Can I have owners opinions on which to look at and what I should look out for.

Budget is 14K, the lower the mileage the better.

Purely a weekend & Trackday car (6/7 a year), and the occasional trip to Tesco's :D

Not overlly fussed if it's modded, but ideally just the bolt on stuff. Would like a little va va vroom.

Peoples thoughts.

as an ex elise owner, i'll point out that elises dont crash well :) maybe not something that would make a big difference in a road car, but if you're tracking it then its something to consider.

Basically the front clamshell is 6K and unrepairable - you crack it, you buy a new one. The ally chasis is also pretty much unrepairable (its do-able, but uneconmic time wise).

Got to be a Caterfield for what you'll use it for.

What happened to the new ITR btw ?

Will be selling as soon as it arrives, a combination of having to use some of the money to fund my girlfriends family crisis, and the fact I can't get the money when I need it.

Hmm 6K, ouch

http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/threa...hreadid=184967

sorry to hear that - you've been working up to that car for ages.

yep, Ive been flamed on this board a few times for saying that elises dont crash well, but mine was a write off after a 20 mph knock took out the front clam and dented the ally floor pan and a friend had a 6K plus bill when he picked up a cone on a track day ripping up the front of the car...

I loved my elise and I dont think that a caterham compares as a road car - you can have an elise as a your only car, but something like a 7 is pretty extreme. For track days however, especially if you're happy wielding a spanner, there's no contest.

http://www.blatchat.com/ the 7 board is good (very caterham orientated rather than general 7 type things)

Caterham, definitely if you dont need the practicality.

I bought one purely for trackdays / weekend fun, and absolutely love it.

14-15k should get you near superlight territory. plenty fast enough (much quicker than a std elise around a track, and FEELS much quicker too due to low driving position) and comes with all the right bits (LSD, Anti cav tank / dry sump, uprated brakes, 13' wheels, 6 spd box - essential for track, lots of carbon shiny bits).

Insurance will be cheaper too, I pay 350 as a second car with no NCB allowable!

Running costs are minimal, parts cheap, and its so easily upgradeable.

heres mine for an idea of what you would be looking at for near that money (I paid 16k, only 7k miles on the clock) :

http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/threa...hreadid=188794

if you want any more info, feel free to ask :)







[Edited by merkin - 3/18/2003 1:18:08 PM]

POC I have emailed Chris, about it, for some reason saw his advert.

should be able to pick up a top notch Westfield for that, either something like POCs or a bike engined one.

For what you want it has to be a Caterham or Westfield.

greg

Merkin, I no nothing really about any Caterfields, although have driven a Busa and Blade, a couple of years ago.

How driveable are they on the road?

I want to be able to drive it at the weekends, down the B-Roads, for a bit of fun.

What mods should I look for to make them trackworthy, ie - LSD, Baffled Sump etc

Oh one other thing where do I go looking for one?

14K is realy top wack thou, as want to keep 1K to buy possible upgrades.

Type r,

hugely driveable on the roads, something like a superlight is ideal, as theres not TOO much power, so you can have really great fun (evidenced by me spending the whole weekend sideways round roundabouts ;).

For trackdays anti cavitation tank is the minimum, but dry sump if its a highly stressed engine (SL isn't particularly) and/or you are talking about over 10 trackdays a year. LSD obviously helps, as does the 6 speed box, as its 1:1 final ratio. common consensus is that 13' wheels are best for track/handling. all sorts of other gubbins, mstly weight saving i.e composite seats etc.
FIA roll bar a must for the track.

www.blatchat.com is a great source of information, and also in my opinion cars, see the for sale board there and you'll get a good idea of what's available, and i think you'll find they have all been well taken care of. They are a friendly bunch :)

for 14k i reckon you are looking at a 1.6k supersport or an older superlight. Anything you buy from Caterham will be 1-2k overpriced, but worth a look on the website to get an idea of the market (www.caterham.co.uk)

[Edited by merkin - 3/18/2003 2:26:10 PM]

Thanks for your help, will check out Blatchat

So what are Westies / Caterhams like in a crash?

:)

repairable - dont need to buy half the car at a time like the elise and they've got a steel chasis rather than a bonded ally monocoque, so you or any decent garage can do the work.

I have no idea what a westy is like in a crash !!!!! i don’t want to find out LOL

I have had a couple of track day dings, like hitting tyre wall at 3 or 4 mph (i started at 80, and just spun and spun and spun loosing speed untill DONK!!!!!!! clipped the wall heheheh) PHEWW

Westys offer better value for money in my opinion, both are well put together, each having its owners reasons for buying, mine was that fro 13k i get a car that can more than match the performance of a R300, it is a megablade though!!

Get a cat westy, they are just soo muh fun

type R,

I spent £10k ish on mine for a 180bhp Zetec, with rollbar, LSD, track tyres etc.

fine to drive on road and track, for example, I drove from Leed to Cadwell park in fog, did a full days tracking around Cadwell, then drove home :^)

http://wscc.ggr.net/cgi-bin/BB/ikonboard.cgi

is where Westie bods hang out.

It is not £6000 for a clamshell on the Elise - more like £350 for an S1 Elise and £1000 for S2. Fitting and painting will add about £1000 apiece if done properly.

Elises do tend to bend their chassis' if you crash. Which basically writes the car off. But saying they don't crash well is wrong, because they're very very strong and a heck of a lot better in an impact than your 40yr-old design Lotus 7-alike. Side impacts are the most obvious improvement, but the Elise has modern-fangled things like crumple zones, etc.

I love my Elise, and it's a good tool on track, but it's a road car to me. If it's primarily for track use it would be easy to argue for a Caterfield. Either Elise or Caterfield is light, so neither of them punishes brakes and tyres on track like, say, a Scoob would.

gregh you were looking for one around the time I was last year if I remember correctly.

