Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

nasty crash and good to see the guy was ok afterwards.

I have had my front suspension break after coming over the bridge at Oran park before, no rolling off the road but i reckon if it happened at speed on the straight i would be in the same boat and just a passenger.These were tein coil overs so it can really happen in any car either kit or something you buy from a major manufacturer.

I also was driving a car "somewhere" where we had been doing top speed runs in a 350kw light weight car and as i slow down and take a corner, the rear toe arm snaps and i come to a tire smoking spinning stop.

Just be careful to use quality parts and check over things regularly especially if you take it to the track often. Don't give up on your dream as i reckon building a kit car would be awesome :)

  • 2 weeks later...

Ultima is genuinely on my one day list of things. I have the bucket R32 fun club car. Now have the Sierra Cosworth to break down on me and leave me stranded in places. Now I just need a big house/garage to move on to one more project before the Ultima. That is getting a gig in Europe and bringing back the uber personal import :)

Likewise a bucket list item for me too. The recent engineering rule changes in NSW may put an end to that though which will be a shame.

Nothing too wild, just the basic kit, silver gel coat, black interior, AP brakes, 6.2L Chev engine around 300rwkw will be plenty

Always loved this pic speaking of Ultima's;

672%20Ultima%20GTR.jpg

If you look around you might be able to pick up someone else's 1/2 finished Caterham project. You'd be surprised how many people start projects like these and just leave them un-finished in a shed. You can pick them up cheap once they have been sitting a few years.

That Corvette is pretty cool. I love Vettes, but know them well enough to know many are garbage. From memory the 84 Vette has 185hp :( And being the first of C4s they are pretty rubbish. 89 - 94 is what I would be after.

But the biggest problem is housing prices in Aus, I cant afford a house for the toys :) Hence the plan to get to Europe with work, get the dream car. Import dream car and then when in 4-5 years when I am around 40 build a Caterham with S2000 running gear or Ultima, depending on cash, and what my 22yr old Russian bride prefers :)

yer, the emission regulations really hurt those Corvette , most people just take them off and be dune with them.

most cops have never seen a Corvette so it's not like a skyline.

If anybody is after a pretty well sorted Clubman, check this out;

Clubman

A friend is selling it. Makes 130rwk, weighs 550kg, does easy 1:08's at Wakefield and will go quicker.

Only reason for selling is that he bought a brand new one.... a MNR with a 'turbocharged' Hyabusa engine, dry sump, sequential box, digital dash etc = 220rwk and 500kg!!!

BTW if you contact me first, we can definitely do something about the price to make it very attractive...

Edited by SRS13

Has anyone looked at the STOHR vehicles? www.apracing.net.au

They look impressive for a track only option.

Anyone got an idea around cost? I see the closed wheel version also 'for lease' on my105...

Stohr's are quick, Adam Proctor won the Sports Racer series in his this year, however he had all of the best gear on his car (it won the DSR championship in the USA the previous year) and it had a modified motor when the Speads and the West's ran stock motors.

I have heard from people who run them and race against them in the States that they are somewhat more fragile than the West's and the Speads, as everything on the car has been reduced to the minimum size needed, and there are a number of parts like rod ends that are considered throw away items in the car.

  • 2 weeks later...

To be honest if you wished to walk the path of making a kit car, you couldn't get a batter start then Caterham (there are plenty of companies within australia that sell very nice replica kits for much cheaper). I've used to work for a mob that built them for the road and track and they are just awsome, they are very simple to put together with many people out there who will be more then willing to lend a hand, especially if you start getting some track time.

There are a few reasons why you should build a caterham well before trying to build something more crazy like an ultima/cobra/gt40, this is because it's relatively cheap to throw together (so if you give up like many others you haven't lost much), it will give you a very good understanding of what it takes to build a truely balanced vehicle, and it may very well be so much fun that you won't even want to move to something more expensive.

You have a large amount of engines to choose from depending on what you want, be it a nice NA like a 4AGE (a very common choice), or maybe something turbocharged like a SR20, or supercharged like a 4AGZE, or just go all crazy like and throw a Rotary in there. Actually there isn't many things you cant change on this car depending on what you want....

