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Important Update November 2003:

Since putting this site on the net I receive enquiries at the rate of aproximately one a month, asking if I sell the plans. No, I don't.

Not even if you are a poor student in the outer reaches of the universe who writes in pigeon English, I don't sell plans.

If you think I am one of these people who try to make a pathetic few quid "on the side", I don't sell plans.

If you are, or if you are working for, Steve Porter and trying to find out if I am secretly selling plans on the side, forget it; I wouldn't lower myself.

If you are wondering how much the plans are, it's probably about £90 and not worth it.

This design is now out of date; leading arm rear suspension is not the best way to go but it is just as expensive as anything else and just as time consuming so don't bother. The front suspension is a bit Mickey Mouse also.

If you want to have a go at building from plans and you want a Lotus 7 type car, buy the book, "Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as £250 - and Race It!" It's currently £12.95 from Amazon.

Of course I love to hear from people who have read and enjoyed this site, and there have been quite a few; it's part of the reason for doing it. A little boost for the ego. But from now on, all enquiries regarding plans will head straight for the bin.

Enjoy:

16th December 1999.

Sorry about the poor quality of some of the pictures only I've used some of the Polariods for convenience in the first instance. Really observant people may also notice the use of washers and pieces of tube as "nyloc savers", until final assembly.

1995 and a new job and shift pattern presented me with the ideal situation to do something I had always wanted to do: build a car from the ground up.

What I would never do however is drive around in an un-finished, scruffy mess; like being unusual makes the car special enough for it's appearance on the road. I had every intention that this car would be finished properly or not at all.

Apart from the usual fun use on the road, I was hoping to use the car for the occasional club motor sport event such as hillclimbs or sprints (something else I would like to do before the effects of time work against me!) so with this in mind, I set about surveying all the plan-build cars available. It was a reviewer in an annual kitcar guide who commented that the Formula 27 was the best handling chassis of all plan-build Lotus 7 replicas, and that motivated me to look closer at a set of plans.

They appeared OK to me. Enter my very good mate Big Andy. He is my mentor, inspiration and Quality Control ("That's no good, do it again!"). It was only after Andy had said, "Go on, have a go. I'll help you." that I decided to go for it.

There would be only one rule: There are no rules and my word (or Andy's 'cause he's bigger'n me) is final.       Or: The goalposts are firmly cemented onto a set of castors.

So the original concept was: 1300cc Ford x-flow power, aiming approximately in the direction of the 750 Motor Club's class C, single aeroscreen and only one seat. Passengers? Look, you can either have a drive yourself or sod off and build your own car OK? And you can only have a drive if you're around the same size as me because it has been built to my vital statistics and there is no adjustment. Tough.

I came home from a holiday in the Southwest via Stroud to pick up the plans for £80 and later the same week bought the steel locally for another £70. It's August 1995.......

Go!

There is a recommendation to use some kind of chassis jig to keep everything straight and true and as it was going to be on the garage floor, what could be more solid? The process of chassis construction allows this; tack welding the pieces together, it gains rigidity as you build the structure, until it is quite stable. Then you weld/check/weld etc. until solid.

So I cut the first six pieces of 1/2in square tube to form the bottom of the chassis but as I tacked them together, I drilled two holes in each and screwed through into a rawlplug in the concrete via a couple of wooden spacers (about 1in), having checked for square, level and alignment. This first "plane" was my jig.

As I write, I am reminded that having bought myself a decent hacksaw, it was in for quite a bit of use. My early efforts needed quite a lot of dressing for which my Black and Decker Power File was a Godsend. My later work however became progressively more accurate and now even my toast is a uniform thickness. G-clamps also started to litter the garage floor. A spare length of tube clamped across two existing chassis members had a new piece clamped to it for squareness whilst welding.

Everything seemed to be going OK until I came to the bottom part of the seat backs which were bits of tube joined at weird angles each end. Being unsure I rang F27 who told me the plans had been updated since mine were printed and "...now we do it this way...". It was a phrase I was going to become quite familiar with until I virtually abandoned the plans altogether, but more of that later.

Having tacked most of the chassis together it was time to consolidate things a little and weld it properly. I thought it best to do as much as possible whilst leaving it screwed to the floor for added stability so I would complete one weld, then the corresponding one on the opposite side before letting things cool, then another pair and so on.