Your car sounds nice, espeacily the price.

sjobson - been through this several times on this board :)

I crashed my elise a few years ago at a low speed (silly me, etc). The front clam was quoted at £6K and the ally chasis had a dent in the floor pan which, as its ally and repairing ally is an absolute nightmare (talk to anyone with an ally framed motorbike...) it was a write off - car valued at 23K, repairs for front clam, door and chasis 15K from HR Owen.

Dont get me wrong - if i was to have a crash I'd rather have it in a someone elses Elise than a caterfield, as I'm sure you're far better protected in that shell. But when it comes to repairing minor damage both myself and my friend who cracked his front clamshell have found to our cost that elise repairs can be expensive stuff. It doesnt take anything away from the ability of the car - i think the elises are absolutely fantastic. But if I were to buy a car thats going to see a lot of track days, I'd steer away from an elise as trip through the gravel which may take out a wing on a caterfield, may be very expensive in the elise.

Perhaps the s2 is more reasonably priced ?

Finally - this is my first hand experiance, not something i read on another board or heard from a bloke i met in the pub. :)

Cookie Monster how is the 205 these days?

i did half a dozen races last year with a whole 96 bhp (flywheel...) :) which was good for learning how to race, if not particulary great for winning races... still managed to beat quite a few folk with considerably more horsepower though.

Ive a new lump, which is a bit more serious. Its in the car, but ive still got some plumbing to do then put some throttle bodies in. So im hoping to have it all complete in a few weeks.

The car weighs in at 770kg, and should make upwards of 170bhp from a 1.6 crank with bigger pistons. The handling has always been stunning, and it looks like a shed :) so there will be some unsuspecting scalps being taken...

cant wait...

I'm sorry, but no way, no how does an Elise clam cost 6k. It never did either.

The chassis isn't repairable though, and due to the way the wishbones etc. are mounted to it, there does lie the possibility of bending and thus writing it off. Its one of the weak points in owning an Elise, but on the plus side it is incredibly robust in a crash.

Having been in a Caterham, there is frankly no way its even close to the safey level, but that may not be a consideration depending on your usage.

Whilst they are both light weight cars, they feel completely different to drive, so you need to test both and see which is to your tastes.

Sounds Good Cookie Monstor, my old CTR was pushing 210BHP at of the lickle 1.6 when I sold it, it had undertaken many mods since you last saw it.

Drop me an email next time you race or do a trackday, would be good to meet up and see the beast. :D

Test drove an Elise today and I am leaning towards it, purely as I will only do about 6 Trackdays a year, I just havent got the dough to spend on T/Days like I used to.

yep - if you're not going to just track day it but want something for the road, then the elise makes sense, its much more rounded than the caterham type things. I really did love mine (standard S1 in titanium with a blue'ish hood), driving it was always an event. We did quite a few runs back up to Scotland (from London) spending a week or two touring the west coast. This was a few years back when they were still quite new so it really did turn heads everywhere (i couldnt drive it to save myself though.... :) )

I thought the 7's were too extreme really as a road car (now i'll get flamed from the 7 owners :) ), though I was thinking hard about a 1.6 superlight instead of the elise. It was really a) the cost of the caterhams and b) lack of radio, lockable boot (although the elise boot can be opened from outside the car...) and pretty poor in wet weather. It was our only car at the time as well.

To be honest, which ever you go for I reckon you'll love it. But, of course for the kind of money you're talking about you could buy a racing saloon and something to tow it with... :)

I'm hoping to do a couple of track days to iron out the bugs in the 205 at the beginning of april, then race it in the middle of april - i'll let you know :)

Excellent would like something to do on my days off, as all I have is a Ford Ka :D

That was my thoughts, but I reckon, I will want a 7 when I have had my Elise for a while, but hey ho, I need a road/track car, not the other way round at the moment I think.

A S1 clam shell is not £6K. A new clam for an S1 is approx £1,000 plus paint, labour...

They can be repaired also - it depends on the damage as to the cost. So you can get a repair and local respray for a reasonable price if you try

The chassis itself is an expensive piece - they used to be about £7k - I can't believe that they would write a £23k car off for a 20mph accident. I know from a few friends experiences that this should not be the case

Having an Elise as a track car is not going to be hugely expensive - it depends if you are racing or just doing it for fun. You shouldn't be crashing or colliding with anyone anyway .... hopefully :-)

But if you did have a bump - it could be a lot more expensive than say a Caterham. But I know which I would prefer to crash in

If you want something to go away in at the weekend / put shopping in and look the dogs ... its got to be the Elise IMO

Simon

Join www.seloc.org also (south east lotus owners club) - they do lots of very reasonably priced trackdays and have a good community and you can get a lot of good advice

Thanks for the info, will check it out.

Looking at the S2 135-R, bit of weekend fun, and the odd jaunt to the shops, so sort of set my heart on one now.

Type R
If it not going to be your only car then I would get a Westfield/Caterham (personally I prefer Caterham's). Elise does have better rain protection but if it's for fun who cares.
As for B-road blasting I don't think Caterham's/Westfields are the best due to their lack of weight and the state of the roads as they get thrown off line, fun though!
For 14k or less you can get a 2L Vauxhall engined Caterham, these can be made to be a very powerful car, or one of the bike engined Westfields (they sound fantastic)
terry
PS maybe go to some of the meetings or try a place in Barnet called Ratrace who service Caterhams, they also have a tuning company called Protune who could help you with Westfield and Caterham upgrades.
terry

Just have to say that Poc's westy looks bloody good, pity this is not being advertised at the end of the year, just what i would be looking for