build diary

March 28, 2006:
I spent some time fooling around with wipers last night.
Those who have read my book will see a reference to the wipers being installed. Well, that was artistic licence. I've had the parts for some time but never installed them on the car. I received an education in the mix-and-match Lucas wiper system. It turns out that if I try to use all my undamaged parts, I'll have less than 90 degrees of sweep. This is due to an early wiper motor and late model "wheelboxes". The combination of gearing is all wrong. I'll poke around and see if I can find the parts I need to make this work. After striking out on the wipers I cut the foam for the fuel tank and spent some time cleaning out the holes so all the fittings can be installed. Now it's just a matter of the final bracketry and then paint. Hopefully tonight.

Andy from Titan Motorsports showed up again today with a truckload of very sexy parts. Most of them were for various Miatas we have at the shop but a set of roller-barrel throttle bodies would fit the Seven nicely. Time for some dyno fun!

Chris Fiaccone suggested that my backwards louvres could be solved by cutting out the offending parts and inserting some mesh. Not a half-bad idea. Mark Rivera (who is showing amazing daily progress on his car) is going to send me a pre-punched sheet of aluminum that I will bend up for a new hood. But in the meantime, I might give Chris' suggestion a try.
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Sexy roller barrel throttle bodies.
No restrictions here!
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March 30, 2006:
I removed the original battery tray (surprisingly heavy!
) and welded in a couple of short bars to help support the fuel tank. The tank was dropped back in and, um, didn't want to fit. It was wedging up against the rear uprights and forcing the sump against a frame crossmember. Why? Good question. With a little push the tank dropped in but I've lost about a millimeter of clearance that I sorely needed. At least the tank does still go in with a little push. Hopefully it'll still do that once painted. At worst, a bit of bending on the rear uprights will bring back my millimeter. The good thing is that it makes it easier for me to build a good "tank restraint" system if the tank doesn't want to move in the first place!
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A new bar to support the fuel tank.
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This little bracket will hold up the fuel pump.
There will also be a couple of clamps holding it to the frame member.
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March 31, 2006:
No work done on my part last night other than some experimentation with an old roll cage and a Corbeau seat on my rally Miata.
However, a few others have been working on my behalf. Mark Rivera took a bit of time out of his manic build to punch some louvres in a sheet of aluminum for a new hood. Thanks to a small error, he had to use 0.060" metal which carries a bit of a weight penalty but I'll live with that. The louvres are also 4" wide instead of the 3" I used before so we changed the pattern around a bit. How will it look and will I be able to bend it? Well, it's 3003 alloy this time which is softer than the 5052 I've used in the past. The hood is definitely resisting efforts to go together easily!

Jim at Coveland Motorsports managed to dig the wheelbox I need out of an old Spitfire and will be sending it my way. Thanks to both Jim and Rod McLellan of the Octagon Motor Group for answering my questions about the details of Lucas wiper systems. It's a ski weekend so this is my last break before the Car and Driver test. I'll enjoy it while I can!
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My new hood!
Some assembly required. Mark Rivera punched these louvres and will ship me the sheet of aluminum.
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April 4, 2006:
Ahhhh, that was some gooood skiing.

The gas tank is painted and installed.
I've plumbed everything in, altered wiring, strapped down the pump and added in a new fuel filter. The latter is a bit of an experiment. Due to the packaging of the Miata filter, I decided to try a generic inline unit. It's intended for carbureted cars. Hopefully it won't pop - at least it's a metal case. Hmm, perhaps a little more effort on fitting the Miata part would be in order. The big step will be tonight. I have to fill up the tank. I stopped there last night because I had a mental image of the tank leaking like a colander and I didn't have the stamina to deal with it.

