a while thing. Good rental yards have low ones that either articulate to a slope or come with LONG ramps that slide back under the trailer deck. If your going to be doing it often with the same truck (or similar) you can find on line (or have made to fit) "two part" ramps that either fold at a center joint of lock together to give you a long ramp that folds to half the length. Sorry to say that sometimes looking at doing it the "cheapest" way is often more expensive and time consuming than just doing it the best/easiest way.

Since the rear mounting bolts go through rubber grommets and the front is a single center mount you are going to still have a lot of torque twist unless you also add a differential brace like most of us who seriously beat the cars have had to do. I tried to upload a photo but it wouldn't let me because it was already in a previous thread called "reverse lights". It will be the red inverted "V" shaped item if you find it on here.

I used the shop in Santa Cruz a few years ago. I was the first SB100 he had done and I had luckily brought a lot of the SB100 paperwork and the 1960 auto requirements (used for 0000 year on kit cars) part of the DMV material with me. He could not find a stamped "minimum" thickness on my obviously new Wilwood rotors and almost failed me on that but relented and wrote "new" in the requirement box. Had me drive the car at speed and stop it with the emergency brake which only passed after I set the mechanical Wilwood single rotor caliper so tight it dragged and had to reset it before I drove home. Really did a thorough inspection making sure all my lights had DOT emblems and my headlights were aimed properly. checked for dash warning lights for the emergency brake and high beams and made sure my reverse light was operated by the transmission. If you have it all working it's not a problem, got passed after about two hours, but you might want to go where the operator isn't quite as diligent.

Had a blast at the WCLM in Tahoe. Perfect weather and a really beautiful area at just the right time of year. Summer tourist gone and too early for any snow so not a lot of crowds or traffic. Quite a lot of road construction but most of it wasn't on the great twistys so other than a bit of "waiting for the pilot car" nearer town all was good and some breathtaking views and "spirited" driving. And, no one snubbed my non lotus 7!!!!

A "how hard could it be" attitude.

14 broken bones? What did you fall from, the third story roof?????

Anyone else need a lift to LOG? We can take BusaNastra's advice and squeeze in one or two more ;-)

If your close enough to a racetrack that has a pro shop your best off trying on driving shoes as the size given for each manufacturer varies and a lot of them are given in "European" sizes that don't translate to an exact American numeric number. Also a lot or different "feel" to shoes when you walk in them. Some are pretty much "car only" and a good walk down a long paddock is about the comfort limit, others feel almost like regular shoes. As far as "trying them on at the store and then buying them on line" goes try to keep in perspective that the few bucks saved my be what causes you to not have a brick and mortar store to go to next time you need something you need to try on. And if you think shoes are a guess on line, try ordering a driving suit. On the other hand, if you don't need fire retardant shoes you can find some really comfortable "moccasin" style shoes that don't have a lot of extra sole that are just as narrow as the driving shoes and have a lot of pedal feel. I have driving shoes (Simpson) and some mocs (Dexter) that are the same width and feel about the same in the car. Whatever happened to the $3 lace up summer sneakers of my youth? No extra rubber goo-gahs stuck all over them to make them look "athletic" and soles so thin you could feel both pads on the bike pedal.

How do you put two 11' cars into a 20' trailer. Easy, just count them as 10's and "carry over" the tires. Hum, not as clear as I thought, maybe I should have taken more math and less philosophy.

I've been to several "Lotus" events with my "second least a real 7" WCMS2K (I think Storkers will now rate as "first least a real 7") and never had anyone fault me or the car. Maybe it's just a west coast thing but the members I've met are much more "car people" than "Lotus Snobs" and I've had great fun at every event. Going to LOG in a week and bet I find the same acceptance for my clone as I always have. If I didn't already have way too many cars, boats and motorcycles I'd probably be like most of the other Lotus owners I've met and have a couple of them, usually at least one of them not running at the moment and not too concerned about it. LOL.

My new shocks required larger springs and I was also going stiffer front and softer rear. The heim type end on one of the QA's was about to fail and another was getting loose so it was more of a "need" than an upgrade.

I'm debating the need for drilling some cooling air holes in the bucket. There should be enough exposed metal in the headlight bucket to radiate heat to the outside air. The LED's produce less heat than the H4 Halogens they replaced and the fan is just to move air over the heat sink at the base of the bulb. When I get the chance I'll drive around in the heat of day and see if the bucket gets too warm. Mostly will have the lights on when it's night so probably cooler air moving over the bucket.

I wanted to keep my headlights with the LED ring turn signals so went with the "New Bright's LED" replacement bulb units. Lot of stuff to fit into a standard bucket but it all went in OK. Replaced my H4 Halogens. Haven't been out at night, or even aimed them yet but look pretty bright in the garage. The light has a separate ballast and a fan at the back plus all the wiring to stuff in. I decided to pop rivet the ballast in place as it seemed too heavy to just stick in with tape or try to make epoxy work on the round bucket and square ballast.

I'm now running different springs and shocks (had the QA -1 7/8" set up). OD on the new springs is 2 3/4". Have three track days on the new set up and nothing touches even with a passenger at speed on track. I think anything up to 3" OD will fit but will be very close under max compression.

From the three S2K's rear suspensions I've seen it's pretty much mandatory that you go with a narrow body shock and spring. I had to stay that route when I changed and I know RNR had the same problem, don't know his exact fix for his contact under suspension travel. I'm not sure that there was ever an "exact" location for the suspension pick up points on an S2K, more like every car was a beta test....

did an upgrade on it when I downloaded the Gopro movie maker (which being a computer illiterate I don't use). I got two complete track session from my turn on to my turn off and several other sessions where it went on/off at random. Does the beep when I turn it on but obviously its got its own thing going. May be time for a Hero 3 as the main camera and stick the Hero 2 somewhere else on the car. Only bothered with the 2 because it had the outside "stereo" mic port. Still have never heard from Gopro on how it's "stereo" since their Cineform and my Windows Movie maker only sees mono from my stereo mics. Does eliminate the wind noise problem from using the camera mic so it was worth it.

I'll give it a try. Was on track at Sonoma and at Thunder Hill in the pat week and both times did it again. Batteries fit so tight they have to be slapped out but who knows. Has a couple of cars do some spectacular dust cloud offs right in front of me and both times the camera wasn't recording. Bummer. Going back to TH on Thursday so will check it out (yeah, I know, I'm a track whore ;-))