Information required on Caterham 7 type cars fitted with bike engines

[Robin Plummer]

Does anyone know of any websites that have info on Caterham 7 type cars (and Westfield and Dax etc) fitted with motorcyle engines, such as the hyabusa or blackbird etc?

[Steve Hart]

In the 750MC mag a few months ago there was a full-page advert from "The 4 Wheel Motorcycle Company Ltd" who claim to be authorised by Caterham for service, conversions & race support on the "Blackbird Project" (170BHP Honda Blackbird, apparently with kits available shortly)
No web site but email contact doug@gold.arts.freeserve.co.uk and Tel 01273 203178

[THR]

URghh!!!
dont do it!!
bloody motorcyle engine rubbish, class ruiners.

altho they are damb quick

there is a westy, with a 230bhp TTS engine in it that does 0-60 in single seater times!
altho this is very harsh on the geartrain.

they are very quick and very light. and cheaper to run than a race spec car engine tho.

but its a car really! put a car engine in it!

[Steve Hart]

They are absolutely perfect for lightweight purpose-built race-cars - in the Radicals we lap only fractionally under the much more sophisticated and better balanced FFord Zetecs yet the engine costs hundreds to re-build rather than thousands. It's hardly modified as it has the all the right characteristics for a RACE engine.

I find the idea of driving something like this on the road very appealing (just the noise is tempting enough) - I'm curious, though, in how they would perform in a regular road-going Caterham with a passenger in. Would such a car be useable in real-world conditions?

There are indeed some enduring prejudices in club racing which don't really stand up to argument but are nevertheless understandable - if you invest a lot of time and money converting and maintaining an engine originally designed for a day-to-day saloon, and then some upstart whips your ass with a stock engine half the size, it must hurt! However the latest 750MC Sports 2000 class shows that they can run side-by-side with "car"-engined racers and have a good battle.
Steve

[bobdrummond]

CCC magazine has had a load of features on these cars over the past year or so.

[Bluebottle]

Kit-Car magazine have been writing quite a bit about this in the last few months- the September issue features the first part of a bike engined Locost build. Their website is http://www.kit-cars.com
(I've never actually looked at this site, I just read the mag!!)