Kit Car - THE OFFICIAL NORDSCHLEIFE LAP RECORD VIDEO!

THE OFFICIAL NORDSCHLEIFE LAP RECORD VIDEO! On 19 August 2009, Radical Sportscars from Peterborough, England, successfully smashed the Nürburgring Nordschleife Production Car Lap Record by eight seconds, with racing driver and 'Ring expert Michael Vergers at the wheel. The new SR8 LM's time of 6m48s beat a record that has stood since 2005, also set by Radical in a previous-generation SR8. The record attempt was witnessed and confirmed by both the UK's evo and Germany's Sport Auto motoring magazines. To confirm the car's road-legal, production car status, the car was driven from the UK to Germany for the attempt, using the same road-legal Dunlop Direzza tyres for both the journey and the record.

Westfield Kit Car Model Overview and Basic Buyer's Guide

Westfield Kit Car Model Overview and Basic Buyer's Guide

Westfield PreLit


This was the original 'copy' of the Lotus/Caterham 7, so called as it is 'pre litigation' ie. before they were forced to change the design! Alluminium panels are utilised, suspension/components from the MG and Triumph Herald. Identical in size/shape to the Caterham. Kit parts are no longer officially available but replacements can be sourced from the Westfield factory.

Westfield SE


Effectively the base of the model we see today. The SE is an English axle'd car and has now stopped official production. While the rear axle design may seem a little outdated this does not detract from the handling on 90% of roads and tracks, in fact, in some cases it is preferred due to being lighter than the more modern independent versions.

Westfield SEi

Amongst other evolution, the major changes was the introduction of fully independent rear suspension, a major advantage on very bumpy/ripply roads.

Westfield SEiW

This stands for the 'SEiW(ide)' version of the car. A wider cockpit meaning more room and increasing seating options.

Westfield SEight

The SEight was sold with the Rover V8 engine, a formidable pairing. Customers have fitted everything from TVR engines, to short block Chevy engines and more. Tends to be a very commited subsect of the Westfield fraternity.

Westfield SDV

Standing for 'single donor' vehicle' this is the factory kit to build the car from one base vehicle. Build and component quality therefore depends very much on the quality of the vehicle used and the skill of the person building it.

Westfield Sport 2000

A 190bhp Ford Duratec engine, various factory limited edition items and you have the Westfield Sport 2000.

Westfield Mega Range (Megabusa / Megablade)

Available both factory built and home built the Megarange incorporates Westfield's bike engine options, the Megabusa being the preferred option.

Westfied XTR2 / XTR4

In a significant departure from their usual design, the XTR2/XTR4 is more 'Radical-esque' in design. The former utilising a Hayabusa plant, the latter the car based Audi engine.

Westfield XI

Orginally built back in 1982 the XI is now back in production due to popular demand. Fitted with the BMC 1275 A series engine. It utilises donor parts from Midget, aimed to mirror the looks of the classic Lotus the modern release is updated with the necessary work to enable it to pass the SVA test.

Westfield FW400

Briefly the FW400 was the king of the kit cars, boasting a highly strung K Series engine, Hewland transaxle and innovative carbon fibre chassis it took Caterham's even more highly strung R500 to topple it (at least in figures).

Home built Westfields
From the humble Ford Pinto and Crossflow, to every bike engine under the sun, to V8s, rotaries and more, the ingeniuity of kit car owners everywhere means there are literally 100s of different engine configurations out there all with the pluses and minuses.

Important tips when buying a Westfield
- inspect the suspension components
With exposed suspension, this can be a dead giveaway as to the car's condition and to how well it has been kept. Are the shocks rusted beyond comprehension? Can the spring mounts still be adjusted? If running adjustable suspension does the clicker still click smoothly? If running bushes, are they oozing and crumbling out of the wishbones? Inspect all these areas.

- examine the quality of the build
As with any kit-car, build quality varies hugely. These are not production line, robot built cars - they are home built by enthuasiasts and the quality of the build is directly reflected from the quality of the person who built it. If, on light inspection, you see masses of twisted wire behind the dash joined with insulating tape then you might fear for the quality elsewhere, if however, you see nicely laid out correctly terminated wires then this might be an indication of the quality throughout. Of course, this is just one simple area, but if you don't trust the build quality you can see, don't trust the build quality you can't see!

