So, typical story here - long time lurker on this forum but haven't posted much to date. I've been planning this build for a pretty long time - I first discovered Sevens back in 1987 when I bought a copy of "Top Wheels" magazine and there was a feature article about Donkervoort's new IRS frame design - I always thought that was one of the coolest sports cars I had ever seen. Over the years I had daydreamed about building my own car from scratch, but it wasn't until I discovered this forum that I started thinking seriously about doing so.
About a year ago I had just finished construction of my shop and even though I wasn't planning on looking for a donor for a while yet, I heard about a deal that was too good to pass up. I ended up getting a totaled '96 miata along with a complete spare front sub-frame for $420 - and the car only had 25k original miles on it. It was pretty well stripped out already, but the drive-train and running gear was all there, so that's all that mattered. I was still able to sell off a few miscellaneous parts and made the $420 back (FREE drive-train!), and also got $50 from recycling the carcase as scrap metal.
Since I now had the parts in hand, I could start designing the frame and suspension components. A friend of mine, Skip Cannon, happens to own a very nice example of a Caterham SV, and was kind enough let me take detailed measurements from his car. Here's a link to it:
http://www.britishv8.org/Other/SkipCannon.htm - back when he first built this car I had helped him out by making some extensive modifications to the transmission tail section, and fabricating the front motor mounts. Since the miata has very similar track dimensions to the SV, it made sense to me to design my car as a clone to the SV in dimensions and proportions, but modify the rear part of the frame for the IRS suspension.
I've been pretty busy over the last year, and probably should have started this log a while ago. I have a pile of pictures I'm going to upload to get caught up, and then I'll continue the log from there. Then I'll try and post something every couple of weeks as I go along. Since I'll be sharing this link with friends and family that have no idea what a Seven is, I'll start out with a couple of pictures of Sevens I admire.
- John