Swan Jnr

do you have a picture? actually do a google search for jenson healey engine and it shows this page on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen-Healey from what i can see the engine should be a lotus 907 engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_907 have a look there for info. and yes it was fitted with Su's in its export guise to the US. its the same engine that went in the first lotus esprits so should go well!

page two on this link. perodua nippa, 2000 reg. 37,k on the clock. cheap, old reliable technology, and he'll never get caught speeding with that engine. http://www.ww-autos.co.uk/107840/stocklist.htm

sat in the cab of an AA truck once we spotted two mgf's broken down at the side of the road within 30 miles. AA man reckoned that they were quite a common car on his call log, due to head gasket failure brought on he claimed by the location of the engine. It was designed to go at the front with all the airflow that this entails and in the MGF location didnt stay cool enough and this placed extra stress on the head gasket. drove one a while back and they were good fun though, and they are really good value second hand. other than HGF no other horror strror i recall reading about.

Is it really worth ruining your positive feedback for the sake of less than £7's worth of items? some people.....

my old car built by pete cherry.

from talking to someone involved with the sva process it seems that the UK gov is trying to maintain its right to continue offering the sva test to keep the kit car business alive. the rest of europe dont have anything like it and so there is pressure from europe for us to drop it. i understand that the recent tightening up of the sva proceedures with more paperwork hoops to jump through are a part of the government attempting to make the sva scheme look as strong and convincing as possible in order to be able to force europe allow us to be a special case.

July/August good for me. glad to see you made the decision to stay on john. paul

apparently one of the fraud issues they are trying to combat is kit car companies passing off their owen turnkey cars as amateur builds. if they are a professional builds as i understand it then they need to go through the same modern stringent emissions tests as a new car. as an amatuer the emissions test is a lot less strict this means i think that this is the end of the pinto as a turnkey engine choice as there seems little chance a pinto will go through as a professional build. (though there might not be many of these left anyway) even if you have the company build up to a certain stage this will no longer be an amatuer build.

do you mind me asking where you got the seats from?

just spotted this, and its amazing, tragic and lots of other things. i thought it was fascinating though. http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=9321 the rest of the forum is quite good if you're nosey like me!

thanks alan, i sincerly hope it is that simple. The problem with the letter i got is that it is all about the amateur build declaration. when they demand build photos in the same letter it makes you think that its linked, as that would make basic common sense. optimistic really to apply such a crazy concept to something such as a governmental body! Paul

Hi tony, the yorkshire lads meet pretty regularly, and ther area sec is Big Lee on this forum. I think that he will have a link to his area webpage (he certainly used to when i lived up there) good bunch of guys and like all hoodies, friendly and always willing to help out. paul

anyone know what you are supposed to do if you buy a part built kit? (or a mostly built) and therefore dont have any built up photos? there is a box to tick if you bought part built but it doesnt seem to mention whether this exempts you from the photos? (got my amateur build thingy letter today) paul

i agree with nigel, this just isnt on. why dont they have any record of this? I had assumed that they held this information on a database? is that naive of me? is your licence the only info they have on you? surely they have to have a record in addition to this otherwise how do they ever check it against the licence? if they hold personal data surely one of the requirments of this is that they must keep it accurate and up to date otherwise they are in breach of the deata protection act. what am i saying, this is government, since when have the rules that affect us had any bearing on what they need to do? anyone need a (very) part time researcher?

like enforcer i'm equally puzzled as to why anyone would be doing this? It beggars belief? having only been on one track day so far, and being about the slowest thing there other than the water butts on the chicane i was looking forward to asking john to sit with me on a few laps this year to show me what i should be doing. the track day i attended was well organised, friendly an unintimidating for an utter novice like me. i notice that in johns message he says that he is very close to jacking it all in, but from tims message it looks like he may have actually done this already. if you havent john, and even if you have, i'd ask you to reconsider, and not leave as a result of one idiot, who probably isnt even a member of the club, and then instigate some form of legal action to track the culprit down. i cant imagine why an idiot would be doing this, but it seems a shame that the work you've done by the club would be ended by some moron who's potentially not even in the club. On the email front, there seem to be a few programs that will allow someone to do this kind of magic trick with making emails dissapear. I think the "text" is actually an image so it may be possible to right click and save the image to your hard drive (for use as future evidence) in the same way a screen grab creates an image of the whole screen at any given time so could be used in the same way to give you hard evidence of the email activity. This may help for the phone stuff http://www.zyra.org.uk/hoaxers.htm paul

Cheers! I think, (not sure) that the P6's only had four speed boxes. I was advised that in a kit car all first will do is spin the wheels and so a five speed would be best? I'll email Ray! Maybe i will get one for this summer. Thanks again paul

sadly that box had been sold before i even emailed them. still looking if anyone knows of one

sounds good thanks!

Hello, is there anything special i need to do when painting a set of alloy wheels? the wheels themselves are fairly new, what types of surface prep will need to be done prior to painting? Thanks paul

[still waiting for the approval to join the nsra forum! cany reply or pm without it.,

i've heard that before salty, probably in practical classics, would like to see the evidence its based on. i hope it isnt just a hunch.

if you look here; http://community.rhocar.org/index.php?show...c=18068&hl= it sounds like theres going to be a nearly new pinto going spare very shortly! paul

those volvos are tanks; theres a lot of pretty old ones about. the petrol consumption was the concern though with those. had a friend with one and while it never went wrong in three years the fuel bill (even 5 years ago) was pretty shocking. all that indestructability comes at a cost. vege oil in diesels is a pretty excellent solution if you can be bothered to keep clearing the shelves at tesco! vw and mercs are the best best apparently just sling in oil and off it goes. not sure what it does long term to the engine though. i think some cars need a heat exchanger.

out of interest what was it?

Hello all, with the announcement that tata have launched the worlds cheapest car (Tata Launch) this got me thinkling again about the cheapest possible way to get on four wheels. when i've a bit of time on my hands i end up on autotrader trying to figure out what would be the best value. (sad i know!) i'd looked at little things like the perodua nippa: cheap to buy, tax and based on reliable old Daihatsu Mira (1980's) mechanicals. The only trouble is, you couldnt exactly call it a looker. Various kit cars seemed good value, though again not overly blessed in the looks department. so the challenge is, can we think of the cheapest transport available? for me it would need to have: A low purchase cost (if Tata are pitching in at 2.5k brand new, it has to be under a grand) low running costs: Fuel consumption? Tax? (maybe even tax free?) Reliability. just a thought for an idle moment.