Now welding in quantity, I got an unexpected physics lesson; a small amount of CO2 in a bottle freezes like hell and frustrates your best efforts. A very helpful man from SIP advised me to use the argon/CO2 mix and I never looked back. Other people had told me they use CO2 and have no problem which is fair enough, but the argon makes the job easier for no extra cost. I had bought the Migmate 100 second-hand and two bottles of CO2 came with it, which were OK when full, or for tacking but useless when used in anger.

I did as much of the welding as physically possible before the BIG moment - The Grand unscrewing-from-the-floor ceremony.  Would it distort?  Would it resemble Chesterfield Spire? No!  'Course not; it would be in the bin by now if it had.  Underside completed, every weld was dressed, cleaned, treated with Kurust then primed. The final finish is white Hammerite.

NOTE: Reading this again, I feel I should point out that if it had turned out to be horribly scewed, I could not blame the person who built the garage. That was my very first motoring scratch build 16 years earlier!

Off the floor, the front was completed for the mounting of the steering rack and suspension, with extra triangulation pieces (not on the plan) for added strength. Every mounting hole on the chassis is internally reinforced with round tube to prevent crushing. Easy. Suitable tube was cut into correct lengths, then an 8mm hole drilled through chassis box. Open one side to 13mm, push reinforcement in, tack, dress etc..

My memories of this period in the build are of things seeming to move along quite quickly as a couple of hours work would see it "grow" noticeably. When came the time to leave it for get ready for work, I felt some achievement. However, once the main chassis structure was more or less complete, progress slowed dramatically; even a couple of sessions showed little gain.

My brother-in-law formed a series of bends in some 1/2in round tube for me to create the rear shape of the chassis, but I left them to one side until both axles were in. A slightly shorter assembly was noticeably easier to manoeuvre within the tight confines of my garage!

FRONTAL SUSPENDERS

I also bottled out of making the front lower wishbones. These are an unusual tube size for a start and join angles would have caused a lot of trial and error to get it right, so I elected to buy the tubes from F27 already milled and ready to weld. A bit pricey though. I used a workmate to hold them together for welding with another length of tube representing the bushes, for alignment.

The inner mountings for the lower wishbone are a little bit special thanks to Andy. I wanted comprehensive geometry adjustment; camber adjustment was OK but castor left room for improvement. Andy came up with a system of precision spacers where the thickness of each equalled 1 degree of castor and each pack of spacers contains one for 1/2 degree. So now the mountings themselves needed to be a bit more precise to match so I guessed they would be machined from a solid bar. Not so. Andy produced things called "bending tables" (figures) and made them from 3mm plate right in front of my very eyes. Spot on!

Andy also turned all the bushes for the car from a piece of Nylotron.

Top wishbones seemed to go OK. 40mm square tube (3mm wall), carefully shaped by cutting and welding to form an "Inter-city" nose on the outer end and a slight bend on the inner, with turreting of 3mm plate to mount the coil-over suspension unit. Below the outer end is a mounting plate in 3mm cut using a supplied template, for a Cortina upper ball-joint.  The "comprehensive" (ha-ha) plans say "Don't use the Ford ball joint as it protrudes too far upwards and won't fit." Fine, I didn't, but it still wouldn't fit!

I rang F27. "Ah. You've got an old set of instructions. They only make one type of ball-joint now, you'll have to make spacers". What?  They have names and addresses of plan-builders on a database, so why not send out updates? Surely, it makes good business sense to get as many cars on the road to a high standard as possible. But what do I know?

So I made spacers and ordered 4 coil-over units from F27. They came £300 later and were wrong. The fronts were too short. F27, "They're the right ones; they're the only ones we supply". Me, "Well they don't fit".  I was now losing confidence; had I made a gigantic poo poo of the chassis? Had I read inches for mm or something? F27, "Oh hang on. You've got an old set of plans haven't you? We don't do the inner ends like that any more, we just cut into the tube and use a shorter coil-over."  AAAAAGH!  I could have done that with half the hassle of making all that turreting.  I exchanged them with the manufacturers; Wellingborough being closer than Stroud.

REAR SUSPENDERS

I made a big cock-up here. A BIG one.  What a plonker.

Andy cut the 3mm plate to the supplied template for the mounting brackets that were to be welded onto the Escort rear axle (Timken type, with interchangeable diff ratios) . CNC mill, all 4 pieces together. I then made them into two box section mounts with the 2 1/2in hole for the axle in between two holes where the leading arms mount. Next stage is to cut through the large hole and weld back together on the axle.

