Post 4: Fitting a Tow Bar

    I have no easy way to pull the block here, it's way too heavy, I have no hoist, no bridge. My friend Landers suggested I took the car down to his shop.
  So I  bought a basic tow bar for Harbor Freight:

   I figure I will use it in the future if we go to the Dragon, or the Beach, or wherever I might not want to drive the car. It will also come in handy if we go to an Autocross somewhere and have a mechanical problem...

   I had to slightly modify the attachment brackets to fit the 1" square tubing at the front of the car. When the radiator is back in place, I may have to re adjust them to leave them in place, or possibly weld four lugs into the tubing.

    Anyhow, this is the way it looks at the moment:

   

   I will need help in the morning to push the car up out of the driveway, and will tow it to Landers' shop behind Rachel's Honda Elements. When the engine block is out, I will bring the car back up to my tent and do some cleaning up in the engine compartment while it is empty (straighten up wiring, clean metal, polish aluminum, repaint. A high polish on the aluminum head cover would look good. I also want to add a fuse box and wire a cigarette lighter/USB unit.

  One thing I want to do in particular is put a high polish on the Cast Aluminum Head Cover;

Post 3: Problem, already!

  At the end of the day at Barbers, I spent an extra $30 to take the car on the big track for a few(4 I think) of what they call "Parade Laps"
   It was a lot of fun, and I was surprised how fast they actually let us go. Nothing like racing speed of course, but I did push the car.
   Problem is, the car started overheating after the second lap. 
 The coolant was low, so I added water, but it was overheating again by the time I got home that evening. I refilled the radiator the next morning, but it was soon overheating again, so I dropped by HESCO. They ran some tests, and found there was a busted head gasket, coolant in two cylinders, and a leak in the radiator... Bummer!
    It took me a couple of days to get some kind of estimate from the mechanic: about 8-9 hours and $1500 in the best of cases(just replace the head gasket). Experience has taught me that the "best of cases" almost never happens at the mechanic shop, so I figured at least $2500...
   I decided to get my hands dirty and do it myself. After all, I used to work on my car all the time in the 60's and 70's . So I drove the car home carefully.
   I needed cover and was going to buy a tent from Harbor Freight to put up in front of my workshop. As it turned out, my friend Charles had a 10ft x 15ft tent, and we put it up on Sunday:

with the door wide open, it extends my workshop nicely:

Took the head off on Monday. It had a couple of tiny cracks near the spark plug hone in two cylinders, and I took it to be completely rebuilt. I also took the radiator to be flushed, checked, and repaired if necessary, but I believe the leak was at the hose coming in the lower part of the radiator.

     I thought I would have the car back running by next Sunday. But then I checked the cylinder bores for scratches, and discovered two deep gouges in cylinder #1:

     They had to be made by a big piece of metal, and Landers' guess was that the clip holding the piston pin got loose. It makes sense, but what we do not know is whether the clip was replaced, or is still missing, in which case the pin could slip out and create havoc.
    As much as I hate the time and expense involved, I have no choice at this point but pull the engine, have it checked, and have a new sleeve put in. I can't do it here, so I will call AAA on Tuesday to haul the car down to Landers.

Post 2: A Day at the Track!

    Barber's Motorsports Museum was having the Annual "Historics" Festival last week end, with races of vintage cars, in particular Lotus.  I went on Sunday morning to see the cars, and there were some great ones, my favorite being this all aluminum Lotus:

There were three Lotus Super 7 there, and Danny Wilson's won the race in it's category by half a lap:

   But mostly, I wanted  to try my hand at the Autocross, something I had never done before...
   The course was set with cones at the "Proving Grounds", which is much better than on a parking lot. It even included a banked turn:

   It's basically a succession of tight turns, and the only straight line is at the departure. 
   There were a couple of young guys already there with an old  souped up Mazda Miata when I arrived at opening time, and they had already set a time of about 43s on the course. 

