Stevie's Hood

Well here's my Robin Hood 2B kit car.  Its come on a little bit since the pics and is about 85% complete with just a few bits like lights, trim etc to fit.  Total time has been almost 3 years and more than 800 hours of work.  It took me 30 hours just to make and fit the bloody wings!

Since its my first car I've built, I have to learnt a lot in the art of fabricating/drilling/bodging stuff that is incredibly badly "designed" in the first place.  I'm sure it would have taken me half the time if I had designed it and built it from scratch myself!  Next time I shall bond the panels on because I don't want to drill another hole in my life.

Here's some stats about the car:

Car: Robin Hood Engineering 2B.
Donor: Ford Sierra 2.0i Ghia w/120K on the clock (0-60 in 9.1s, top speed 126mph, weight 1145kg).
Chassis: 38mm tubular TIG welded spaceframe chassis.
Bodywork: 14-18G Stainless Steel sheet with mirror finish and GRP exterior panelling.
Suspension: Sliding Pillar front, Semi-trailing independent rear.
Power: 114bhp at 5300 rpm (rev limit 6250 rpm). Of course its probably not after 126K miles....
Torque: 138lbft at 3800 rpm.
Weight: ~580kg (it that's 155kg boat anchor in the front!).
Performance: 0-60 in ~7s, top speed ~120 mph.

The pile of bits I paid £1600 for are definitely not "kit car" material - there's no way you can realistically build a car from them.  Even in a simple car like mine, there's probably over 3000 bits which go in to it.  The entire pile of bits fitted on to a big pallet trolley like the one's you get in Homebase/Ikea, so there's not much there.

Typically, the main bits you get which are USEABLE are:

Chassis (has to be prepared and painted),
Flat body panels (lots of panel cutting/forming required, to make the bastards fit),
Steering rack, front shocks, and a few bits of metal to convert the Macpherson Strut to Sliding Pillar,
GRP front wings and nosecone which are so badly cut out I've had to cut, fill, and now paint them,
D+T-special exhaust,
Cortina radiator,
Few token rusty nuts and bolts from B+Q.

The rest you have to source yourself either from the Sierra donor, scrapyard, or companies.

Once through the dreaded SVA test, oi've got planz to mod the front suspension to double wishbone with rose joints and replace the heavy rear ones with lightweight rose jointed ones not designed for a car that weighs 580kg rather than 1200kg.