I have been looking at getting another 7 style car, I previously built the bike powered striker that is in my profile. I was thinking about a car engined caterham or VORTX, to be used in sprints hillclimbs and also be road legal. Would like the option of a windscreen and hood and also have a full cage. Has anybody had any experience of both cars and are caterhams worth the extra money.
Cheers

Without starting a debate, are you concerned about resale value of your potential car? If yes, you want a Caterham (BLASPHEMY, I know).

Agreed! Caterhams Hold value. for eventual resale.
Did you know that average tenure of a Caterham is 18 months.. read it somewhere :-)
DIY efforts rarely resale for 1/2 of their parts costs.

Yes while resale is important, I was thinking about build quality and handling

Loved my caterham and being able to order parts over the phone using the chassis number and knowing I would get a part that fitted was bliss, however if your into tinkering (as I am) then it didn'tt tick all my boxes, messed with Caterhams don't fetch as good money as unmolested ones, hence the reason I sold mine, oh and it was tiny as well!

ive had both,and while ther mnrs were very very good. they are not the same as the caterham. and both my mnrs cost more than my caterham! which was only a 1.4 k series.
the lotus 7 club hillclimb championship is very competative with many cars very similar to each other and classes split well.
i went up to the l7c meet at harewood lasy year and ther was about 50 of them there.

My thoughts a decent caterham roadsport would get more use than my old fireblade powered striker, which while fantastic on track did not get any use elsewhere. So looking for something a bit more usable that I can still enter in motorsport events

id look for a 90's supersport personally. i think lsd is standard on them which is a zf unit inside a 7" ford diff. many have cages too. and not overly expensive. a 1.6k series would be a good place to start.

Hi

For out and out handling the Striker would probably be the quickest, assuming all cars in the same spec, certainly that's what the results suggest.

Of your two choices the Caterham any day though - you'll have to do all the set-up tuning on the Vortex yourself without many(?) others ideas to 'borrow', the Caterham is a 90% done deal, you'll know what setup to use and you'll be just fine tuning it to suit you.

Make sure you've done a bit of investigation into class splits though - even though it's 'just for a bit of fun' you'll want to be there or there abouts and the regional and local events will have the class split for "road going specialist production" normally set at up to 1700 cc and then 1700 and over.

The Lotus 7 series suggested by Dan is excellent and travels over most of the country, though if you just want to play locally you'll find plenty of 'locaterfields' at most events anyway.

Personally though it would be a CEC Striker, £ for £ you won't go quicker on the hills I reckon

Had my current Caterham now since 1992 and will never sell it. Had one before it for 4 years as well.

Hillclimed it extensively from 1993 to 2003, over the years held a decent number of class records, got a cupboard full of pots and considering that I never had a really powerful engine (1860cc 175bhp x-flow was the best) I was more than happy.

Comparing it to other cars a similary powered (x-flow) Westy came close but with a similarly untalented driver as myself the Caterham would win. Stick in a big, powerful, expensive Pinto and Westys generally went no faster much to the owners disapointment. VX Westys also appeared to struggle initially but eventually some really tasty pieces of kit appeared but they cost £££££'s. When I changed to the Zetec I had 175 bhp and could easilly match a Westy with 220 bhp unless a driving god was behind the wheel.

Robin Hoods were a total waste of time, way to heavy and the chassis and suspension always worked in total oposition. Some tried the Dax, again too heavy and most had strange handling, one had a 300 bhp 1500 turbo Busa engine and it was totally hopeless (the driver was no novice and had success in other cars before and after). The odd Locost turned up but generally they were running near the back of the class. One oddity was a Pinto engined Spydersport Silverstone in the early 90's, that really flew.

But there were a couple of X-flow powered Sylva Stikers out there at the time that were more than a match for my car. Both were live axle early cars and handled beautifully and were very light. One fitted a VX later on and it went even quicker despite the heavier engine and not really being tuned to get the best out of it. Later independant rear cars never appeared to do as well but things may have changed now.