Klasik-69

On my S3, each knee panel had about 6 or 7 phillips head screws holding the panel. The only wire that got in the way was the one going to the heated screen feature. Getting the panel out took some turning and twisting, kind of like a puzzle but it does come out without having to bend it or deform it in any way. The reason why Scannon had issues with the wires that burned is because of the infinite wisdom of the British Lucas mindset, the power goes to the switch first and then to the fuse, which is kind of ass backwards. On the plus side, this gives every car a heater or built in bar-b-Q option that may not have come with one from the factory :smilielol5:

I agree with you on that. I was looking to see how it was done due to my own interest in doing my own car, but no supercharger installed on this engine. Perhaps he has a kit in his garage and it will go with the car:driving:

Well, OK, but where did I make a comparison to a Miata ? I mean I agree with you on the Miata. Mine is a full race SM with full cage, race seat, etc and I can't brag about the comfort factor either, especially since I do have a hard top which only makes it more cramped. On the hard top issue for a 7, if I remember right someone had a post with some pictures of 7's in Japan and they had cleverly made fiberglass tops for these cars. I thought they looked a little awkward but they were functional.

Maybe you've never worked on cars before but that doesn't mean you can't learn, and for the most part, it's not very difficult. The other big plus is that you have a whole forum full of very knowledgeable guys who can give you very expert advice on fixing most anything. I know I've benefited from them quite often. You should ask questions directly to Xcarguy about the size of the Stalker since he owns one. He should be able to give you a pretty good idea of the size difference and any advantages or disadvantages. Personally, I'm going to go over to the Brunton factory in a couple of weeks to see exactly what they have. I love my Caterham but the idea of 450 HP or more is slightly intoxicating. My advice to you on the windshield and attaching top cover, side curtains, etc. is forget it. I know I'm going to catch some Hell over this but this car is really a fair weather car. Yes, some guys do go on long trips and don't mind wearing the same pair of underwear for 3 days (wear, flip, flip, burn) :rofl:. Some people ride bicycles cross country too. Not me, and you've got the Cayman for those trips as well.

16' if you ever plan on reselling it. 14' is too restrictive. 7's and mini-coopers, but others won't fit very well.

Electric brake controllers are not a problem. Most U-Haul outlets will install one in most any vehicle. Cost varies according to quality. Some as low as $69, and some over $140, and really both do the same thing in a basic way. More important question, does your vehicle have the 7 pin trailer connector already on the vehicle ? If not, it will need to be wired up and that may cost you more than the brake controller. Most of today's full sized pickup trucks and SUV's have the wiring in place, some like the Ford F-150 with trailer towing package have the controller built in as well. Overall, not a problem to add whatever you need.

Kitcat listed every screw up I made. Were you riding with me ? Uncanny how you nailed every screw up possible. I got one better. My buddy put his Z06 in his trailer and drove 400 miles to Roebling only to find out when he got there that his car key(fob) was back home. Luckily, he left the window down on the car. He had to drive to the nearest Chevy dealer and buy a new fob, then wait over an hour to have re-programmed to the car. SO DON'T FORGET TO TAKE THE CAR KEYS TOO. One more thing I would recommend is an IR handheld thermometer to check the tire temps on the trailer, and at the same time, check the temp on the wheel bearings. Every hour or two when you stop, depending on how much tea or coffee you've been drinking, check the temp. It only takes about 45 seconds and will tell you way ahead of time if you've got a bearing starting to go bad or a tire with an issue. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. On the subject of trailer tires, most are made in China now and that is a big problem. Goodyear has one brand still made in the US but it is hard to get and it is expensive. Buy radial trailer tires. Don't install car or truck tires on a trailer, it doesn't work very well and will fail sooner than later. Keep pressures up to at least 45 psi. If near the load limit, crank that up to 55 to 58 psi. Low pressure kills tires by increasing the temperature. If you have electric brakes and a brake controller in the tow vehicle, take the trailer on a dirt road to see how active your trailer brakes are. If your wheels lock up too soon or too easily, adjust it so it doesn't or barely on dirt. On good asphalt, the braking will be better and it won't tear up your tires. Also, you'll prevent jackknifing the trailer if the road gets wet. Don't be afraid to test it out away from traffic to make sure it's good rather than waiting until you're doing a panic stop in traffic. Also, really big point that some have already brought out.............IT DOESN'T STOP AS FAST AS YOUR TRUCK ALONE. Allow more distance between you and the vehicle ahead of you. Also, other drivers can make your life miserable. They will pass you and then slow down in front of you. There is a temptation to drive up on their butts.................however as an old gentleman told me, you can't wrestle with a turd without getting poop all over yourself. Back off and live another day.

