Hi,

Warning: This could be a can of worms...
I am reading evo magazine and their recent Road and Track Car of the Year feature made me think...
In the article there are 3 seven type cars: a Mazda MX-5 based cheap Westfield, a basic Caterham and a Caterham R400 (plus at least 10 other non seven cars).
The consensus is that the Caterhams handle so much better than the Westfield (or any other car in fact).

Now I wonder... if a properly put together and prepared, set up Locost (MNR, MK, whatever) would be compared against a Caterham. How would it do?
In other words: We know Locosts are cheaper than the big name, but does that necessarily mean they are not supposed to handle so well?

Let's not talk about power here, that is not relevant, I am only thinking about handling, ride, steering, etc, but not power.

Anyone has experiences with both? Or honest ideas?

Gergely

I am actually thinking of writing to evo and suggesting to test an MNR, MK or similar. I would be interested what they think...

I was thinking the very same thing when I read the report. To be fair, EVO do seem to have a soft spot for Caterhams. They always rate higher than the equivalent Westfield.

I think the key thing here is chassis and components. The current caterham chassis have been optimised and i suspect the test cars are full of light weight bits.

Take a chassis optimised by cymtrics, welded to the standard of caterham's computer controlled systems and fitted with the same light weight bits ..... i bet it would be just as good.

Reality is we have cheaper cars and you gets what you pays. I'm curious how well a MNR would do as they have sold themselves on the race performance & development of the car.

How did the striker do? That has an excellent reputation for handing.

Caterhams have a live rear axle, MNR and MK indy have IRS.

What front uprights do caterham use vs front track width and wheelbase. MNR use cortina or sierra depending on modle. That will affect steering geometry.

How accurate are the chassies assembled? a few mm here or there will affect the wheel positions

there are so many things to consider that it is impossible to guess which would be better.

In theory, the latest vortx with all the trick suspension parts and low unsprung weight gubbins should beat an equally well set up car with outboard suspension and a live axle but the caterham seven has been honed for decades so should be pretty good.

caterham have de dion now so its abit lighter than live axle but gives small drive, i guess, but with a bit less unsprung weight

and as far as i know catherham use a unit on the front like the ones found on a spitfire, these are meant to give better geometry, or so m lead to believe

would the results for the westfeild not be pretty much the same as for a locost since the two are said to share the same fundamental design...

quote:

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Originally posted by smart51
Caterhams have a live rear axle, MNR and MK indy have IRS.

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No 2 cars are the same so i think any report would be flawed to a point, and if it were to cover the differences then it would be boring to read (too technical).

Maybe the factory Caterhams can be similar but certainly the other test vehicles would be suitably different. Its all pros and cons i guess.

my mate andy races cateringvans and i think has just won the championship or what ever it is, i must admit his does handle better than mine, although i could go faster in a line, corners are another thing mind you i have a indy and the back end is supposed to have problems.

Didn't caterham go IRS in the latest CSR?

Also i believe the caterham upright as well as having ok geometry is lighter than the cortina counterpart. (i say ok as it was also the same upright used on the lotus f1 cars till Colin decided he wanted more "something" (can't remember what) and designed his own.)

As for manufacture, the caterham chassis is cut by computer to within 0.5mm and then welded by computer under controlled feedback to make sure it has 'perfect' welds.

Pretty sure they did

Hi,

Interesting post.

My 2p's worth. I have had my MNR RT+ for 1 year now and done 1150 miles, half or more have been on track. I indeed have the inboard suspension, road legal slicks etc and it has been setup by MR MNR (marc) himself, and have a full roll cage.
Obviously there are so many variables so please don’t take this as gospel…..but I have found that I generally have more speed around corners than almost any other car I have come across while on track. This includes numerous 7 style cars too. High speed corners seem to be a big advantage with my current setup. There generally isn’t much that will pass me, if anything at all.
Personally I am very happy with the performance (corning wise) of my car, but it does lack the odd few horses down the straight.
Thanks
Russ

[Edited on 11/6/07 by rjbrookes]

The CSR has inboard dampers at the front, and am fairly sure IRS at the rrear, so very different from the normal Caterhams.

I'd be interested on how well the Striker compared, as I reckon it'd be not far off if not better. And more so the Riot, as it's touted as being the best handling Sylva yet (and both cars are on my shortlist for my next project - along with a second hand Caterham plus BEC conversion!)

friend moved from a BEC Stuart Taylor to a CEC Caterham. He prefers the handing of the caterham as its more progressive - least i think thats what he said. He might be along in a while to contradict me

Maybe the car engine effects the weight distribution in a more positive way (Colin Chapman would have designed the original with a car engine in mind and setup the weight distribution accordingly).

Just a thought mind, before the BEC fellas form a lynching mob!

i think the comment was the bec was far more responsive - perhaps he's just getting old & can't handle a fast car

That Westfield in the EVO test was an embarrassment. I work for the US dealer of the MX-5 based kit, and Westfield has admitted they had no idea what was going to be done with that car when they provided it. They can't even tell us anything about how it was set up! I doubt it's ever had an alignment done.

Now, the version of the same car that we have here performs very well. A Caterham driver commented that the steering was much better than in his car. Peter Egan (from Road and Track magazine) said the same thing - he preferred the steering to his Lotuses.

My Locost's been driven by a few magazines (against an Atom and as part of a Locost feature). It's done well for itself, and Larry Webster said it was easier to drive sideways than Caterhams. On the track, I can keep up with "faster" Caterhams more easily than you'd expect.

My point? It all comes down to setup. There's nothing inherently magic about a Caterham, it's just that they understand the need to provide a properly set up car for a test. Once in a while they get it wrong, but not that often. Meanwhile, the smaller makes seem to get it wrong as a matter of course.

Hi circuit driver have already done a comparison of the 7 market at some poin in the not to distance past ( maybe last year ).

As the post above sujests it really is down to the difference in the effoert that the manufacturers put into the product they are selling. And the understanding they have of what makes this type of car handle and what dosent.

In short if you put the caterham westfield raw mnr mk luego mac#1 gts ect ect the caterham westfield raw will always come out on top without doubt. Reason they put the effort into the product and testing with that product to make it handel better.
I have said it before but certain cars with known handeling problems from day one are still on sale with the same hadleing problems some 4-5 years later. They seem to think that if they ignore the problem it will go away. Where as in reality all that is happening is the market resale value of that product is droping.

cheers Matt

As with all cars it is the manufacturers that continually improve and develop that stay ahead. As one famous car maker once said - to stay still is to drop behind.

Its also probs fair to say that the different models have a different Forte in life. Eg - its not fair to compare a Focus 1.4 to an ST or RS version. Same could be said of the 7's. Case in point - you cant compare my roadgoing ZR to an all out track prepped 7 but both do what they do well.

I like reading the mag articles as on the whole they are well written etc, but if a comparison of models is to have some meaning it would be nice to see 2 comparable vehicles being compared from the setting up right through to the track in a controlled way.


Just a wee point as well - i dont class kit built cars as locosts. If you dont weld the chassis yourself then you dont deserve the accolade. True locostbuilders dont deserve to be tainted by the kitbuilders They deserve every bit of credit they get for the dedication.