All in all i highly suggest you go for the caterham, then sell if off if you want more and then move onto your next project.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Update 3: Hi all It's been a while. Quite a lot of things happened in the meantime, among other things the car is (almost) back together and ready to be started again. Things that I fixed or changed: Full turbo removal, fitting back the OEM turbo oil hardlines. Had to do quite a bit of research and parts shopping to get every last piece that I need and make it work with the GT2860 turbos, but it does work and is not hard to do. Proves that the previous owner(s) just did not want to. While I was there I set the preload for the wastegates to 0,9bar to hopefully make it easier for the tuner to hit the 370hp I need for the legal inspections that will follow later on. Boost can always go up if necessary. Fitted a AN10 line from the catch can to the intake hose to make the catchcan and hopefully the cam covers a slight vacuum to have less restrictive oil returns from the head and not have mud build up as harshly in the lines and catch can. Removed the entire front interior just shy of the dashboard itself to clean up some of the absolutely horrendous wiring, (hopefully) fix the bumpy tacho and put in LED bulbs while I was there. Also put in bulbs where there was none before, like the airbag one. I also used that chance to remove the LED rpm gauge on the steering column, which was also wired in absolute horror show fashion. Moved the 4in1 Prosport gauge from sitting in front of the OEM oil pressure gauge to the center console vents, I used a 3D printed vent piece to hold that gauge there. The HKB steering wheel boss was likely on incorrectly as I sometimes noticed the indicator reset being uneven for left vs. right. In the meantime also installed an airbag delete resistor, as one should. Installed Cube Speed premium short shifter. Feels pretty nice, hope it'll work great too when I actually get to drive. Also put on a fancy Dragon Ball shift knob, cause why not. My buddy was kind enough to weld the rust hole in the back, it was basically rusted through in the lowermost corner of the passenger side trunk area where the wheel arch, trunk panel and rear quarter all meet. Obviously there is still a lot of crustiness in various areas but as long as it's not rusted out I'll just treat and isolate the corrosion and pretend it's not there. Also had to put down a new ground wire for the rear subframe as the original one was BARELY there. Probably a bit controversial depending on who you ask about this... but I ended up just covering the crack in the side of the engine block, the one above the oil feed, with JB Weld. I used a generous amount and roughed up the whole area with a Dremel before, so I hope this will hold the coolant where it should be for the foreseeable future. Did a cam cover gasket job as the half moons were a bit leaky, and there too one could see the people who worked on this car before me were absolute tools. The same half moons were probably used like 3 times without even cleaning the old RTV off. Dremeled out the inside of the flange where the turbine housing mates onto the exhaust manifolds so the diameter matches, as the OEM exhaust manifolds are even narrower than the turbine housings as we all know. Even if this doesn't do much, I had them out anyways, so can't harm. Ideally one would port-match both the turbo and the manifold to the gasket size but I really didn't feel up to disassembling the turbine housings. Wrapped turbo outlet dumps in heat wrap band. Will do the frontpipe again as well as now the oil leak which promted me to tear apart half the engine in the first place is hopefully fixed. Fitted an ATI super damper to get rid of the worn old harmonic balancer. Surely one of the easiest and most worth to do mods. But torquing that ARP bolt to spec was a bitch without being able to lock the flywheel. Did some minor adjustments in the ECU tables to change some things I didn't like, like the launch control that was ALWAYS active. Treated rusty spots and surface corrosion on places I could get to and on many spots under the car, not pretty or ideal but good enough for now. Removed the N1 rear spats and the carbon surrounding for the tailpipe to put them back on with new adhesive as the old one was lifting in many spots, not pretty. Took out the passenger rear lamp housing... what do you know. Amateur work screwed me again here as they were glued in hard and removing it took a lot of force, so I broke one of the housing bolts off. And when removing the adhesive from the chassis the paint came right off too. Thankfully all the damaged area won't be visible later, but whoever did the very limited bodywork on this car needs to have their limbs chopped off piece by piece.   Quite a list if I do say so myself, but a lot of time was spent just discovering new shit that is wrong with the car and finding a solution or parts to fix it. My last problem that I now have the headache of dealing with is that the exhaust studs on the turbo outlets are M10x1.25 threaded, but the previous owner already put on regular M10 nuts so the threads are... weird. I only found this out the hard way. So now I will just try if I can in any way fit the front pipe regardless, if not I'll have to redo the studs with the turbos installed. Lesson learned for the future: Redo ALL studs you put your hands on, especially if they are old and the previous owners were inept maniacs. Thanks for reading if you did, will update when the engine runs again. Hope nothing breaks or leaks and I can do a test drive.
    • No those pads are DBA too  but they have colors too. I look at the and imo the green "street" are the best.
    • I’m not sure what happened I told them about sonic tunes free OTS tune and the next the I know .. I was booted..   To funny 
    • Yea - I mean I've seen my fuel pump which is decades old and uh, while I'm not saying this with real knowledge... but I sure get the ick at using anything in the fuel system that produced the state of that pump. Many years ago I went through multiple pumps (and strainers) before I dropped the tank to clean it out with extreme violence. I'm talking the car would do maybe 50km before coming to a halt, which resulted in me cleaning out the filter with some brake cleaner and going on my way. None of my stuff ever looked like what came out of your fuel tank. I don't think I'd be happy with it unless every single component was replaced (or at least checked/cleaned/confirmed to be clean here).
    • I'm not going to recommend an EBC pad. I don't like them. Just about anything else would suit me better. I've been using Intima pads for a while now.
×
×
  • Create New...