- don't necessarily discount a sprint, competition or track car as a purchase
More often than not, a car made for use on the track will have had more frequent thorough inspections and use a higher quality of components throughout than a car made purely for road. The downside to a competition car may be the harshness of the ride (suspension) and the noise - although some may consider these benefits!

- has the chassis been repaired or hit?
Most accidents in Westfields seem to be front impace, while repairable, it does need to be done correctly - preferably by the factory in a jig. Examine the chassis bars leading from the front of the car to scuttle (centre section bulkhead), you're looking ripples or creases here. A weak area of the chassis to check is the diff carrier, get underneath the car and look at the mounts that hold the diff in place, you're looking for any cracks on the welds and joins.

- ensure documentation is up to date
Does the car have a valid V5 with the engine number matching? Engine changes are not uncommon so you want to ensure the hassle of sorting the new numbers is not yours. Similarly, all cars now have to pass IVA, examine these documents to check all is in order.

Kit Car - Ariel Atom attempts to beat the 0-60 MPH world record

Weird. i thought the standard time quoted was 3 sec or less! I reckon the Levante RS is faster (but 5 times more expensive!)

A Rough Guide - Components needed when using a motorbike as a donor for kit car (Westfield Megabusa,Dax Rush and other bike engined Kit Cars/Specials)

Here is a rough guide of what you need for a bike-engine installation. Use it as a template to present to a breaker/dealer. This may help you from being given the run around and a reminder for parts you had not thought of on your list!

Some parts may or may not be required depending upon the extent of the loom etc used from the donor car.

ENGINE
Main unit complete with cylinder head (doh!) - Ensure it has an engine# if you want to easily register it with DVLA

Carbs - all 4
With throttle/choke/idle adjust linkages
Trumpets to get into airbox
Clamp screws and rubbers to hold them to inlet
Fuel/air breather pipes of the CORRECT bore, preferably with clips
Throttle pot sensor
Airbox/Air filter unit?

Others
Gear shift lever arm
Exhaust manifold - useful for downpipes mainly
Exup valve (YAMAHA only)
Sprocket from Gearbox output
Electrics
Main wiring Loom (full and undamaged if you want to use it easily)
Main switch/Fuse and relay
Starter relay
Coil Packs and LT/HT wires
CDi (ignition) unit
Regulator/Rectifier unit
Fusebox
Relays
Instruments (speedo is probably not useable)
Exup-servomotor and wire cables (YAMAHAs only)

Pipework
Fuel pump and fuel lines to carbs/tank
Oil cooler and pipes
Radiator (CORRECT one please) with thermal switch/sender
Rad Fan
Rad Header tank and pipes
Cylinder head top pipes including thermostat if fitted there
New parts required
Propshaft 2-piece and central support_Speedometer - some bikes still have mechanical drive, most are electrical_Output sprocket from gearbox - requires adaptation/fabrication_Engine mounts - requires fabrication_Gear linkage - either mechanical rods and/or solenoid operation_Reverse system - mechacnical reverson, electric Heath-Robinson or Fred-Flinstone___
Special Parts