Yes, I bought the "Swift Hitch" a few years back when my truck did not have a back up camera. It's a little better than no camera but nothing like the truck's built in back up camera. Now I use it on the back of my big trailer when backing up. Not great but better than nothing

Tom is just outside of Charlotte, NC and we have a summer home in Murphy, NC so it's not that much of an issue to get it up there. And yes, I have seen other 7 variants with turbos and SC but most of these cars are a little different in the layout of the chassis/engine position. On the Caterham R300, there is very little room in front of the radiator, and at that, it is only on the upper 1/3 of the radiator due to the slant of the nose cone. I'm pretty sure that an intercooler would have to rest on the outside of the engine bay and be piped in. Here are a list of issues to overcome or deal with; 1) position/placement of the intercooler (either turbo or SC) 2) position of the turbo and its interference with the steering shaft on left hand steered cars 3) is the ECU capable of handling a turbo environment ? 4) is the radiator big enough to handle the extra heat developed by extra hp ? 5) is the powertrain able to handle the extra hp without reliability problems ? 6) will the gear ratios be adequate for road courses to allow the turbo to spool up so the power band is in line with the need ? That is quite a bit to overcome but I don't think it's impossible. I do think it will be expensive. Is it cost effective ? Not sure, depends on how much one wants the extra hp.

Tom, I highly respect your opinion and your knowledge on these. If I weren't racing the car and could spare it being idle for a bit, I'd run it up to you to see what you could do. I may well end up doing that after this season. Higher horsepower has never scared me away. Please don't misunderstand me to say you can't do it, I'm just saying I have yet to see one done on an S3 that didn't look like a frankenstein creation.

Last year I ripped off the left rear fender when I got a little too chummy with a cone at Talladega. After I called Caterham to see what that little itty bitty piece of CF cost ($600), I decided I would rebuild it in fiberglass. It was is about 5 or 6 pieces, hardly looked like a fender. When I got done, I repainted both sides even though only the left one got tore up. I compared the weight of the two, right one in CF and the left one all glassed up with fiberglass on the inside, it was hard to really notice that much difference. I doubt if the whole car would vary by more than 40 lbs one way or the other. Perhaps some of the body parts you're thinking of replacing can be fixed. It takes time and patience but the nice thing about CF and fiberglass is they don't bend, they break. So putting things back together is a matter of taping the outside, glassing the inside. It may save you a good bit of money.

Tom, I agree with you that turbos are the best way of getting more power without resorting to getting a bigger engine. However, on the standard chassis S3 Caterham 7 with the Zetec engine and left hand drive, I don't think it can be done in a clean way. The limited room on the exhaust side of the engine, the fact that the steering shaft runs right through there and the fact that there isn't enough room in front of the radiator for an intercooler are all the reasons you can't do it with grace. Yep, I've seen a car with the "external" look, the intercooler hanging off the side of the engine, an oil cooler on the other side just to balance off the messy look, exhaust plumbing that only Dr. Frankenstein could design, and a car that basically looks like it had a bad abortion in the last trimester.

If you look on the Brunton Stalker web site you'll see their single axle tilt bed trailer designed for these lightweight cars. I was going to build one like it but decided against it since I also tow my Vette or GTO. It is a nice design if you want a single axle lightweight trailer.

Nice work, that looks like a brand new trailer now. The only thing I could see that you could have done and not sure if you added it later is having brakes on both axles. Reasoning on that is if you lose an axle or wheel, you can run on just one axle to get home, and it would be nice to have brakes on that one just to be safe. That's why I had my trailer built with dual electric brakes. Also, it allows me to set the brake controller down to 7.0 for smoother braking. If I load a heavier car like the Z06, I adjust it to 7.5. Money wise, you made out pretty good on that buy.