   One of them took me around as a passenger, and I immediately realized these guys knew what they were doing, very fast and very smooth. I knew right away I couldn't touch them. And my first try at the course was pretty pitiful at 53s, even though I felt I was going fast... But then again, I had never done Autocross before.
    I did a total of 10 runs through the day at 10 bucks a pop, 6 alone and 4 with passenger, and by the end of the day got my time down to a "decent" 49s, still a long way behind the best 42 s of a red BMW Z3 and the 43s of the old Miata... I believe the car can do better, but the driver needs to practice. 
   Mary, Todd and Charles came to the track around 1 pm, and they each got to ride with me. 

   Charles shot some pictures of the car from the sidelines:

 and he even shot a video of the ride:

   A set of very sticky racing tires would probably help, something like the Hankook Ventus or the Toyo Proxis:

    But these could only be used on the track, and therefore would require another set of rims. When I do a Google search , thousands of ugly rims pop up, and I wonder what the hell is going on and what awful taste the after market rim buyers must have. Where is simplicity and restraint, everything is flashy and busy. I would be very happy with a plain black rim like this if I could find it in a 4 bolt pattern:

    One question of course if I am going to get a new set of racing wheels is: should I go to a 15" rim and a wider tire in the back?
     One big problem though is the unusual old British  pattern of 4 3.75" (used by the MG F and Rover Metro). That will make it hard to find a rim, especially one I like...
     An option may be to use an adaptor.

Post 1: Have a "Lotus" Super 7, will race you!

    Well, I was doing research on the Lotus a couple of days ago to design my 3 wheeler frame and front end, and ran across this car for sale in Charlotte, which was a mighty tempting toy:

    I talked to my friend Landers, and to people at the Barber Museum, and things looked pretty good, especially if I could get the price down. It is not actually a full blooded Lotus, but a 1986 Winfield kit that was bought around 1990 and finished by a father/son team in the 90's. But unlike later Westfields, it has the aluminum body like the Caterhams, which I much prefer to fiberglass.  
    Well, things went pretty fast, I went to look at it, made a low offer, it was accepted, and I almost unexpectedly found myself the proud owner of a very Vintage looking Super 7.  I want to be clear, this is not a "real" pre 1972 Lotus, but rather what is known as a "PreLit" Westfield. "PreLit" refers to the litigation that took place in the late 80's when Caterham threatened to sue Westfield for making kits too close to the original Lotus design, and won. PreLit Westfields are almost identical to the original Lotus Super 7 as designed by Colin Chapman in 1961, with aluminum body and hood. Even better, the body was never paint
   "Post Lit" 1990 Westfields are using fiberglass panels, and for a "plastic hater" like me, that was a really big deal:

  The original car had a 1340cc Ford engine. This ones is supposed to have a 2 Liter Toyota 3T engine, with a 5 speed Toyota transmission. It was in a Vintage Cars Showroom in Mooresville, just North of Charlotte:

 We had to spend the night in Mooresville because to the rain, but the next day was beautiful, and I rode the car back home all the way from North Carolina in one day. That was a little rough, but really not that bad.  We stopped in Asheville for lunch, and Charles even managed to sneak it into Biltmore Estate to shoot some pictures:

    The car is a perfect fit for me: 6ft, 180lbs, size 34 waist, size 10 shoes. Shorter people will have a hard time reaching the closely spaced tiny pedals, taller people will be cramped, and bigger feet will hit two pedals together. Actually, I have to wear very narrow driving shoes.

    It is very easy to drive, at least for people used to stick shift. The wheel is tiny, but yet easy to turn, the steering is very precise, the shifting smooth, the car almost perfectly balanced , with easily handled oversteering. There is no real need for double clutching, but I do it anyway because it sounds good...

   It corners like a demon, especially since I replaced the old dried up Yokohama tires with a set of much stickier Uniroyals. I put semi synthetic oil in the motor to flush out whatever was in there, and will go to the best full synthetic next week.

    It's a blast!