17 replies to this topic

[roy]

Hi, i have been looking at a few bike engined kit cars, does anyone have one or know abit about them? i love the vx to bits, but im thinkin of selling her to free up some funds for the new house. I could get a decent bike engined kit car for approx half of what i could get for the vx, so it would free up some cash. There is a few MK's on pistonheads with R1 engines. does anyone know how reliable they are & what they are like to drive? Cheers Roy

[tony1]

Hi, i have been looking at a few bike engined kit cars, does anyone have one or know abit about them? i love the vx to bits, but im thinkin of selling her to free up some funds for the new house. I could get a decent bike engined kit car for approx half of what i could get for the vx, so it would free up some cash.

There is a few MK's on pistonheads with R1 engines. does anyone know how reliable they are & what they are like to drive?

Cheers
Roy

if your going to get one then buy a westfield or a dax rush i have owned them both and they are fantastic,dax is the better of the two

[roy]

what engine's did you have in each of them? what kind of reliability did you get with them? Cheers Roy

[davestarck]

If your not handy with a set of spanners then don't bother. Bike engined kit cars are great for track use but need lots of looking after. Think about it - a bike engine is designed to push the weight of a bike not a car. The clutches don't last 5 mins and the engines are over-stressed giving them a short life. Excelleration is out of this world but they do tend to run out of puff at higher speeds. My last track day in my Tiger super 6 (2.1litre pinto) I was with a guy in a lovely MK/R1 car. Mine would out run his on top end along the main straight, but obviously he would get there quicker. Mine would also pull more speed up the hill to Druids than his and do it all day long without missing a beat. Came very close to a purchase but didn't want to be taking it too bits every other week!!! Thats my opinion anyway Dave

[catstain]

My grinnall scorpion does not need me to be handy with a set of spanners but it has bmw reliability and only 3 wheels it also goes around corners faster than the vx but they are harder to live with than the vx no roof, or revevse etc

[roy]

Being handy with spanners.....thats kind of one of the reasons im wanting to get a kit car, it would be more like an ongoing project to learn alot more about cars & gain more knowledge with "the spanners". I find with the vx, if there is a job to do, it always seems to be more difficult than it should be. for example access to things is alot more restricted & you end up having to take half the car to bits to do a simple job. Also the vx is my day-day car, so i cant have it is pieces for more than a weekend as i need it for going to work during the week. With a kit-car, im sure you can do alot more jobs without the hassle of not having access to everything, as there are alot less restricting bodyparts. also as i mentioned, it can be left in bits for as long as it takes to get fixed as i would have a "shed" for going to work, so im wouldnt be restricted on completing repairs/jobs over a weekend. I understand that the acceleration would be excellent, but it would run out of puff at the top-end as its only a small capacity engine, but due to being up in Aberdeen, the only track that i would be usng regularly would be knockhill which is a small track & isnt that high speed. I would be also using it as a toy for the summer days on the road & im sure you all agree that acceleration & handling on the road, is much more useful than a car that car do "150mph" I would also consider a kit-car with a normal car engine. comparing the two, what would be the benefits/downsides of having a car-engined kit car compared to the bike-engined? thanks for all your responses....you never know, if i decide to go for a kit-car, a very nice stage 4 vxt could be up for sale.

[_JoE_]

hey roy, I know nothing about bike engined cars but I do know of a good engine tuner near me, CLICK they specialise a lot in what your looking for and supply a few different companies with bike engines, they'll do whatever you want. I know if I had the funds available and the unbareable urge to come close to death then this is the route I would take!

This is one of the companies they supply engines for, might of seen it before, it was all over the net a few years back. CLICK

[tony1]

my first was a wesfield mega blade which i bought from the factory but quite slow so was sent to tts who breathed on it and went a hole lot better,the second was the dax rush with the busa engine which i had tuned ie cams head work and power comander made just over 200 bhp but went like a rocket,i lapped tim harvey in a exige going round brands,i had the first ever customer build car, i never had any problems at all with any of them if there put together well they should as good any sport car ish

[roy]

my first was a wesfield mega blade which i bought from the factory but quite slow so was sent to tts who breathed on it and went a hole lot better,the second was the dax rush with the busa engine which i had tuned ie cams head work and power comander made just over 200 bhp but went like a rocket,i lapped tim harvey in a exige going round brands,i had the first ever customer build car, i never had any problems at all with any of them if there put together well they should as good any sport car ish

yeh...i can imagine that dax being a rocket. Did u do much work on them yourself? if so, are they fairly easy good to work on? or did you find that it was too specialist & had to send it away to "specialists" most of the time.

I would like something that is fairly reliable, but should it need the clutch needing replaced or something like that, i would like to be able to do it myself to learn more about it & just learn more about the mechanics of cars in general. Thats the problem with the vx, i find its all or nothing & you have to take clams off/engine out to do alot of jobs & i dont want to go ripping the vx to bits as iv not got the mechanical knowledge / tools as yet to be confident of fixing it & managing to put it all back together again. Also there are a lot of jobs which dont require the clam off, but they are just so much hassle as the bodywork gets in the way most of the time & access to aot of things is so restricted.

