Has anyone built a kit car before?
 

i am looking at building a kit car. i have been looking at a , a tiger r6, and a vortex rt as i like the look of them with the aero screen rather than a full windscreen and they are all relatively cheap. has any one built one before? and does any one know if they can have a cosworth engine fitted instead of the duratec or zetec engines.


cheers

Build a Murtaya! they use Impreza components...
Adrenaline Motor Sport. Creators of Subaru Impreza based sportscars

get yourself over to Westfield Sports Car Club - Homepage and get yourself talking to the various members on the boardroom. They are all a friendly bunch and will help out wherever they can.

I happen to own two westfield kit cars and they are brilliant! I cant recommend getting one enough.

There are alot of different kit car manufacturers and as with most things you tend to get what you pay for. Having said that, they are a doddle to look after if you have even the slightest engineering inclanation, they are cheap to run on the whole and will put a smile on your face bigger than most scoobies ever will.

Cosworth engines are do-able yes, but come with large pricetags generally, duratc engine is generally the best engine available for now with lots of power out of the box and lots of developement from reputable tuners for those with pockets of all sizes.

The best bit of advice is get yourself talking to the owners on the various forums (like the westfield one i mentioned above) go to some of your local area meetings and have a look at the cars

Yes, dont do it.
Costs go through the roof when you start building them correctly.
Your always fighting for time too.

bought mine factory built. you'll find this useful though - LocostBuilders

Thought about building a dutton 25 years ago - im bloody glad i never got round to it :lol1:

wimps :D:D:D

in my yoof, i could knock out an airfix kit in a weekend,

and it never cost more than the price of the kit.

the only real challenging one was the Tamia JPS lotus 1:8 scale

took a bit longer

mart :D:D:D

I have built some from scratch, and it is very hard work!

Les :)

I have built a few Caterhams in my time. Obviously very high end of the kit car market as its just a case of following instructions like lego etc.

If you are looking to do something at the lower end of the market then there is quite a lot more work involved, even Westfields take a considerable level of time and skill to get to a good standard.

The majority of the problem is time and space. If you have a nice big warm garage / workshop and you have a couple of weeks of time to kill then its easy. If you have an hour a week to build the thing then forget it.

When I got my last Caterham kit I booked a week off work to build it and worked on it for about 10 hours a day.

I have a new Westfield chassis in the garage (it is only 5 days old), I hope it turns into a car soon.
(The other half is building the new model to race).

Do you have a wife/girlfriend or family?
You will not have any time to spend with them and they will get annoyed (as I do).

I would guess that if you are only using the car as a track toy, then you are free to use whatever engine you wish, but remember a regular duratec engine in a light car will give scooby beating results.

yea i do have a girlfriend, but i am going to take a gap year before i go away to uni, so i will have plenty of time to do it :D not loads of space, but enough.

and i think i am now down to either a cosworth turbo, if i can find a kit that will allow this cheap enough, or a duratech engine with throttle bodies maybe :P