I made the box sections by bolting two plates together using two dummy bushes and welding 3mm plate across as per plans. Each plate's outline is vertically symmetrical and so are the two bolt holes, but it was only after I had completely finished welding both mounts that I discovered that in one, the large axle holes were not. I had even dressed off half of the welds before I noticed.

"Oh dear" I said calmly. I think that's what I said anyway.   :-(

Of course, they don't do it like that anymore! F27 plans come in the form of an A4 ring binder with separate sheets inside, each one either a drawing or text (instruction/info). With mine, the text didn't always match the drawings and this was the case with the bottom coil-over mountings. I was not particularly impressed by the "new way", so I designed my own; I wanted the mounting bolt to be supported at BOTH ends.

I bought a Expert Software's "Quick and easy CAD" for £10 and found it to be very useful, easily paying for itself times over. Using it mainly for detail parts, the work is made far easier by printing templates. I started really getting into the CAD and this became as much fun as the building, now how about starting from scratch and designing a complete car?......er, no.

The axle was treated like all donor parts: clean with wire brushes (mechanical and manual!), Kurust, primer, Hammerite - Red for the axle. No, I think I did it yellow first, then red after I puked.

And another thing I've just remembered. Grinding the old leaf-spring mounts off the axle, I noticed it to be cracked right around the tube casting. Well, it did come off a van! I took it back to Andy (who had given it to me in the first place) and said, "Sorry mate, but this is no good". "Hang on," he said, and jumped up onto the wall at the back of the yard to his workshop and walked along to get passed two parked cars, then behind the building.

"Come here!" So I did the same. Ah. The wall is 9in wide and about 4' 6" high, but the other side is a 15' drop into the canal. I got passed the two cars, "Stop there,.....hold this." One end of another Escort axle came my way. Now I'm walking backwards and trying desperately not to look down at the Grand Union! It's amazing how fear motivates.

STOP PRESS: That was around 3 years ago, that wall has recently collapsed into the canal!

Axle in, (leading arms and Panhard rod made without incident) naff wheels on, ROLLING!  Outside for a photo shoot. The whole build is recorded on Polaroid, negative and video.

COCKPIT

Now to gain some control.It was to be done in the order: seat, steering, pedals, and the layout was completed to suit me only with no adjustment as I had no intention of selling my pride and joy, and neither have I ever been a fan of the classic, straight-arm sportscar diving position.

I figured there to be little need for a sophisticated seat as there's no room for your arse to move sideways anyway. SORRY, how crude. My perception of the driving position was such that there is little requirement for upholstery due to the inherent limits of lateral movement of one's buttocks.  Better?

Well, I pinched an idea from a Robin Hood I'd seen at a sprint meeting and used a piece of well varnished plywood for the squab base topped with a leather covered foam cushion. The foam came from Leicester Market where a very helpful chap advised me to top 2" of normal density foam with an inch of high density for the squab, with just 2" normal for the back. Mounts for the seat belt were threaded plugs made by Andy which we welded into the chassis box section and although I said, "..one seat.....never sell..", we fitted them to the passenger side just in case! Belt is an FIA approved 4 point with quick release.

Steering column. Ah, this is where the big downturn occurred; the plans were virtually abandoned here, my dummy went one way and Teddy went the other.

The instructions are very complicated here and refer to the pedal mount being welded to the column tube amongst other things. The drawings however, bore absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the text and I'd already noticed that the pedal mountings were covered in their own section. Of course, the text was mk1 and the drawings mk2 but wait, there's a mk3!??  There was now a third way which was much simpler, AAAGH!

"Stuff the plans" I thought. I sat in the car and held the steering wheel exactly where I wanted it (bolted to the column of course!) and wedged it there so that I could check the alignment with the Allegro steering coupling connected to the rack. When I was satisfied, I made my own bloody mount!!!

The steering shaft was lengthened by Andy who used the bottom end of my spare donor shaft with the top end of the original, to get 12" extension and an "invisible" joint, i.e., hidden inside the tube. God, I'm getting fed up with all this writing, I'm off to bed. Goodnight...............................................................................................

.............Ah, that's better.

Where should I put the pedals?   Just there?  OK.

I made the pedal mount at the time of chassis construction according to the plans (or should that be "estimates"?) i.e., to take Escort master cylinder and clutch cable, but during a change of policy (my word is law!) I gained a pair of weber carbs which would foul.

