Kit Car or a Replica? WCM Lotus 7 Replica | Throdle

so what's up throttle have you ever wondered about buying a kit car well keep on watching because today you're going for a ride hi i'm nadine one of the co-founders of throttle and today i'm in san mateo with my friend simon hi nadine how are you good and what are you gonna show us today we're gonna look at a lotus 7 replica which is a world-class motorsports ultra light kit very cool now it is so cute and i want to find out more about it but i say we just jump right in okay it sounds like a great idea so yeah step there grab there and then i can help you on the way okay you're the first person i've ever met who's actually bought a kid car what were you thinking when you went through this decision so it was pretty impulsive to be very honest um i had a friend he has a catering that he built he let me drive it on the race track and right then and there two weeks later i bought this thing so the first thing you look at is well kit cars can be really fast and you can build them pretty economically almost always it will cost you more to build a kit than it will to just go buy something that somebody finished or was in the process of finishing and never finished it what about space because i've heard like that's a big concern for guys like where are they actually going to work on this car you don't need a lot of space but you do need tons of uh mechanical skill and tools and then all this time and then okay well are you capable of finishing the vehicle as good as a professional yeah or are you going to finish it like a home builder what about how you license this thing is there different rules or something for it i mean in california one of the best parts about a kit car is the fact that you can register it in a unique way in california under what they call a special build license you can basically do almost whatever you want so uh this was built in 2000 um for year 2000 you would have to have all the smog equipment this has none of that do you take this on a track um i like to drive it on the racetrack i like to take it down to get groceries actually i'm kidding um there's nowhere to put groceries yeah um so i i honestly really bought it to drive on the racetrack there's just this feeling when you drive this this car specifically where it's like a big go-kart this truly is a go-kart because there's this much suspension travel it's all solid heim joints there's no rubber bushings it's manual steering it's manual brakes so you actually get a workout anytime you want to stop it um it is a crazy thing to drive yet it's so rewarding when you drive it do you have any cool track stories you want to tell us about oh yeah so the first day i took it out on track was at a sonoma raceway and i actually had my father in the passenger seat and my father he's gesturing to me and i noticed there's a big puff of smoke coming out the right side and um i immediately pulled over let my friend lafari go by we pulled it in and i basically uh blew the valves on there oh my god you blew up your car so are you gonna take me up for ride to the top yeah all right let's do it yeah [Music] we almost got hit in the head with a rock but that's okay but uh let's take a look at this uh cool cake car it's a lotus 7 replica so in the 60s lotus made this car called the 7 it was basically like this open wheel and they were really lightweight they put a motor in the front and they were really fast they raced them it's certainly a unique car and therefore you don't always find them available yeah and probably the most common thing people see is a caterer him which everyone knows because you see it on top gear and all these other tv shows world-class motorsports it's a company out of texas and they um they manufacture their own kit so this is almost like that it's certainly not as nice but it's it's essentially that type of car and so trying to find something like that i think a good place to start is maybe here in the back it has a about a 10 gallon basically it's a race gas tank has a couple i think it has two two fuel pumps one way this is different than a traditional lotus 7 is it has a full independent rear suspension it's actually off of a subaru forester it's got i want to say it's a 411 gear set with a limited slip differential so it's it's really great for the track so i'm loving these seats i'm pretty sure this is a carbon fiber seat that's a that's an aluminum traditional race seat all right and they're not adjustable so when you get in um yeah one of the one of the funny things about this car is when i got it the pedal box moves so when you if you're taller or shorter there's a little little uh screw device that actually pushes the pedal box further away from you or towards you that system was actually a little unsafe so i had it changed and now it's all fully bolted down and unless you're my size you probably can't drive it the passenger sits right next to it as far as the dashboard goes like most kit cars there's no ignition there's no key to put in what you get is this little uh on off thing so you'll notice that kind of turns it on there's an ignition switch but the way you start it is actually there's just a push button you could in theory you know you could borrow it without having any keys uh the steering wheel does come off yeah one one of the things that i added was this this air-to-fuel it had to go with the the hon data set up so it's a full closed system as far as fuel injection uh the other thing that i put on is this this nice little shift light i remember you saying the hood of the car if anything ever happened to the hood you wouldn't be able to replace that thing because it's a kick car we actually actually pop it up because it's a kick car um you'll notice it's a it's all fiberglass but since they'd only made a few hundred of them it would be nearly impossible to find a new one of these so this is a engine and transmission out of uh s2000 so honda s2000 a little convertible one as far as i know it is a f20 motor with a f-22 head it revs to about 8 300 rpm and nothing really modified on it it's just bone stock um not even a not even an air box or anything the only thing that would be aftermarket is really just the computer and the exhaust system thanks simon for taking us through your lotus 7 replica today my pleasure so there was so much content that we had to divide it in a couple videos so be sure to check them out and subscribe to our channel and hit the bell so you don't miss out on any of our content so simon how do people follow you they can follow me as my user id 7 replica and certainly you know it's a lot of content in the video but i know i had a lot of questions about how to buy a kit car what are the things in it and so if you would comment ask questions i'm on there and i'll be happy to read them thanks for joining us and catch us next time on throttle's driving connections and fueling experiences you

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