If it's raining, you certainly will soak it up.

 

The great thing about Sevens/Kits is that there are as many iterations as there are opinions of what makes a good car.

It's also a curse, because you will never get an unbiased opinion when you're looking.

The Caterham devotees will always say they handle better - to be honest, they handle better in general because they've been set up by the factory. Many garage builds are only ever 'set up' in terms of bolting the thing together and setting the geometry to somewhere within the manufacturer's recommendations. Take a car like a Westfield, Fury or a Dax and set it up properly and it will handle as well or better than almost any Caterham you care to mention, especially if you get one of the cars with rear wishbones, rather than a live axle. Having said that there are some woeful cars out there with pickup points so badly positioned they can never be made to handle well, but these days the smaller manufacturers are getting much better.

Anything from Fisher, MK, Stuart Taylor as well as the more established names will provide a good race-proven chassis to start from. What the builder did from there will be personal preference, but they will give a good base. Remember you will want to change bits (or in your case, most bits ) so getting the basics right is most important. The later the chassis, the better it will be - some people seem to think a 1990 Westfield chassis that's been freshened up with a new engine and cockpit is worth the same as a 2000 chassis car - it's not, all manufacturers have evolved their products over the years.

Then there's weight, a bike engine will undoubtedly be lighter and the car feel more nimble, but revving to 8000rpm just to get into the power band isn't always fun on the road - they're great on the track or on a hoon though, a ZX12 powered Fury will weigh less than 450kg and have 180bhp or so, that's 400bhp/tonne, or the equivalent of an R400, but for

 

This is true - however the harness can be put back in in less than 5 minutes and having sat on the floor on cushions it's not too bad for a quick blat.

 

Yeah, right!

It's all been said really so I haven't got much to add.

I think the most important thing is to decide how you're going to be using it and how much tinkering you want to do.

Do you want something to fiddle about with and develop (probably knowing you ) or do you just want to get out and hammer the thing as often as possible?

I was/am very much the latter.

The Caterham suited me better as they're much more of a 'out of the box' product, it's relatively easy to decided what spec you need for the job in hand and go and find one that's close too or exactly that.

Now I've learnt a little about setting up suspension etc. I might be tempted try something that requires a little more understanding next time.

This makes interesting reading now :

Jo's westerham thread

 

Oh how funny is that !

I start off wondering whether 155bhp is actually enough, and yo'ure speculating about a bike engined Westie

And we both end up with 130bhp car engined caterhams !!!!!!

 

ah, and there was me thinking the cushions were just there because its a girl's car

 

No but you might wish you were a girl after you've sat on the floor over a speed hump

 

Enjoyable is it Jo?

Compared to a horse or washing machine?

 

Lots of very good replies here, thanks for all the input

Going to speak with Mr B tomorrow and see how realistic it is. There is now a big space where his bike was which needs filling.

Given what i've read so far....

I think a Caterham, factory built, around 140-200 bhp and used for the odd weekend jaunt, and hopefully used for some track days

 

Not sure a horse provides the same kind of pleasure at all (not in the 25ish years I've been riding anyway ) but I think a washing machine might be more pleasurable.

I was thinking more of the ouch factor you guys might experience compared to a girl sat on a hard floor