The angle grinder was fired up and whole mount removed, three sessions to build it (it was lightened) and one to remove it. Are you getting the idea now why it takes so long to plan build? I bought a pair of individual master cylinders and a balance bar and used CAD to design a floor mount for them, racing car style. The Escort pedals were still used, only shortened and upside down on their original shaft. The cost was slightly less than that of an Escort jobby anyway. Throttle pedal is completely independent on it's own little floor mount and pulls the cable downwards through the bulkhead.

One thing I notice with most Lotus 7 replicas is the elbow-crunching position of the hand brake lever, so to save my funny bone from injury, I elected to mount mine on the passenger (what passenger?) side of the tunnel, slightly forward and out of the way. Not very good for handbrake turns but autotests aren't my thing.

Instruments. I wanted to keep as close as possible to classic appearance as the 7 was designed in the fifties, so the dash layout is, from the right: two position ignition switch, starter button, horrible red kill switch, oil pressure gauge, oil and charge warning lights, water temp gauge, horn button, classic style lever light switch with full-beam indicator below, ditto direction indicator, spare switch for future electric fuel pump, tacho, speedo.

First tacho to be fitted was a small 50mm item but it seemed to have a mind of it's own, or it related to someone else's engine but it was no good to me, so it went back.  TIP: I remembered reading an article in a motorcycle mag where a bloke fitted Skoda speedo and tachos as they were very adaptable, so off I trolled to the local breakers and sure enough, there was an Estelle. At first glance the instrument pod looks like a complete unit, like all the rest, but it does actually brake down. The mountings need to be slightly modified as the plastic case they came from is a bit thicker than the ally they're going in.  Chop through the speedo cable, unless you fancy trying to unthread it from back of the car!

Finish on the dash is a bodyshop rubbing down trick, only without the rubbing down! I mixed dark grey Hammerite then when dry, sprayed a "ghost" of gloss black. Easy, just an aerosol held back around 18" - 2', practice first.

Steering wheel is a lovely Mountney with very thick padded rim, very comfortable. This cost me £2 from a car boot sale and I've never seen one with such a rim before or since.

CHANGE OF MIND

Now remember, there are no rules and my decision is final. Until I make another decision.

Somewhere along the line I went from Ford to Vauxhall power for the following reasons:

1 The 750 MC abandoned class C due to lack of support.

2 Popular starting classes were becoming "up to 1700cc kitcar"

3 X-flow already out of date

4 Hassles over the prospective purchase of a new Mondeo estate put me off the blue oval for life!

I sold the x-flow engine and box and bought a complete 1600 Cavalier engine from an ad in the local newspaper. Then down to my local breaker where I picked up a reconditioned Manta gearbox. I was taking a guess that the transverse engine would go "north/south" and mate up with the gearbox, it did but the clutch plate didn't. No problem. Looking through the technical listings, Andy found a plate with the Manta splines and the Cavalier diameter and Bingo! Expensive though because of rarity, but I should hope it won't need many!

I've always thought that size for size, Vauxhall engines have the edge over Fords for build quality and mid-range grunt, and it was a good 12 months later that I was pleased to read that Caterham had started to use the Vauxhall. Good decision. Even the Ford-biased mag I read it in, begrudgingly admitted the Vauxhall was better.

So we seem to have digressed into the engine bay, but who cares? I'd better announce it:

ENGINE BAY   There.

I bought a 1600 "nail", which starts and runs OK with a certain amount (a lot!) of cam noise, but it makes the car move and will do until the chassis is complete, then it's rebuild time.

I also managed to acquire a spare engine block and sump which I bolted together with the gearbox to make mounting the unit easier. Stand by for, "Great Balls-Up No2".

I lowered the unit into place as low and as far to the rear as practical, then made the gearbox mount using a Fiesta engine mount. Tubing was then welded into the chassis with extra triangulation, and substantial bolt-in mounts made to facilitate easy engine removal. A pair of Manta engine mounts were used; the holes for them are already there on the Cavalier block. Granada, rally spec doughnuts soak up the vibes.

Balls-up Alert!    Later, having fitted the complete engine, it became obvious that I had mis-judged the slope of the bonnet which would now need an extra bulge nearly 2 inches high!

...TO BE CONTINUED. Tune in next week for the next exciting episode of...Hege's adventures of...... 

