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Another day (well, night), another kit car

As I am still quite taken by the idea of a lightweight kit car with a reasonable size engine, I went out to Bristol last night.

For starters, if you want to go to Bristol, don't start from East London or Kent. Traffic was utterly horrible, it took me 4 1/2 hours out there and almost four hours back and that was on a bike. Sod only knows how long it would have taken to get there in a car.

Anyway, the car in question was a Fisher Fury. It had been built to conform to 750 MC a while back and it didn't look like the regulations have changed much so it still would've been possible to race it if I wanted to. However, even though I liked it more than the Westfield last weekend, I ran into a similar problem - I just didn't fit it. The fit wasn't far off but whoever built the car had added additional tubing to the rollbar (basically stays/ties) that connected to the chassis in front of the rollbar. Said tubing unfortunately intrudes into the shoulder area and when sitting in there, my shoulder is pushed forward by the sitting and I'm in there like a modern version of Quasimodo. God knows what that'll do to your shoulder in the event of a crash, although I have a suspicion that it'll involve getting your shoulder X-rayed. Of course, adding rollbar padding is going to make the Quasimodo stance even worse, so that part of the rollbar would need reengineering. Given that the car is pretty much priced well above the market price for a good Crossflow Fury, embarking on additional engineering projects isn't really feasible IMHO. Not to mention that it's got some of the usual kit car niggles (I'd rework part of the electrics to use proper automotive multiplugs instead of the hateful pre-insulated crimp connectors) and it really would have to be a lot cheaper than the asking price.

I guess I'll give up on kit cars for the moment and concentrate on Elises and VX220s instead. At least I know I'll fit those and just have to find the right combination of cheap enough and good enough.

Reply to
Timo Geusch
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Just get a Caterham 7 clone.

Reply to
Conor

I've already looked at one. I'm not travelling the country in a quest to find one that actually fits, because a lot of them don't - I'm too tall, the owner was too short in leg etc blah blah. Or they're horribly put together.

A decently put together kit car at a realistic price is actually not that easy to find.

Reply to
Timo Geusch

They're not likely to be any more roomy than the Westfield he tried recently though, are they...

-- JackH

Reply to
JackH

Apologies. I assumed you wanted to build your own.

Reply to
Conor

I'd get a Fury if I was planning to do that, but lack of time and garage space pretty much prevents me from doing that.

The problem is that with all the prebuilt ones I've seen so far, I'd have to do a certain amount of rebuilding anyway so that wouldn't make a lot of sense to buy a prebuilt one unless it has a large number of attractive parts on it.

Reply to
Timo Geusch

Most of the clones are a good bit bigger than a Caterham. The vast majority these days use Sierra diff, shafts and uprights. By using the halfshafts unmodified, you have made the car bigger than a Caterham.

Sounds like Timo doesn't really fit a Caterham or a clone. The only one that's big enough to fit is a Luego Viento or if scratch building, a locost to the one of the McSorley redesigns. These add extra length / width height in various degrees.

Shame about the Fury though, a Fisher Fury is by a long way the quickest car which I have ever been in.

Reply to
Bob Sherunckle

That's about the only way to be sure of it fitting.

Reply to
Peter Hill

I saw that very car today. I will probably also see it tomorrow. (c:

Reply to
Douglas Payne

That seems to be the case - I'm beginning to understand why the guy I bought my 911 off more or less rebuilt his Westfield over a couple of years after buying it.

Unfortunately they all seem to be like that.

Reply to
Timo Geusch

Remember and say hello to then - good turnout ? Pics to follow :-) ?

Reply to
Bob Sherunckle

Westfields SEiW are also a bit longer, but they're also a little outside the budget.

For something with a tuned crossflow that thing went rather well, but I'd have to get someone with a tube bender to properly sort out the rollbar. I also wasn't too happy with the way those tie downs had been stuck on. I'm out of practise these days but with a little practise I can weld a lot better than the welds that I saw on that part of the rollbar. Not very confidence inspiring.

The trouble is that this Fury is overpriced as it is and having to throw money at it just so I can make it work for me at all is even dafter than I usually am. Plus, the gearbox is annoyingly noisy due to having helical cut gears so I'd ideally want to stick a regular type 9 in there. I think that was roughly the point where I turned off the mental calculator.

Reply to
Timo Geusch

In the OSF drag club, we have a member with a Mk1 Fiesta 1300XFlow built by the Harris brothers which runs 13 second quarter miles.

Reply to
Conor

Pics from today - Fintray Hillclimb near Aberdeen for those not in posession of a mind reader:

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Great turnout of cars, over 100 entries and a fair number of spectators but not quite as good as the same venue in May.

Lots of class records were broken today and a couple of people came close to breaking the all-time course record (which has stood since 1989).

Great day for taking photos too. Hopefully more of the same tomorrow.

Reply to
Douglas Payne

Wallace's new car.

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650bhp I understand :-))
Reply to
Bob Sherunckle

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