JPSC Forum

Hello out there,

I have been meaning to post some details of my build for a while. I have always enjoyed reading other people's build blogs and found them really useful over the years. Special mention to Neil Everett's excellent build blog on his Sylva Mojo http://www.mymojo.co.uk which i found really useful when building my first kit car a Sylva Mojo 2.


A little about me and how I got here. I am a Mechanical Engineer and work in the oil and gas industry based in Aberdeen. Probably like many of us I have been interested in cars and wanted to build a kit car for a long time. Finally when I had a garage and finances allowed I built a Sylva Mojo 2, I sold it after 8 years of ownership about 18 months ago, it just appeared recently on Ebay so might be on its way to a new owner by now.

I thoroughly enjoyed building and driving the car and learned a lot from the experience, so perhaps naturally wanted to do it again. I didn't look at too many cars having seen the J15 in the buck development stage and really liked the way it looked. I did consider a Raw Phoenix and a Westfield Mega S2000. In some ways I might have been better going for the Phoenix as I like the shape and the front engine rear drive layout might have been a nice change to the Mojo. I fancied the Westfield because it looked good at Stoneleigh, I suspected I could built it really fast and its performance would have been great. Any way my decision was pretty much made and I had chosen the J15 when I next had the time and money etc.

For my 40th birthday party my girlfriend Lorna gave me this cake, perhaps I have been talking about it too much? So with that motivation I went ahead and ordered the car on the actual day of my birthday..

I finally picked the kit up the day after Stoneleigh 2013. So I have actually been building for nearly a year now, with varying degrees of progress.

Its getting late now so I will post up some more later with the spec I went for and what I have in mind for the finished car. I'll also need to get a photbucket account so as not to clogg the forum up with pictures.

Keith

Looking forward to it

Good stuff but did you eat the cake?

Great choice of car, but then I am just a bit biased!! How far on with the build are you??

Looking forward to some progress reports!

OK, so the decision was made it would be a Sylva J15, now to decide the specification. I won't bore you with all of the garage tidy up / floor paint preparation, suffice to say preparations were made to hibernate for the winter.



BEC v's CEC - Oh no not that again.

I've had a hankering for a BEC for quite a while and I went through all the justifications for one over the other, Jeremy had just recently sent me some pictures of the Hayabusa engined car that went off to Galek Motorsport in the States and I thought it looked great. I then weighed up the costs of both and it really was touch and go for a while. Jeremy, although not very keen, would have made me a chassis extended to suit but I would need to extend the body myself.

In the end I decided on a car engine for two main reasons, I didn't like the idea of a chain drive on a predominantly road car and I was concerned that I would find it difficult to get an age related plate or new registration using bike parts. These might not be reasonable worries but that was how my mind was working. I was also mindful that my time is a bit limited and my garage not too big, so I had to be reasonable about the size of project I could take on. I haven't built any other manufacturer's kits but I suspect building a Sylva is a bit more involved than most so that was probably a big enough project already. This no criticism of Sylva as I know this is what Jeremy sells, a more challenging and hopefully rewarding build experience.

Engine and gearbox selection were next. Jeremy is a great advocate for the Ford Sigma engine and I admit the demonstrator RIOT with the 1.4 engine did feel quick and I like idea of the 'added lightness'. I went off and looked at the 1.6 and 1.7 options. In truth though I had already really got the Ford 2.0 Duratec in my sights so I didn't wrestle with that decision for too long. I was briefly distracted with idea of the supercharged Mini engine, a Honda K20 VTEC and possibly one of the supercharging kits for the Sigma engine. I discounted them in order as, possibly too big a project (unknown installation) and not that light, quite a tall engine and I don't want to stick above the rear clam if I can help it (jury still out on that) and finally ruled out on cost.

So I decided on the Duratec. Good power with TB's as standard, tuning potential if my driving skill ever needs it and reasonably priced with easy availability. I then quickly settled on a Fiesta ST150 gearbox to go along with that for minimum hassle.


Taking advice from Paul Jepson, who helps with kit car registrations, I realised that getting an age related plate using a engine and gearbox kit from a breakers would be tricky as mostly they didn't have V5s that I could copy to prove the age. Previously I hadn't been bothered about a Q plate on my Mojo but this time I knew I would be spending more money and would prefer age related or new. I made the decision to have a new registration.

In order to qualify for that I bought a Fiesta ST150 engine and box from a breakers, the engine was damaged and provided FOC just for some extra carriage, to be used by Jeremy to finalise the engine mount fabrications. The gearbox would be destined for reconditioning as new and I would buy a new engine.


The rest of the main spec was relatively easy to decide. I wanted inboard front suspension as it feels like a very Sylva feature, (hopefully I will feel the handling benefit, if not it’s just a cool feature), new fabricated rear uprights, alloy shock absorbers, 13” wheels with light weight brakes and throttle body fuel injection. Also knew I would be powder coating the internal panels having seen it on Richard’s car on these very pages. I also wanted to use stainless steel brake and clutch tubes, there is no sensible technical justification for that but I work with hydraulic control systems and you get a bit OCD after a while about tubes being straight and parallel.

My last major decision was body colour. I agonised about that for a while, my taste in these things errs towards the bling a little and I really want a metallic colour. I chose red gel coat as a colour to have the body made as I already liked it and if finances don’t allow a paint job I will still be satisfied. More on paint colours later.

Finally for tonight, we did indeed eat the cake / car!

Keith.

So the build starts / continues.

I had ordered the chassis and suspension without powder coating. I did this because I wanted to have brackets and earth bosses welded to the chassis where possible and planned to weld brackets for the radiator, head rests and brake tee pieces. Powder coat colour was also not 100% decided at this point either, so it all worked together OK. I designed some brackets for the radiator on CAD and had them water jetted and folded. I decided on the J15 logo just for fun. The brackets for the brake tees and headrests were just drawn out to make in plate, one advantage of the brake tee mounts was that I can use a nyloc nut to demonstrate securing for the IVA test, the other was I just liked the tee pieces. A collegaue and ace welder at work fabricated the remaining brackets and machined some earth bosses and welded it all together for me, thanks to Laura.

The aluminium panelling wasn't my favourite job on the last build and this time I decided to draw the panels and have them water jetted, the intention was to get a better quality finish more easily. I drew them up, printed full scale templates, tried them on the car and adjusted them until I was happy to have them made. In the meantime the chassis had been powdercoated and the panels were then laid on the chassis to drill the rivet holes.





In the end I chose a metallic grey powder coat colour, I have a friend who is involved with powder coating and he helped sort out the powder and gave me some advice about what should be done and also took care of getting the suspension parts coated in black. The colour scheme is roughly anything bolted to the chassis is black and the chassis and rivet panels would be in the metallic grey. Once the chassis came back from coating I noticed a few problems with the powder and also didn't really like the colour as it was a lot lighter than I had expected. I had the chassis recoated when the panels went to be done. I came to like the colour OK and decided not to change it. The other thing I decided to do was try and match the rivets to the panel colour. The only ones I could get were not perfect but close enough for me.

That powder coating problem is annoying!! Having said that, I think its a good call to do all the bracketing and welding first. I'm guessing you'll be hand painting the problems in? Or can areas be re- powder coated?