STOP PRESS!    er,  STOP ETHER!   er,   STOP whatever you stop on the 'net!!!

It's the 9th of November 1999.     The car is presently in the state shown in the first photo at the top of this page.  I have recently returned from a day trip to the Brooklands Museum, Weybridge, where I found the inspiration to continue. Glory be!  (can't spell alleluia).

NOTE: Brooklands is a brilliant place to visit for the day if you are into 'planes and cars. It is a piece of old England. NOT Britain, ENG-GER-LAND!  It really manages to recreate the atmosphere of it's glory days.

I am contemplating re-designing the bodywork to look like a thirties style club racer.  Ooooh!

It should be easy raise the scuttle by three or four inches by making a pair of spacer panels for the sides and an extension piece for the bulkhead. A vintage style nose in aluminium sheet should be a challenge though and would think painted wire wheels. Have you got any? I'll need adapters for the Ford hubs as well.

Yes, I can see it all now, British Racing Green of course, with maybe Old English White wheels? I've already drawn it but I must get the TR7 done first, before it rots away.

BACK TO THE PLOT

No way did I want a bloody great bump in my bonnet, especially when people can fit V8's to these things without bumps all over the place. I was very depressed with it at this point and was more than ready to give the whole thing up. Luckily Andy had a spare weekend in which he and I put in good session to bump start the project again.

We not only managed to re-site the engine, but another major step was to make up the prop shaft. We worked up a hell of a sweat cutting off the tubing that formed the engine mounts before very carefully making new ones and welding them in. It doesn't sound much when you can write it down in one sentence but it took us most of Saturday to do!

I was impressed by the process involed in the making of the propshaft. It helps if you just happen to have a CNC mill hanging around in the corner of the workshop, now let's see... Ah! There's one, good.  

The rear end of the Manta propshaft was cut off, as was the rear end of the Escort's. Andy then removed the UJ from the Escort rear section, putting the diff flange to one side and the other yoke in the mill. Here comes a bit of precision for you; the sawn off tube with the yoke on the end was mounted vertically on the bed of the mill, tube upermost - yoke downwards, BUT it had to be precisely vertical on all planes as the next operation involved something which I don't know the name of.

Basically, it's a lathe cutting tool on a special mount which wizzes around on the mill and you have to stop it to adjust the cut with an allen key. It's for "turning" things too awkward to mount in a lathe. So the rough cut propshaft tube was "turned" down on the mill while at almost the same time, the Manta shaft was cleaned up on a normal lathe. Andy acheived an excellent fit between the two and we test fitted the shaft before removing it for final welding. There, a very good weekend.

NEXT..

I can't reach the sodding gear knob.

Luckily for me, the Manta's remote link is made from 3mm plate which was relatively easy to chop through and extend with more 3mm plate, and the operating rod was similarly easy to stretch. The gear lever is shortened with a rather expensive ( for what it is ) ally knob.

Back to the engine bay - I didn't want a lot of clutter around the engine as It gets hot, so the only major items there are the Cavalier's coil with the ignition module attached.

ELECTRICS

The coil sits on the shelf formed by the bulkhead which is where the battery should be ( I think ) but it isn't.

The plans I bought have only one small reference to electrics: "use Escort loom", or something like that. But that's it. The plans are advertised as "comprehensive" - oh yeah?

In the boot, I modified the bottom chassis rail behind the axle with 1/2 inch square tube to form a base on which to mount the battery and fuel tank. I made an aluminium tray with 1/4 inch clearance all round the battery - sealed gel type, very small - and put three matchsticks on it. What the Dickens is he doing now?

I put four good blobs of sillicone sealer on it and some more near the edges. Cling film the bottom of the battery and PLOP!   Push some more bits of wood down the sides to centralise and leave to mature overnight. Next morning, remove battery, cling film and wood, add more sillicone, renew cling film and PLOP AGAIN!   Now the battery sits tightly in a tray 1/4 inch deep, cushioned by sillicone. Two lengths of threaded bar pass through the chassis either side of the battery tray and another tray, with silicone as before, sits on top to clamp it in place.

Sitting towards the nearside, there is a short earth lead but the positive lead runs accross the car behind the seat, through the bulkhead and along the offside of the seat to the footwell and up into the dash. This seperates the electrics from the fuel and brake lines which run down the propshaft tunnel; safety see. Tell a lie; there is one spare wire for the proposed electric fuel pump which goes down there. Ah well, so much for perfection.

