Saturday Morning Musing

[Blokko]

Sat here waiting for the rain to stop (it really is persisting it down at the moment) and for the remnants of last nights alcohol to dissipate from my body. Apropos of nothing, here is a summary of what's currently going on in my head :-)

 

 

At some point today I have to brave the elements to pick up my Cat from the body shop. Many of the early SV's have bubbling paintwork on the back panel where water has been trapped by the spare wheel – my car had a particularly bad case of this.

 

 

My car has a 1.8 Rover K Series engine. Recently fitted a new Radtec radiator – the original had gone porous, which was allowing air back into the system as the rad cooled. I've temporarily bypassed the heater as I was having trouble bleeding the system and my suspicion is that the heater matrix has also gone porous in sympathy with the main rad (getting small wisps of steam out of one corner of the matrix).

 

 

The job this afternoon is to investigate whether the heater matrix needs replacing – apparently sometimes they just need a new O-ring. Off to France at the start of July (to visit Norman Verona and to spend a few days afterwards exploring the Normandy beaches) and the bread knife has informed me that I need to have a working heater by then. We are doing the transits between home and Folkestone at night, so it can get a bit parky on a long motorway slog.

 

 

I've spent the morning looking through the Flyin' Miata Westfield build blog as well as reading Dan's build post on here. I'm in two minds whether to go down the Westie route. Though I've done simple things on my 7 (replacing fluids, rad change, thermostat, new DeDion tube amongst others) I'm wondering whether a Westie build is right for me from a skill and also a time commitment point of view. Going for a Westie certainly has its plus points – should be possible to register it with a pre '97 Miata engine in Massachusetts and I get the comfort of knowing the history of the car (with the exception of the drivetrain, of course).

 

 

$30k is about my budget (but there could be some elastic in there for the right car) and I've always wanted to take on some sort of build (but was always thinking of a simpler Caterham build). I'm still not discounting the second hand route – particularly if I can get a Caterham SV (again, comes back to the whole registration issue).

 

 

If my Canadian Client can get their budget sorted I'll be training in TO week of 16 June and then I'll stop off in Boston between 20-25 June. Planning to take this opportunity to visit Mass RMV to talk about kit cars and what my options are. Trawled through the website of the RMV and got confirmation of my earlier query – 6.25% sales tax on car purchase payable to Mass rather than the state where I purchased from. Noticed that there is also an online query form, so I might try my kit car query via that route first.

 

 

In other news.... By the time my company sanctioned my holiday request all of the places at Donington had filled up. This is my last weekend to get a trackday in before selling the 7 (as soon as I get back from France). I'm first on the reserve list, with a backup position of doing Anglesey on the Sunday instead. As I've done Donny a few times already, maybe Anglesey would be the better option (but further for me to travel). Anglesey was the first trackday I ever did. I was new to 7 ownership and I just wasn't comfortable on track with lots of other 7 wizzing all around me. It was wet, slippy and I'd driven the car there – and so really needed it to be in one piece by the end of the day so I could drive back home! Either way, I hope to catch up with Mike of this parish at one or the other track. Maybe I should use Friday to visit Simon at Westfield for a test drive (I live less than 15 miles from the factory).

[Croc]

Good morning Steve. I just sent you a blatmail re connecting at Donington or Anglesey tracks next week. The day before and after Donington is just a drive day so if you are someone on the route between Heathrow and those two circuits then let me know and I can stop by. Cheers mike

[Blokko]

Hi Mike

 

Blatmail received - I'll ping you a reply shortly.

 

I'm hoping to turn up at Donny on the Friday, even if I don't have a track spot. Will be good to catch up with you ahead of my move out to The Commonwealth.

 

This event http://blatchat.com/t.asp?id=240314 is running next Saturday - not sure if that is of any interest to you? I was thinking of popping along for a couple of hours. There will be a spare seat in the 7 if you are interested -

 

I can confirm Caterham Cars have committed a lot of resources to the event, from the display F1 car, which will sit resplendent in a GP2 truck awning, a hospitality unit, and 3 models of the 7

A 620R available for passenger rides http://blatchat.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

A Supersport R and a 160 both available for test drives http://blatchat.com/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif

[Blokko]

Well, as expected I got a soaking picking the car up. Whilst the quality of the repair work and the spraying is very good, unfortunately the colour match isn't great.

 

I was warned by my buddy who recommended the paint shop (who also happens to have been a paint tech in previous employment) that it would be a difficult colour to match, especially given the different materials on the panels and wings. Could have done with being a shade or two darker but, hey ho, there we go. It does at least look better than having bubbling paintwork.

 

[Blokko]

Stripped the heater matrix apart today and it looks like the O-rings have been leaking for some time. Filed down the flaking paint and rust and replaced the O-rings, so hopefully we will have a working, watertight heater matrix for our holibops :-)