The funny thing is how expensive these little motors are. I just saw an ad from GM performance division on their new Circle Track crate engine, the CT-525. It's an LS3 engine modified for running a carb and is rated at 525 HP, 471 lb/ft of torque. It likely only weighs a bit more than the Kent 1.6 L. Price MSRP $8,750. That works out to $16.67 per horsepower. Cosworth 290 HP engine at $19,000 works out to be $65.52 per horsepower. Yeah, I know, it won't fit in your car. But think about it, a bullet proof motor that you can run as hard as you want (if you can hold on), couple it with a tremec 6 speed which is also bullet proof, and for under $12,000 you have almost as much power as God. Intoxicating, isn't it ?

You want advice, and you want it for free. So here it is, and it isn't worth anything since it's free. Croc has some good ideas but really, the big flat screen ? Wouldn't a mid-size 42" work just as well ? My first trailer was a 24" V-nose completely enclosed trailer. I could put any car I had in there and carry a whole bunch of stuff. However, the thing is big and hard to pull efficiently so even while keeping my foot off the throttle, 8.5 mpg...............ouch. However, the trailer was air conditioned and in it was my 3 KW genset, air compressor, tools jacks, spare wheels & tires, electric winch, etc. The only thing I left out was the big flat screen. Great trailer once I get to the track, a real pain going 500 to 600 miles to far away tracks. My second trailer is an open all steel car trailer that I had custom made in Ft. Pierce, Florida. It's 15' of bed, dual axle, electric brakes on both axles, has slide out ramps that attach to a beaver tail slant without much effort. I then put a tool box on the front frame to house my tie-downs, jack, misc. tools, etc. I also added an electric winch to be able to winch up the car if I ever needed to. The cost of the trailer with twin 3500 lb axles, led lights, painted and ready to go was $2850. I pull the trailer with my F-150 and now added a topper to the bed which makes it really nice to keep my genset, compressor and extra wheels/tires, gas cans, etc. I can pull this trailer at 70 mph and still get 14 mpg, and it is effortless. I would stay away from wood anything on your trailer unless you're going to store it inside. You live in NJ and if its outside, snow may sit on it for periods of time. We have a bunch of smaller untility trailers for my company and they have the pressure treated planks. We're constantly replacing them. Also, single axle trailer is dangerous if you lose a tire from a blow out as this thing may unravel quickly before you get it slowed down. Dual axle doesn't cost that much more and if you do get a blow out, your trailer will stay flat. Down side is its heavier and likely harder to push around by hand, if not impossible. Of course, this also depends on what you'll be using to pull the trailer. A Ford Escape or Honda CRV won't pull a dual axle trailer. One other thing, minor but very important. Have plenty of very bright lights on the trailer. Mount them as high as is humanly possible. Use LED lights if you can. People on the road don't pay attention and when you're pulling a trailer you will slow down more than cars to make a turn, and this is where someone is likely to rear end you. I added extra brake/TS lights on the back of my trailer for just that reason. Good luck.

If you have a lift, why not do it yourself. It's time consuming but I get it done precisely. You will need two 8" laser levels (Lowes) and one 8" digital level (Craftsman). You will need to make a couple of tire frames with some 1" square steel tubing (6' of tubing) and about 18" of 1/4" x 1" flat bar. I now do all three of my corvettes including the Z06 that I run on the track, my 7, the spec Miata race car, and my other personal street cars. I got tired of getting poor results from "expert" alignment shops, tired of having a car drift on the road, tired of premature tire wear and tired of excuses. Since I started doing it about 4 years ago, perfect every time. If I need corner scaling, I take it to a speed shop I trust and have it corner weighed and ajusted and then I do the alignment. If you want to how to do it, send me a PM and I'll give you a step by step process. Probably most of the guys on this forum also know how to do it as well. It is time consuming, about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to get my Z06 done with 4 wheel alignment, about 1 hour for the 7 since the dedion rear axle has no adjustments other than changing the camber plate. You don't have to have a lift but it sure makes it easier to do the adjustments. On the 7 set up for the track only, -1 degree camber on front, 0 toe in/toe out, and 4.5 degree on the caster. This is set up for bias ply Hoosier race tires. I ran the same setup with radial SM Hoosiers last year with great results too. I have no idea what is best for the street since mine spends 99% of the time on the track.