My friend Matt in Australia sent along a scan of a review of "How to build a cheap sports car" from Hot 4s & Performance Cars magazine. "In a nutshell, this is one excellent book". That just makes my day. The Eastern Canadian Lotus Club also mentioned it in their newsletter - the ECLC is the Lotus club I used to pester back when a Seven was just a tickle at the back of my brain.
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April 5, 2006:
The fuel tank is full of fuel, and staying full of fuel.
My fears of uncontrollable leaks were unfounded. I also pressurised the system without any drama. That's all good then. The new tank sits super-low and the whole rear end is on display. If I want to carry luggage, I'll have to make sure there are no hanging straps to catch on the axles! Either that or I'll make box as a "trunk".

After the tank was finished, I rivetted the rear panel back in place and bolted up the fenders. It all went pretty easily as it should. Wow, there's a huge trunk in the car now. It's amazing how much space was being wasted. While I had the rear fenders off, I swapped the new springs on to the shocks and set the ride height to a more-or-less random setting. I'll do the fronts tonight and cornerweight the car. Then it's a proper alignment on a rack. Let's see how well I've done with my camber gauges and toe plates! One of the tires is being flipped on the wheel due to some inner wear. Once that's all done, I'm ready for the track day this weekend. It's a shakedown for the Car and Driver test so I'm eager to see how it all works out. Hopefully I'll have time to do some proper testing, as this particular group tends towards massive chaos trackside.
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From the April 2006 issue of Hot 4s & Performance Cars magazine.
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The gas tank all painted and in place.
It's hard to photograph this thing!
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The car comes back together.
The installation of the rear panel is a lot easier the second time than it was originally. That time I had to reshape the back of the car!
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My new fuel filter.
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Longer, stiffer springs for the rear.
Why longer? Because it's almost impossible to get 9" springs in the rates I needed.
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April 6, 2006:
I popped the front springs on last night, added some rear wheels and dropped the car down.
Holy cow, those new rear springs are stiff. The front seems a less drastic change. I realised that I needed someone else to help me set up the ride height and I was fresh out of helpers. Nuts. Decision time - do I have the car aligned on the rack to make sure the fundamental setup is good without any wheels pointing off in strange directions even though the corner heights will change, or do I do the cornerweighting first? I know it would be ideal to do the cornerweights first, but that's not going to happen. I decided to go ahead with the alignment anyhow. I did pop the car on the scales though, it's down to 1311 lbs wet. Not bad!

So, out of the garage. The rear end is definitely firm. I might have to back that off a touch. The fronts seem to work well but honestly, driving to work isn't a tough test. I may end up disconnecting the rear sway bar to get a good balance but the rear is actually softer than it was before if you compare it to the front. Trust me, that last sentence makes sense! The rears are 43% stiffer while the fronts are 66% stiffer. There's certainly much less roll on the street.

Obtaining the springs themselves was a bit of a trial. I ordered the fronts directly from Pro Shocks - they showed up three days later, just what I wanted - and ordered the rears from Pit Stop USA. It wasn't until the first box arrived a few days later that I realised I'd ordered Pro Shock springs from both companies. Pit Stop USA was less expensive though. Well, until their package showed up. I wasn't able to track it due to a mis-entered tracking number. This was after I had to determine what the mystery password created for my account was and a long conversation full of comedy with the customer support line. When it did show, the springs were the wrong size. After a couple of days, it was determined that the springs I'd ordered did not exist despite the happy writeup on the website. In fact, Pro Shocks doesn't even make springs in that length and diameter. So they had to ship me some others that were an inch longer. All in all, a pretty messy customer experience and there were some notes on the return label that have me concerned. I'll be watching my credit card statement. Next time I'll go directly to Pro Shocks and spend the extra $20 per spring. Either that or find out how to order some of the 10" Legend springs from various online suppliers.

As a complete contrast to Pit Stop USA's fumbling around, Jim Coveland at Coveland Motorsports managed to find the wiper wheelbox I needed in a 1967 Spitfire. He's sent it my way and is asking only for thanks. It's fairly obvious who's going to get my business in the future. Thanks Jim!