Engine Mounts
Bike engines are mounted "hard" in bike-frames, with no rubber mountings. In car chassis's it is customary to use mounts. Fisher Sportscars use rubber suspension bushes, while other manufacturers use none.
Each engine is subtly different but the basics of mounting them is the same. Engine mounts require triangulation to make the engine rigid.
You will need to fabricate the mounts from steel or aluminium depending upon the tools you have available.
Propshaft & Drive
The output from the bike gearbox is a splined output shaft. Ordinarily the main chain-drive sprocket fits onto this and a locknut keeps it in place.
Dashboard Instruments
A bike instrument binacle typically consists of the following displays:
0. Analogue Tachometer reading up to 14000RPM
0. Speedometer (either digital or analogue)
0. Oil low-pressure light
0. Water temperature gauge (either digital or analogue)
0. Neutral light
0. Indicator/main beam lights
Bikes do not usually have fuel gauges – but sometimes have a low-fuel light.
Standard car gauges can generally be used with one or two exceptions.
0. The speedo drive comes either off of the bikes front fork or from its gearbox. Due to the size differences between bike/car tyres/diffs the speedo will need recalibrating. Most bike speedos cannot be recalibrated. You are then faced with a choice of buying a "proper" car electronic speedo that is re-configurable, or using a pushbike computer. The commercial units are available from Stack etc and cost from £100 upwards. Bike computers are available from Sigma, Cat-Eye etc and cost about £15. This is for a top-of-the range model with resetable odometer, stop-watch timing etc etc
0. The tacho must come from a bike due to the higher RPMs experienced. It MAY be possible to feed the tacho generated on the bike engine directly into the tacho. Alternatively the CDi unit may generate an RPM output separately.
0. The standard car fuel tank, sender and gauge can be reused.
0. Gear display. It is quite tricky in a car to remember which gear you are in when you are unused to sequential shifts. For this reason a gear-display LED is a nicety. A unit is available from the author to do this function. It relies upon two reed-switches mounted on the gearshift linkage to inform the display when a gear has been changed. Alternatively if you are using the fully electronic gearshift mechanism the display is included.


Gearchanging
All bike engines feature a 6speed sequential box as standard. Gearchanges on a bike are accomplished by pressing down on a lever with the left foot, or lifting the lever with the foot.
Manual gearchange
Implementing a gearchange lever for a Sequential gearbox in a car is relatively straightforward. _The basic principle is to use a vertical rocking lever sticking-up out of the tunnel and use a forward pushrod to transfer the motion towards the engine. A bellcrank can then be used to lift or drop the gearshift lever on the engine.
Electronic gearchange
Due to the simple nature of the change lever (just up or down) it becomes easy to see an electronic solenoid actuated system.
Commercial system
There is a commerical offering called KlikTronic. This was originally designed for racing bikes but works fine for cars. The system is based around an electronic control box and a two-way push-pull solenoid.
The system is robust and was designed to cope with big American bikes with very heavy shifts.
The system is available from "??" and costs £320+vat/p&p.
Home-Made system
A home made system is easy to design based around some cheap solenoids. It costs a tiny fraction of the price (around £20 to £40).
What you need:
0. 2 Solenoids
0. A bracket to hold them to the engine casing.
0. A nut/bolt and some washers to interface to the solenoid acutators.
0. Some cables and/or electronic control box.

