build diary

July 26, 2006: I just found out there's a video on Streetfire showing the Seven from trackside.
It's from the track day back in April and I'm guessing it's from one of the sessions when I was running about 1:04, although it might actually be a warm-up or cool-down lap. It starts at the top of the back straight, runs through the chicane, through the 180 at the bottom and then back up the hill. It's surprising to see the rear of the car bounce coming through the chicane. I don't remember that, although it could be that I hit the one berm harder than usual. On a fast lap, the car flirts with the rev limiter on both of the short straights here. The speed coming into the last corner in this video is actually how I judge a lap - if I hit the limiter before the berm, I'm on pace.

Jon Winterhalter sent me a link to some build photos. This is the $2500 car from the Car and Driver article and the photos focus on the metal shaping aspect of the build. I've also received a few photos of the GRM Locost that was a sister car to mine. You wouldn't know it from seeing the car now, though. It's obviously a track-only beast and it looks really good.

Just for interest's sake, I did a little counting. I've used the word "fun" 128 times in this build diary so far. "Boring" was used once, in reference to wiring. I think that's a good ratio. On that note, I'm off to Canada for a couple of weeks before diving back into preparing for the Flyin' Miata open house and the track day that is involved. We'll have a couple of Lotus Elises and hopefully a Lotus Seven S3 in attendance, so this will be fun stuff.

entry 1271 of 1439
<< | random | >>
back to entry listing