Some fun stuff. I've mentioned this site once before due to the models, but I neglected to look around. Check out some of the links - a visit to Arch Motors with some stunning pictures, some beautiful illustrations and of course, Out-of-a-Box Designs. Worth a few minutes.
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I can't stop taking pictures of the new "trunk" - but I can't take a good one.
Thos one certainly illustrates how much the rear suspension is on display. I never thought I'd regret writing on top of the differential!
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At work with the new exhaust.
Some of us at Flyin' Miata have bigger toys than others.
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A couple of stickers on the rear bulkhead.
What can I say, I couldn't resist.
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April 7, 2006:
I boogied on down to Scotty's Undercar this morning to put the Seven on the rack.
The technician isn't the chatty sort, trying to preserve syllables for the future. After we'd done a baseline, he asked what kind of car it was. "A Lotus Seven replica", I answered. "I think Steve McQueen had one of these when I was working on his cars" came the reply! Turns out, he used to work near Hollywood in the 60's and would prep McQueen's Porsche for the track on Friday then realign it for the street on Monday morning. How cool is that?

What about my own little car? Well, I'd done a pretty good job in my garage. The camber was fairly well matched up front and the right rear was good. The right rear was toed out slightly though - and the left rear was out even more. Yoiks, no wonder the car was happy going sideways. We tweaked the rear to give a touch of toe in (about 0.03") and matched up the rear camber. Now I have about 1.8 negative in the front (easy to adjust) and 1.9 in the rear. The weird thing was the caster at 12 degrees! I might try to dial some of that out. Overall, though, I'm really looking forward to the track this weekend.
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April 10, 2006:
Track day!
My goal: to beat my existing lap record of 1:05.585 seconds.

First, there was time for a bit of setup. After leaving the alignment rack, I put the car on the scales to cornerweight it. This went fairly easily. The end result had a 20 lb weight savings from last year, but more weight on the light right front wheel and a nice 45/55 weight distribution. Just what I'd hoped for with the battery relocation. An interesting thing happened though. I was finished with the scaling when I noticed that the right rear tire was very low. I'd forgotten to set my tire pressures before scaling. The left front was the one that had been flipped on the wheel and it turned out to be quite high. By adjusting the pressures, my cross weights went from 50.5% to 49.5%. This let me back off on the adjustments I'd made a touch and left me with the ideal 50% cross weighting. I also took some time to install the wiper wheelboxes - more on that in a future update.

On to the track. There's always a bit of chaos at this particular organization. At least, there was. I hadn't been to the last couple of days run by these guys and they've become much better than before. Unfortunately, a snafu meant the transponders hadn't been charged so we had to wait for a while before timing started. It's a bit of an odd setup. Due to the size of the track, only four cars run at a time. You get an out lap, three hot laps and an in lap. Then you line up for your next baby session a few minutes later.

The Seven felt strong. The first session, a heavily modified WRX pulled out on the track in front of me. It was driven by a friend who's usually pretty close in lap times. Well, he miscalculated. By the time we'd been around a couple of corners, I'd glued myself to his tail. He couldn't escape in the corners, under braking and - surprisingly - under power. It was pretty obvious that the Seven had too much rear roll stiffness so I removed the rear sway bar after a few laps. That helped although I still had corner exit oversteer. Of course, some of that could be the result of 145 hp trying to deal with only 400 lbs on each driving wheel. The problem with bottoming out the rear was completely gone and I was still able to drive over berms without any concerns. A slight softening of the rear shocks and the car felt nicely balanced.

My boss Bill showed up late and he could tell just from looking at the car that it was moving fast. The body roll that's plagued me for so long was gone. It felt pretty good but only the transponder would tell. Well, if I managed to pass sound check that is. My new muffler is no quieter than the previous one according to the sound meter although it sure doesn't sound as loud. I went back out with my little Supertrapp tip on...and it made no difference. Well, no wonder. It had fallen off on the first corner! We found it, stuck it on well (I'm not sure if it's going to come off now actually) and I was given the green light. Phew!

