
Originally Posted by
Astro Bob
As an anecdotal data point, I reached Hunter, one of Hayes' sons at Wirewheel yesterday and alerted them to our thread and the family was aware of the critical posting on BAT. Hunter who has extensive sports car experience and likely some limited seven experience reported that he had driven the Rotus and it seemed to handle appropriately.
I would hope Wirewheel know about the posting - they are the ones selling the car!
I am sure it handled as nicely as expected.

Originally Posted by
speedwagon
Rotus rides entirely too hard for me (but may be that it has Carrillo coil-overs rather than the original- too much spring?.
I would expect these are later replacements and not the originals. Shocks for our cars need re-valving to be calibrated for the lighter weight. The springs may have been saloon car spec too instead of a correctly calculated weighting. You cannot just buy suspension stuff off the shelf - it all needs some level of customization to work right on a seven to.

Originally Posted by
speedwagon
...even I cannot build the perfect car the first time and doubt that the complainer or even Chapman could. john
Well said. I can pick faults in every brand of sevens' suspension. As Panamericano notes, every creator is proud of their creation and so not inclined to want to hear about perceived flaws by others. Even the Caterham CSR, which is probably the most advanced design or recent years and was tuned by Multimatic, got it wrong (too soft in rear end/roll center too high thanks to use of 1990 VW Passat uprights). Further, a lot of suspension design issues come back to compromises from packaging everything within a small sized chassis. There is not an unlimited budget either. I suspect the Rotus rear end was likely re-designed for some specific reasons at the time (probably cost) but may never be known.
Dan on the site has owned/built a couple there was one sitting in his shop the last time I was there. Maybe he know more. He is not a fan on the front suspension design so the original design was not as perfect as the poster thinks.
Graham - is the Dan you refer to, the same one referred to by another poster in that Bringatrailer thread? He is mentioned as being hired to build Rotus cars.
Last edited by Croc; 05-21-2020 at 09:59 AM.
Mike
2021 Caterham CSR "CatKong"
2010 Caterham CSR with Cosworth 2.3 Duratec
2018 Caterham 420R with 2L Duratec 210hp at Donington UK
1972 Lamborghini Espada GT
1975 BMW CSL Group 4 (restoration finished - track set up time)
1977 Holden Torana "A9X" (awaiting restoration)
1985 Holden Commodore SS Group A (suspension restoration)
1985 Holden Commodore Group A (suspension set up)
1982 Ferrari 400i (radiator replacement)
1965 Ford Mustang Fastback "Holman Moody"
1992 Ford Escort RS Cosworth WRC (dyno time)
1990 Range Rover 2 door Classic