Most of these "reality" shows are staged to some degree. However, it would be fun to slip in a guy in a 7 who is experienced. Someone like Croc or blubarisax, playing it kind of low key and toying with them on the first two laps then blowing it wide open on the last lap. Do you think they would air that one ? By the way, Kersaw, SC, is so remotely located that there isn't a decent hotel/motel/diner for 50 + miles. It's roughly half way between Columbia, SC and Charlotte, NC, in the middle of nowhere. That land must have cost about $0.12 per acre. We were supposed to have a TT event there last year but it got cancelled due to low participation support. I wasn't surprised. There is video on Youtube of a guy trashing his GT-R on this track when he missed the inside turn and pushed it into the tire wall.

Anyone watch this show on Sunday night ? There was a young man with a Lotus Exige running against the Camaro. I was surprised the Lotus didn't show better at CMP, being a small track. The other guy with a BMW M6 ran stronger, and that is one heavy car. American muscle try to overcome handling issues with more HP.....doesn't always work

Thanks for the link, they show all of them. The one the upholsterer was showing me is the "lift the dot" type. That's the one with the stud sticking up that concerns me. Yes, the stud is rounded on the tip but it looks like something else to get snagged on.

Yep, you're right about it being easier and likely cheaper. However, these aren't for the race seats with the high back. And I want the covers to link up to the rear cover I now have from Caterham. I'm pretty sure he called them "lift the dot". He showed me one of them. The side that goes on the canvas is the hole which has a spring wire devide inside it that grasps onto the studs little recess. The stud is about 3/8" to 1/2" tall, has a small threaded screw stud (either a 6-32 or 8-32 thread) on the base for attachment to the sheetmetal. Would snaps not hold at higher speeds ? I'm pretty sure I've had the rear cover on at times and since I still have it, I know it didn't blow off. Also, regular snaps don't damage the surround paint surfaces. I'm concerned about the possible wind chatter vibration of the large canvas attachment messing up the paint around the stud. The other attachments I've seen are the ones on boats which is a stud that once the grommet of the canvas is passed through, you turn the studs a quarter turn to lock in the canvas.

I need some advice on getting a tonneau cover made for my 7. I need to cover the passenger side seating area when I race and I also need to have a cover for the driver side while hauling the car on the trailer to the track. I have an upholstery shop that recommended using attachments called "lift ups" rather than the more traditional snaps. He claimes the older british sports cars typically used these. After he showed me what they were, I got concerned about these since they look like a stud sticking up. I'm thinking that getting in and out of the car with some of these on the dash and side boards may cause me some problems. I thought the traditional snaps would be softer on my body and wouldn't cause any gashes, cuts or punctures. What do you guys think ? I need some input, the car is going over there on Tuesday.

It's a pleasure knowing that I was able to help someone else. It's usually the other way around. A lot of very smart people on this forum have helped me whenever it was needed. Good luck with the car and be safe.:bigear:

As a "graduate" of skippy school, I know it isn't TRSS. I can assume it's more intense for the money they command. TRSS is a non-profit teenager driving school, Skippy is a profit making venture. They're good..........are they that good? Opinions vary.

I can answer that. If it's more than a year or two old, it isn't in the saved inventory pile, it's in the grind-it-up pile to make cut nails with. It's just like tools. You can sure tell the difference when you put some force behind it vs. a snapon tool. Yes, big difference in cost but if your trade depends on a good tool, where are the savings ? On a boat, 2000 miles from shore, and your turbo takes a crap can be bad news, especially in gale force winds. I think the Carnival ships use Chinese turbos, another one in the carribbean took a dump at St. Marteen. I think this one was the Carnival Dream.............more like Nightmare ! Get a good turbo ready for them, they need it.