Jeff and I made the journey to Atlanta to pick up the Jensen with new motor from Judson Manning, our Lotus 907 engine guru. Judson rebuilt the motor after I did bad things to it outlined here:

http://itforum.improvedtouring.com/forums/...topic=8202&st=0

Judson put this motor together and fixed a few of the issues with oiling, adapters, lines, etc. that caused the last failure. I think we'll be in business this time around, at least as far as the motor is concerned.

We were able to use Judson's GA tag from his road going Jensen to have a few spins around the block in the race car. In fact, I have some rather crude video of Jeff driving as well as some pictures I'll download off the camera and post.

Anyhow, with a street muffler setup the car drove very well! Motor was smooth, as smooth as a 907 is going to be which is to say it sort of sounds like a box of rocks at idle and low RPM - normal for anyone that has owned one of these or an Esprit.

Power is good I think. Pulls decently to about 4k, and then pulls really strongly from about 4.5k to around 6.5k-7k, at least strong for a 4V 2L. While I don't think it is nearly as powerful as a good Z, or RX7, it is lighter and might allow it to run with those cars. We hope to find out.

Anyhow, it has been a long road on this car, very long indeed. Jeff Young has put in countless hours on this car and I really appreciate his time and effort, it is as much his car as it is mine and we hope to run both these British cars in S for a year before building new cars for R. Hopefully 2007 will see a full season of this thing being on the track as it is basically done now - just some cosmetic things to sort out, spolier, etc. But no huge "issues" are pressing now.

I'll get some pics and the video up here tomorrow.

Ron