The Solenoids
The solenoids must be powerful but fairly small. After some experiments the ideal solenoids were found to be the type that sit piggy-back on pre-engaged starter-motors. I managed to buy two starter-motors from a 15year old SAAB 900 for just £7.50 each. Once removed from the motor assembly and cleaned up they looked as good as new. These solenoids are very powerful and draw around 12A and 12V when engaged! They also have a nice long 1" throw on them too. This is great value compared to buying new solenoids from Maplin/CPC/RS etc as these typically cost twice the price for a quarter performance!
Mounting
Once the solenoids have been sourced they must be mounted to actuate the gearshift arm.
The solenoids are pull-types and must be arranged one above, one below the lever (or one at each side if the lever is rotated through 90degrees).
Some solenoids (SAAB included) have retention springs inside which push the actuator shaft out normally. Thus to arrange the solenoids we must have them opposed and pushing each-other in about half way. This is so that when one solenoid pulls the actuator on the other springs and moves. If the solenoids were mounted to give their full throw when one pulled the other would have its actuator yanked hard and not move!
Finding the correct position for the solenoids in relation to the shift-lever and engine mount holes is a trial-and-error thing. You only need to concentrate on one at a time as the other is a mirror image.
Note that solenoids seem to have all sorts of different actuator shaft outputs. Some have just a plastic rod-end (avoid) while others have a nice sturdy steel actuator loop (SAAB – good).
Our actuators will have to be attached to the gearshift shaft via a bolt of some type. The steel actuator output is too big for a normal bolt and so to make the action smooth it is best to weld on a penny-washer to the actuator end. The link through the gearshift shaft is then a simple bolt.
To hold the solenoids in place a bracket will be required. There are some convenient bolts/holes on the bike-engine casing near the gearshift shaft and it is assumed that these are to be used.
Wiring it up
So now we have the solenoids mechanically fixed we need to look at the control of them. For the uninitiated a solenoid is simply a coil of wire in a ferrite former. This is to provide a concentrated magnetic field when a current is applied to the coil. A law of physics states that if current is passed through a coil of wire a magnetic field is generated within the coil. If a ferrite core is then positioned in the coil the magnetic field will "drag" the former along and linear motion is seen.
The coil will draw quite a large current when the voltage is applied. From 8Amps to around 15Amps with some solenoids. It is inadvisible to route cables directly to dashboard/steering-wheel switches due to this requirement. A better system for direct control would be to have the dashboard/steering-wheel switches trigger relays which can be mounted near to the solenoids. This is shown below:
This method still relies upon the driver understanding how to operate a bike box. I.e. the gear-order is one shove down to first, then subsequent pulls-back for 2nd, 3rd etc. Going down in gears is the opposite.
There is also a problem getting neutral. On a bike to get into neutral you do a "gentle" lift/press of the lever when in 1st/2nd gear respectively. To translate this to button presses requires a "tap" of one button then the next to only part-move the lever.
To obtain a "pure" up and down gear functionality on the steering-wheel it is necessary to employ a controller box. The one that I have designed is based around a PIC microcontroller with some solid-state FET relays. This has the advantage of allowing the tricky neutral "taps" to be pre-programmed and also gives an easy indication of which gear you are in via an LED display on the dashboard. The development of this box is way out of reach for anyone who does not design electornics for a living and so will be discussed no further here. The author may be in a position to sell these control boxes once their function has been proven.

Reverse Gear
Bike engines do not have reverse gear (apart from the enormous Honda Goldwings). So how do we get the car to go in reverse?
Commercial Boxes
There are two commercially available systems on offer.
0. The first is the "Reverson" and is the system offered in F27, Fisher and Westfield cars. It is a small box which sits in the transmisison tunnel and interfaces to a split prop. The unit contains a system of gears that normally allows direct coupling of the input and output shafts. There is a small lever on the side – when pulled this brings a gear into play which has the effect of reversing the output shaft direction.
0. The Reverson is available from "??" and costs £??+vat
The second version is almost identical to the Reverson but also features a piggy-back solenoid for reverse selection via a dash-mounted button.
This is the unit used in the Caterham Blackbird cars and is thought to be rather more robust that the Reverson box.
The box is available from "??" and costs £??+Vat
0.
0. BGH Geartech have a similar unit. It can be mounted in 3 ways and has an extra handle position for neutral (i.e. props will be independant)._It costs £520 incVat and weighs 10KG. It has been designed to cope with 250bhp (nitrous) bike engines.
0. The great Ron Champion has an offering originally intended for use with his fireblade locost chassis._This is for De-Dion rear ends only. You put a large cog on the diff-input flange and mount a starter motor above this bolted on a bracket on the diff. _This could possibly be done with a live-axle car but may lead to vibrating loose etc.


Home-Made Solutions
Other solutions for reverse are electrical – relying upon an electric motor to propel the vehicle backwards while the engine turns over in neutral.
This could be done by using some form of gear on a propshaft and a mating gear on the motor. To eradicate losses it is important that the gears are not permanently in mesh.
An ideal mechanical setup would appear to be a small pre-engaged starter motor. A dash button can be used to separately control the solenoid action to mesh the gears, and then the starter motor drive can be controlled by a box of electronics by using PWM techniques.
There are some major problems with this idea though:
0. The ideal place for the gearbox cog is on the output shaft of the gearbox. Due to the size constraints of the engine this limits us to approximately a 10cm gear. This does not give enough clearance for a starter motor to sit adjacent AND allow the propshaft past.

Hopefully at the end you should have something that will be able to do this!