More entertainment came from the throttle cable. Coming out of turn 1, I noticed I'd lost my throttle cable. No problem, I knew it had just popped off the wheel I use to turn it 90 degrees. But why? I idled into an access road, pulled off the hood and restrung the cable. Now the throttle was stuck wide open! I managed to unstick it and drove back to the pits at 2000 rpm. After a bit of investigation I found that the throttle position sensor I was using was binding enough to prevent my throttles from closing properly. Odd, it's been on there for a while. No matter, I wasn't using it anyhow so I just removed it.

Ah, finally. The transponders showed up. We stuck one to the back of the Seven and I headed out. I didn't feel very smooth and figured I'd just run about 1:06 on my laps. To my delight, the time was a 1:04.630 with another to back it up! I was ecstatic. A new lap record for "not a kart" vehicles at the track!

Next session, 1:04.301. Not bad, I was shaving some time off.

While kicking around between sessions as the drifters covered the track with rubber (this is difficult to ignore as a car guy because it sounds like a constant accident!) and dirt, then swept off the dirt, Bill borrowed my new tire pressure gauge. He compared it to our tried-and-true Longacre one and discovered it was about 5 psi high! Hmm, that means my tires were currently at about 13 psi cold. Not ideal. We didn't have a temperature gauge so I'd simply been driving. I added 5 psi to get to the range I wanted and headed out for the next session. The car felt really good, with almost no tire noise and a more stable behaviour. I came in unsure. Was I simply feeling better or was the car actually faster? I knew that I'd been much smoother. The word came in on the radio - 1:03.777 with a following 1:03.8 to back it up. Much rejoicing in the pits from everyone! I went back out for a final set of laps and came back in with a 1:03.368 and a backup 1:03.439 and 1:03.582. Since my goal had simply been to match my earlier 1:05.585, you can imagine how happy I was to take over 2 seconds off. As far as I know, only one other car has only managed one lap below 1:06. There will be some competition when Skip Cannon shows up this summer with his 275 rwhp Caterham, but for the time being I'm very proud of my little toy.

Most importantly for my own skills, I'm very proud of the consistency. One of my competitors came over to let me know that I had to watch my back, he'd just pulled a 1:07. This was still 2.5 seconds off my pace at the time and his next fastest lap was a 1:09. True, when it comes to lap records it's all about That Single Fast Lap, but it's a faster driver who can consistently turn the same times.

Bill took the Seven out for a few laps and complained about fuel starvation in some corners. He also mentioned the brakes weren't too impressive. He'd been driving the 2006 MX-5 which has aggressively servoed brakes and amazing stopping power, so I didn't think too much of it. I packed everything up in the car and jumped in to drive home - and discovered the brake pedal was super-soft. The front master cylinder was dry! Some feeling around showed a bit of a leak under the cylinder itself. I'll have to investigate that tomorrow. I drove home on the rear brakes and compression braking. I own an old Land Rover so I'm used to bad brakes. I also only managed to put 3.5 gallons in the fuel tank. Hmm, maybe those baffles didn't work so well after all.

So, after all that, how's the car? A couple of small problems, but I'm ready for Car and Driver in terms of performance and setup. The Seven rides like a Miata with performance suspension on the street and is a total riot on the track. The engine feels good and strong and the car is at the peak of its handling so far. I'm a little sunburnt, bruised and tired, but I couldn't be happier.
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My new wipers!
They're not hooked up under the dash but the nerve-wracking part is done - I've drilled the holes. And yes, the impact gun is really useful for this installation. Maybe not at full power.
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On the track!
It's obvious from this photo how much the car is improved. By comparison, see what it looked like in October in the same corner.
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Another track shot.
Just because. And here's the before shot.
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Artsy shot.
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