There are two old style but new fuse boxes both mounted under the dash: one has two fuses for ignition and fuel pump ( not fitted yet ) and the other takes up to four fuses for the other bits. All the wiring is new wire with new connectors.

Headlights are normal five inch units with sidelights and front indicators came from a car boot sale for 20p. The pair! Mutsubishi van, allegedly, but they are "E" marked.  Rearlights are normal round things.

ME FUEL TANK.

This holds a mere 2.5 gallons so if you don't like it, let's argue about it now. I rekon that gives a range of about 60 miles or so even with a tuned engine. If you can suffer for more than 60 miles with your arse bouncing around 5 inches from the tarmac with bare minimum upholstery then get on with it!  This is for short, sharp bursts of fun; if I want to go far, I'll take the peugeot.

Originally, I planned to educate myself in the art of aluminium welding. My Migmate could do it, so I bought the necasary wire and gas and tried some test pieces. Pathetic. I stuck with it though and.. still pathetic. I melted nozzles like they were going out of fashion.  I decided that ally welding is a skill too far. It is one of those skills that you need to be practising all the time to be able to do it profficiently.

I designed the tank during a period of waiting for something to happen at work, and folded it in steel the following day. I welded it up with an Escort estate filler neck on top and part of an old, mechanical fuel pump on the bottom to form an anti - surge bowl and take off.

Before fitting, it was sent to a mate in the car radiator business to be pressure tested. It passed, but came back black. I’m glad I didn’t get him to have a look at my watch!

EXHAUST

Doesn’t look much but I am quite pleased with it as a piece of work. The silencer is a previously owned Cherry Bomb with a chrome finisher/deflector on the outlet. Between it and the manifold is the original Cavalier downpipe, slightly modified!

WHEELS

BODYWORK

I suppose it’s time to encase all this crap in something then eh?

ABANDONED.

And that is more or less how it is today. I start it periodically of course and it would have been displayed at a recent show if it hadn’t been pissing down with rain.

What next??

Apart from the idea I had to give it vintage styling, I have often considered trying to sell it.  Better still would be to swap it for a classic restoration project instead of turning it into currency. That gives me until the TR7 is finished to do so......any takers??  I fancy a sportscar with separate chassis, say TR2 to 5 but being impulsive, I'll probably end up with a Skoda and a bag of golf clubs! (No! I don't play)

13th January 2000

I've just spent the day at the NEC for the Autosport (Racing Car) Show trying to find some inspiration for the F27. No luck. The more I read about the SVA, the less motivated I become. I will get some use from the thing and as soon as I've finished the current work on the TR7, I plan to make the bonnet for the F27 and take it somewhere to blow the cobwebs away.

With all the interest in the 750 Motor Club's Locost series, I can't understand why anyone would want to build an F27 now. but it seems they do. Well one bloke anyway. After today, my advice to anyone considering building a Lotus 7 replica with a "normal" engine would be to consider the Locost or just save your money and go for a Westfield or Caterham. Bike engine freaks are on their own !

26th March

Cracking on well with the work on the TR7 and reading mags. It would seem that once the TR7 is back in good order and on the road, I could think about my next project but as there have been no enquiries about a swap for the F27, I am planning to take it to Stoneleigh kit car show and flog it. I should have made the bonnet by then and fitted the speedo cable.

So if you know of anyone interested in purchasing this car which has a history before it even hits the road, tell them to get in touch.

It will need: An exhaust. At least a silencer. I would go to Custom Chrome in Nuneaton, so there's £200 to £500. Probably an engine rebuild although you may get away with a new cam and a de-coke, or maybe the emissions are OK as it is. (Spare head and cam supplied.)  Probably speedo re-calibration. Indicator side repeaters. Brake master cylinder caps with low fluid level indicators. And anything else to get the SVA but as I've never read the book, I wouldn't know for sure.

What it has: Un-used tyres on smart Capri wheels which a Capri man should be pleased to give £300 for (5 off). F/G body bits which have rarely seen daylight, are nicely cut and fitted, and come complete with lights and stainless steel nuts/bolts. (I have considered selling these separately.) A history in words and pictures, plus build manual with my notes and a set of photos, but I'll hang on to the copyright and the video.