Cheers
Roy

[tony1]

the dax i built my self,bought it dec 11 and drove it out my garage on 24 jan,piece of p*ss,the only thing i found hard was cutting the panels to size,the guys down at dax cars were very helpfull they know me quite well coz i drove the nuts plus my car was the first ever customer built one,i did countless trackdays and never had problems,then sold it to my friend who had it a year did about 4 trackdays in it and all he ever change were the pads and oil

[VXJON]

Roy a new member Moospeed over at 116 was interested in moving from a R1 fury to a vx, his car was a very very tidy looking machine.

Link to Ph AD looks like hes already sold it to Driven Image

[roy]

the dax i built my self,bought it dec 11 and drove it out my garage on 24 jan,piece of p*ss,the only thing i found hard was cutting the panels to size,the guys down at dax cars were very helpfull they know me quite well coz i drove the nuts plus my car was the first ever customer built one,i did countless trackdays and never had problems,then sold it to my friend who had it a year did about 4 trackdays in it and all he ever change were the pads and oil

hmmm....it does sound like a good bit of fun. Thats kind of exactly what im looking for, something that is semi-reliable (as much as it can be for the machine that it is) so that i can actually enjoy it, but then should something need tweeking/fixed/replaced....it is easy enough to work on. I've seen a few dax's for sale...from your personal experience, how much should you budget for good one?

Thanks for the info.

[roy]

Roy a new member Moospeed over at 116 was interested in moving from a R1 fury to a vx, his car was a very very tidy looking machine.

Link to Ph AD looks like hes already sold it to Driven Image

yeh...i did notice that one was for sale a few wks back. It was these kind of adverts that made me think about it. It seems that for significantly less than what i could get for my vx, i could get something pretty crazy for a wkend/trackday toy, get a reliable shed for work & have a few £k to spare to spend on the new house.

hmmm.....the options!

[VXJON]

Roy a new member Moospeed over at 116 was interested in moving from a R1 fury to a vx, his car was a very very tidy looking machine.

Link to Ph AD looks like hes already sold it to Driven Image

yeh...i did notice that one was for sale a few wks back. It was these kind of adverts that made me think about it. It seems that for significantly less than what i could get for my vx, i could get something pretty crazy for a wkend/trackday toy, get a reliable shed for work & have a few £k to spare to spend on the new house.

hmmm.....the options!

Have you considered a caterham? Seems to be quite a few scottishelise guys going in that direction.

At the moment I'm planning on a cheapish academy car or roadsport but with a slightly larger budget you could go for a very nice SLR. I'm pretty sure the "hoyabusa"is still for sale which is the quickest car I have ever seen( and I do mean that). Fully setup to the highest standard with all the best of equipment and an amazing spec.

Edited by VXJON, 09 March 2008 - 01:18 PM.

[VXJON]

BTW sign up over at ScottishSevens really helpful and knowledgeable bunch of guys

[roy]

Roy a new member Moospeed over at 116 was interested in moving from a R1 fury to a vx, his car was a very very tidy looking machine.

Link to Ph AD looks like hes already sold it to Driven Image

yeh...i did notice that one was for sale a few wks back. It was these kind of adverts that made me think about it. It seems that for significantly less than what i could get for my vx, i could get something pretty crazy for a wkend/trackday toy, get a reliable shed for work & have a few £k to spare to spend on the new house.

hmmm.....the options!

Have you considered a caterham? Seems to be quite a few scottishelise guys going in that direction.

At the moment I'm planning on a cheapish academy car or roadsport but with a slightly larger budget you could go for a very nice SLR. I'm pretty sure the "hoyabusa"is still for sale which is the quickest car I have ever seen( and I do mean that). Fully setup to the highest standard with all the best of equipment and an amazing spec.

Yeh...it was my 1st drive in a caterham that got me interested in that kind of car. I went down to silverstone for a track day with my work (team building....!!! ) during the day, i drove a caterham, tvr sagaris & tuscan & to be honest i had much more fun in the caterham, the tuscan was good, the sagaris was just a handfull, but the caterham was amazing. Yeh, it ran out of puff at the top end but my god, through the bends it was truly awsome.....i had much more confidence driving the caterham than any of the others.

I think the actual caterhams are expensive compared to any other "kit-car"....maybe im wrong, but it seems you pay more to have the "caterham" name. they are great machines though.

that 'busa does look great....im sure it would be an absolute weapon!!

[roy]

BTW sign up over at ScottishSevens really helpful and knowledgeable bunch of guys

done!

[Mak1]

Roy, The pound/price/performance of bike engined kit cars are awesome if they are light enough and have enough horses to start with. I went out in a westfield the other week running 170bhp bike engine, full cage, weighed less than 500kg and the performance was staggering, especially overtaking. Put it like this, through the twisties my stage2 vxt could not get close. (however I get the satisfaction of driving the VXT everyday I've owned a vx engined Westfield before and came from this to the VXt. The guy with the bike engined westfield had come from a VXT. One comment he made sticks in my mind - "If I blow the engine up it will only cost me a grand to get a replacement" !?