[EDIT 05/14/2011: Ron lost interest in the project in mid 2002. I hauled it out of my shop into the yard, and then over to his house in bits over the next couple of years. At that point, we had a rolling chassis and he was supposed to do the wiring.
Various things happened, and I never got started on my build. Three weeks after I started this thread, Ron's wife called to tell me he'd died, and she wanted me to have "all that car stuff."
A couple of months ago my wife reminded me that I'd never built
her car, and now that I'd shed the race car and other projects, now would be a good time. I'm not quite sure when my 7 became her 7, but spousal buy-in is always valuable.
I found this forum, and started this thread to show that I've done this (at least partway) before, before starting a thread on a new build. Then this one drops back into my lap.
It will be midsummer before I can get over to Ron's and see how much of the car I can find. His wife says it is spread out over a couple of rent-a-sheds and a storage building in the back yard. If I can find enough of the pieces I'll go ahead and finish it. I'm fairly sure it's all there somewhere; Ron seldom threw anything away. Eleven years later it's not the car I want to build, but it's almost done...
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I got turned on to the Lotus 7 in early 2000.
I was intrigued. Like hundreds of other people who've looked at a Seven, I thought, "Hey, I could build one of those." Colin Chapman reportedly did his first car in his living room; hell, I had a pretty nice workshop and a lot more tools than Chapman did then.
One problem was, I already *had* a project - the Kelmark, which was fairly far along in the parts-collecting stage. However, there was a sizeable amount of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about welding up a chassis from scratch. Not to mention all the details of a fairly complex mid engine, 4wd layout. A Seven, on the other hand...
I'm subject to sudden enthusiasms. Most of them don't go anywhere, but it beats watching TV. Anyway, I talked about it to fellow car geek Ron Melson, who I've known since high school. Ron dug up a bunch more stuff on Sevens, including some decent chassis and suspension drawings. I kept thinking about it. I had a 1971 Capri with an almost-new 2.0, but the body was succumbing to terminal rot. I'd already planned to retire the car at the end of the year, and I didn't have anything else to do with the driveline... if I scavenged as much stuff as possible from the Capri, I might be able to build a Seven for, say, somewhere between $500 and $1000.
I didn't want to jump tracks with so much invested in the Kelmark, but a Seven would be simple enough for me to get some practice and confidence, and I could always sell the Seven clone after I was done. I talked about it with AB, my wife, who objected strongly. No, there would be no selling it. *She* would drive it. When would it be finished?
Ron and I built the wooden cockpit mockup in June. I'm bulky and I've had knee surgery; I wanted to be sure I could get in and out of a 7 before I spent much more time making plans. Ron came over and we used some scrap wood I had in the shop to make the mockup. A Series I 7 was 39.5 inches wide. Current Caterhams are 42 inches. The mockup showed that was awfully tight; we decided to use 46 inches. That was fortunate, as it worked well with the widths of the rear end front end bits we wound up with.
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I was in no particular hurry; I had plenty of irons in the fire already and funds were short. Ron was saying he'd like to have a similar car. He decided to scrap his 1984 Mustang and use it as a donor for his car. And he was willing to buy the materials and start right now.
That was fine with me. I could have all the "learning experiences" on someone else's car. After years of hot rodding, this was the first time I was actually starting a build completely from scratch, without a least a body or chassis for a guide.
We weren't planning to build an accurate Seven replica, just to use the basic idea and build our own car. Sort of a 'stand-off scale' Seven. We knew the 5.0 would be overkill for such a small car, but "Free is a quality overcoming many faults."
Our initial plan:
1984 Ford 5.0 V8, T5 5-speed
Mustang steering knuckles, power rack, instruments, steering column, pedal assembly, brake booster and master cylinder, parking brake, and wiper mechanism
15x7 wheels, 235-70/15 tires from the Mustang
1985 Nissan Maxima semi-trailing-arm IRS, disc brakes, 3.36:1 ratio
estimated weight: 1500 pounds
That left a lot of details unstated, deliberately. We would make further decisions as we went. Lots of the parts we scavenged from the Mustang were bigger and/or heavier than we needed, and other stuff was sometimes not optimal, but we were going for expedience instead of perfection. We'd both had enough terminally stalled projects; we intended to get this one on the road quickly.