What it wants: Is a good owner to finish it off and get some fun from it. If you're looking for a super-cheap bargain then stay away; I don't even want to talk to you. I'd rather see it burn than watch someone walk away clicking his heels in the air. With regard to the cost of building, the F27 adverts seem to be a little more accurate these days; £4k is a bit more realistic than the £1.5k I was told. So on that basis, if you gave me £1500 you would have to spend a further £2500 before you could say I ripped you off!  You should be able to do a good job for a grand, then you should have a car with a market value of around £2500 if that's important to you.

What do you think?

I would be interested in constructive discussion of the above.

28th April 2000

Here it is, with bonnet !

Nice Eh? Don't forget though, I don't sell the plans. See top of page.

Sorry about the quality; it's that cheapo digital thing again. It's not helped by the parallax compensation being crap.

The car is just about ready for the Stoneleigh Kit Car Show this Sunday/Monday (30th/1st), where it will be on display in the sales hall.

Stoneleigh Kit Car Show

Preparation for the show was hampered on Saturday by the need to change the back exhaust box on my Pug 405 estate. So minus skin from the back of my left hand, I removed the rear drums from the F27 to check everything was OK. It was.

Then a game of "Musical cars"; moving all three into the street to re-park them in a different order. The F27 was then loaded carefully onto Andy's newly renovated trailer, so as to enable an early start Sunday morning.

My brother-in-law Rob was my side-kick for the day, and we arrived at Stoneleigh at ten to nine. Parking outside the hall, I went in to find my allotted space had already been occupied by some other git! There was quite a bit of confusion and frustration as few seemed to know the numbering system and the carpet (promised on the booking form) seemed to be non-existent. We unloaded in the exhibitor's car park and I drove the F27 on it's furthest ever journey, the 200 yards to the hall, and found a spare bay to slot into, next to a nice bloke selling a Fiat twin-cam engined Leda.

Then we set off around the halls to make a profit for the day, which we did; I got the TR7 insurance 10 quid cheaper than last year from Adrian Flux, (RED ALERT - Adrian Flux turned out to be a load of crap. Wouldn't touch 'em with a barge pole!) and Rob also had a good deal on the insurance for his '77 Thunderbird from the same place. And on the way back to the car, I picked up a Shutz gun with extension tube and ordered new 'plates for the TR7.

I had prepared two fliers for the F27, one explaining the basic details (engine, gearbox, suspension etc) and the other with pricing details and stuff. I also had a booklet which was a print out of this very webpage, nicely bound and covered. So nice in fact, that quite a few people accused me of being the manufacturer and asked would I build them a chassis! :-(

On reflection, it was quite flattering to think that my little presentation could look so professional. Or is it just that the kitcar industry is that crap?  But I was slightly annoyed that I may have inadvertently helped Formula 27 in some way.

So I sat behind the car waiting for the onslaught of visitors and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of interest shown. It is fair to say that there were more people interested in how it was put together than people interested in actually buying the thing, but I didn't mind that; I was only too happy to talk about it.

I did notice two or three blokes walk up with a tape measure, check the wheels and headlights and walk away, avoiding all eye contact with me. Twice. If that was you, you're a bunch of pig-ignorant twats! I thought it was quite amusing for a start, but all you had to to do was look up and we could have shared the joke. Must be from the "Life under constant pressure, never a minute to live" brigade.

Although it was quite warm outside, inside the hall was quite cool. But this helped me to realise that this summer's shows are going to be just that little bit better, thanks to Charlie Dimmock;  Phwoar!  You could hang your hat on some of them.

Anyway, it was around lunchtime that a Mr Coulton came and tried to get me to drop the price, I refused and he went away to think about it. He returned ten minutes later and asked if I would take a cheque. Yep!

So it was sold. The end of an era (for me anyway). But now people started to return to see if they could pick up a bargain. One chap who I remembered from earlier seemed genuinely disappointed, and a German was there with the cash - too late.

So would I go back on the Monday? Would I 'eck as like! 4pm and crowd thinned enough for me to take the car back to the exhibitor's car park, where there was this long, long straight bit of road. Two things: Yes, it is VERY noisy and yes, I did make a good choice of engine and 'box; it goes like hell!

It is the morning of 11th May as I write and I have the money AND the car! The buyer is unfortunately in hospital but expects to collect the car next week.

In the meantime, I have so far chased a TR4 but don't fancy it (hit a lamp-post!) but plan to view a Jensen shortly.  That's a very rare model: the Jensen Shortly.

16th May 2000

It's gone.

GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE

The End.

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