At Home Mechanic

Building a car can be as simple as assembling a car from a kit that gets delivered as a large box of parts dropped at my front door. Or it can be as complicated as buying steel sheets and tubing to weld into a form of my own design. As this is will be my first complete car construction from the ground up I have been thinking that buying a kit car would be the best way to ease into the world of automobile construction.

Car kits come in a variety of forms, it is possible to buy a kit that will replicate an exotic high performance racing prototype or as ruggedly simple as a dune buggy. As I have written before, the two leading contenders are the Lotus Seven style of low slung roadster from the 1950's or the classic Shelby Cobra of the 1960's. The Lotus is smaller and less powerful, the Cobra is larger and probably more powerful than any reasonable person would ever need.

I have thought about putting a six-cylinder engine rather than the usual V8 into a Cobra for a lighter and more maneuverable car. And I have considered replacing the usual four cylinder engine found in most Lotus with a larger, more powerful power plant, probably a V6 engine of some sort. But the Cobra is truly meant to have that monster V8 and the Lotus would be an ill handling mess with a heavier engine in its wimpy little frame. If only there was a kit that was a scaled down Cobra or a scaled up Lotus...

Fortunately I have found just the compromise, the Stalker V6. Largely based upon the design of the Lotus Seven, only on steroids, it is designed to accept the General Motors V6 engine that power a zillion S10 pickup trucks and SUVs. The frame is stronger and larger than the Lotus designed frame, which is an advantage for us Plus-Sized Americans. Performance parts are easy to come by for the GM V6 can be manipulated to squeeze out plenty of power in a relatively light package.

A bonus for the Stalker V6 is that kit is very complete; essentially there is no welding required. Plus it is possible to order ALL the parts for your car from the company that makes the kit or you can source the vital bits yourself. Any North American junkyard is filled with all of the inexpensive components needed to create my automotive masterpiece.

The resulting complete car comes in at about 1400 pounds and 200 horsepower is not hard to achieve. This works out to a very tasty 7:1 power to weight ratio, which is enough to hold my attention.

The legal disclosure portion of this posting is that I am not in position to get rolling on this project right off the bat. I have a lot of personal obligations and responsibilities to take care of over the course of the next year or so. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a first step and my first step is to think this project through. I value the input I receive from my readers (thank you family and friends) so I hope to hear some of your views on this new development in my car-build project.