How Long To Build Yours?

[Guest Biffo]

Seen on 'another' forum;

 

*****Building the car has given me a sense of trust for all its major components; if something goes wrong I know how to fix it. The build itself took less than a week,******

 

Number 1 Mecanno (spelling?) set, me thinks!!!!

[Guest Ant]

what car do they claim to have built in under a week?

[Guest TerryBarry]

It has previously taken me longer than a week to build a Tamiya 1/20 scale Grand Prix car.

No wonder the Hood isn't complete yet - and I don't even have to paint it and apply decals.

Terry

[Guest Biffo]

It was a "Caterham" of course!

 

See here, and check out Peter Carmichael's post (about 10th one down)

 

http://www.blatchat.com/t.asp?Id=2843

[Guest daveg]

All

 

This has lead me to a good question...

 

What is a "reasonable" build period for a RH?

 

Something RHSC fail to mention in their brochure!

 

Dave

[Guest mickmellors]

Simple answer -

 

 

It takes as long as it takes - and even then its never REALLY finished !!!!

[Guest trevor hooley]

one of my friends bought a sumo at harrogate in July / august, and passed sva last week, the car is well finished with only minor tweeking to do... by the way he is a professional mechanic with a fully equiped garage.

 

karl

[Guest Ant]

What is a "reasonable" build period for a RH?

 

Not sure if I was "reasonable" or not, but I did log every hour spent on it from arrival of the donor to passing the SVA test. Lots of facts and figures on my web site on an overly complicated spreadsheet, but the breakdown was as follows:

 

155 hours dismantling donor and refurbishing bits

another 250 hours from kit arrival to engine running and 4 wheels

another 450 hours to get to an SVA failure

another 45 hours to an SVA pass

and another 20 hours or so on teething problems in the first few weeks of daily running.

 

Add that lot up and it's about 920 hours. I did this in about 13 months. Collected donor may 02, kit pickup end of aug 2002, engine running new years eve 2002, sva fail may 23rd 2003 and sva pass june 13th 2003.

 

That all equates to an 85 hours a month average, or 14 hours 20 munites a week, or just over 2 hours per day. My wife didn't see very much of me that year!

 

None of this includes thinking time, designing time, discussing time, parts / components finding time, catalogue browsing time, or reading time, but it does include rather a lot of tea drinking time

 

Whether this is "reasonable" or not I have no idea. This was my first kit so I reckon I wasted a fair amount of time learning from my mistakes. That said I've been maintaining cars of all shapes and sizes in my spare time prior to this for about 10 years so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect I guess - certainly on how the systems work etc etc.

 

Ant

 

PS - Mine's a wishboned 2B, all stainless, unmodified 2.0 EFi.

[Guest daveg]

Ant

 

Phew...

 

From your email address I assume you are Prof. of Statistics @ Notts University

 

So, about a year is good going if you have a full time job!

 

I started in March so I should be ready for the summer all this summer I was un-employed so I got quite a bit done including the spraying (biggest job imho) but now I have a job the whole build has slowed down.

 

Mick

 

I count finished=sva, after that its upgrades etc

 

Dave

[Guest Battery Bill]

We will be claiming a bit more time for the "Battery conversion" But think a year and a half will suit us.

We both think we get more done on the dark winter nights, summer has too many distractions like Barbys and beer.

[Peter Bell]

What are you doing playing with Barbies! shouldn't Joey have an action man? My daughters never let poor Ken drive Barbie's Ferrari, he had to be the passenger.

Peter

[Les Welsher]

Talking of Barbies, action man and Ken what about this:

 

A little girl is in line to see Santa. When it's her turn, she climbs up on Santa's lap. Santa asks, "What would you like Santa to bring you for Christmas?" The little girl replies, "I want a Barbie and Action Man." Santa looks at the little girl for a moment and says, "I thought Barbie comes with Ken." "No," said the little girl. "She comes with Action Man, She fakes it with Ken."

 

Sorry, couldn't resist

 

Les