Roush V8 engine package for Kit Cars, Self Builds and Replicas - GT40, AC Cobras, Daytona Cobras and more

Was informed by one of my sources about the new package from the engine builders, Roush. This has great potential for kit car and replica builders looking for that extra air of originality with extreme performance and up-to-date technology (at a price). Its just a straight up match for engines and gearboxes. The thing i like about the concept is it takes a lot of the time hassle out of your build planning and execution by already having the gearbox and engine set up as one.

"Roush Now Offers Complete Crate Engine and Transmission Packages

Kit car builders and street rod enthusiasts have traditionally had their share of issues mating the transmission to the engine in a project car; either one or the other would install smoothly, but rarely both would work in tandem without a lot of additional work.

Roush Performance has solved this problem with the introduction of the "Ford-in-a-Ford" powertrain package, which includes a powerful Roush crate engine perfectly matched to a complete aftermarket performance transmission. All hardware, calibrations, and everything needed for a seamless installation are included.

The first application was installed in a 1963 Ford Galaxie, which paired a Roush 511SRFE engine with 525 hp and 575 lb-ft torque to a Ford 4R100 four-speed automatic transmission. This car, and powertrain package, will debut at the 11th Annual Goodguys PPG Nationals in Columbus, Ohio, on July 11 to 13.


Bob Corn, a former Ford engineer who now works at Roush, is the project manager of the package development, which will eventually include both short- and tall-deck small-block engines. During his tenure with Ford, which ran from 1962 through 1981, Corn was instrumental in developing several of the now-legendary Ford engines, including the 427, which is often heralded as one of the most instrumental in automotive history. His background and knowledge made Corn a natural choice to help Roush Performance bring a complete powertrain package to market, a product offering unmatched by anyone else.

"As we looked around there was nobody that offered a complete engine powertrain package that was just 'plug and play,' to borrow a computer term," said Corn. "What Roush is offering the car builders is a complete kit with a recognizable and proven engine, mated with an industry-leading transmission. All the parts are included in the Roush kit-things like the calibration, electronics, throttle position sensor, torque converter, and everything that will be needed is already part of the package and all designed to work together and drop right into the chassis. Roush is doing all the hard work on the powertrain so all the customer has to be concerned about is the actual car build itself."

Although the 511SRFE engine was the model used to develop the concept, Roush will soon offer a complete line of engine and transmission packages that can fit a wide variety of applications. For more informatio"

Ultima GTR/Can AM Chevy powered Kit Car - The Car Top Gear isn't allowed to test?

Firstly i’d like to say I have love for all cars (especially sports cars) but do you ever feel we’re paying more for the brand/corporate marketing budget than actual performance?? There is a 911 (air cooled 3.2) in my garage as well so its not like i am biased (well a more of a slant to what i have built with my own two hands) either way. The Ultima Top Gear test debacle is a real indicator of the problem. For a good few years they have refused to compare it to the heavyweights (Ferrari, Porsche, Lambo etc) or the minnows (Pagani, Gumbert, etc) who keep the high £$£ cost performance ratio myth going. Now I know a good few people frown at kit cars due to lack of pedigree (How much pedigree does Pagani have apart from meeting Fangio, or Koenigsegg CCX (A swedish guy with no car background shoehorning rebuilt Ford V8 into a car and asking thru the nose for it). Whatever they say it doesn’t match with the Ultima. Designed by Lee Noble (Top Gear happily test his later Noble Car), Used as a test bed for the legendary Mc Claren F1 (I’m sure Ron Dennis and Gordon Murray wouldn’t have picked a crap car to test a legend) running gear/engine and a car with raw power. Now do you feel the big boys are scared of having their image shattered (like the Banzai runners did in 70s/80s california beating established sports cars with Can Am specials) by a Kit Car and have forced Top Gear not to run it (or they will veto the show) or Top Gears producers are ignorant? I’m not saying a car cannot be worth alot of money (i was always told anything i worth whatever someone will pay for it) but some over play the issue. What’s your take on it?

Check out the independent test video and share with us your take on it.