Fury as a road car - what's the catch?

[battered]

S47 said:

1. Front 'suspension Rocker' breaks if you drive it enthusiastically often over Welsh 'B' roads.
2. exhaust running through the sill can cause fire - it gets very very hot within the fibreglass sill itself. so carry a large fire extinguisher.
3. Heavier than comparable '7' owing to full bodywork.
.

The fire risk is poor and should have been thought about but the suspension and the axle mounting fault/fragility is the sort of thing you can expect in a kit. They don't have huge R&D budgets and they are fitted with a variety of engines, gearboxes, power outputs, etc. A bit of owner fettling is to be expected. After all, it's not as if the likes of Caterham are perfect and they have been doing it for much longer. My Caterham had a number of inbuilt faults. Some of the desgn was simply poor.

[ugg10]

As far as I am aware the fire risk is down to either people wrapping their exhaust manifolds which transfers the heat into the side pod or people not putting ventilation holes in the front and rear/bottom of the pod to get air flow through it. Easily solved and a bit of an urban myth I think.

[S47]

I agree with 'Battered' however the front rocker has been a known prob since the very first cars, even the upgraded rocker breaks This issue really ought to have been sorted, since they inevitably break when you are really pushing on and can lead to very nasty accidents through no fault of the driver - Be careful I've seen this happen to a mate on 2 occasions whilst I was folowing him - each time he and the car survived, but I wouldn't want to own a fury Knowing I'd drive it like I do My 1970 lotus 7 which has never had similar probs.
Of course for smooth circuit racing they are fine

[dern]

I haven't driven the fury but my stylus is the rx7 engined car on ebay at the moment. I can only compare them with the couple of westfields I've had which were a 1700 xflow narrow body and a 4.6 john eales range rover engined widebody.

The stylus is a very stable car even with the silly power mine has. Mine is a little heavier than normal which may provide more stability but I find that it seems to skip about less and the handling is more neutral. I suspect that this is mostly around setup but the stylus that I have gives me a lot more confidence that the westfields. Although the westfields weren't flightly by any means it's just that the stylus feels properly nailed down. This was especially evident at Combe where you need that confidence.

The other big difference was the aerodynamics and the screen. The screen is great at high speeds and kicks the flat westfield in to a cocked hat. I binned mine and fitted an aeroscreen on the westfield due to the appalling buffeting but the stylus suffers from none of that. The westfield could feel like pushing a brick through the air much above 120 but the stylus is still pushing on very hard.

Another small difference is that you don't get water kicked up by the open wheels in your face in the stylus.

I'd drive one if you can, they really are brilliant. I suspect that any of the variants will be great if screwed together correctly. The stylus forum can be found here... http://www.clubstylus.be/forum/ and one of the owners has bought the rights to the cars... http://www.ssc-stylus.co.uk/

Regards,

Mark

Edited by dern on Friday 5th August 12:10

[alolympic]

Cheers Mark, some good advice,
Love your car, it must' be quite the drive! if it lookeda bit more subtle for road use I would be very tempted...

Any owners heading to the Goodwood Breakfast club this Sunday?
I'd love to have a nosey around a car

[Justin S]

alolympic said:

Cheers Mark, some good advice,
Love your car, it must' be quite the drive! if it lookeda bit more subtle for road use I would be very tempted...

Any owners heading to the Goodwood Breakfast club this Sunday?
I'd love to have a nosey around a car

Marks car is very capable on the road and has adjustable boost , so you can play with conditions and passengers fear level adjustments at the ready , as I know. It well screwed together and very linear with its power and a really decent car.

[dern]

alolympic said:

Cheers Mark, some good advice,
Love your car, it must' be quite the drive! if it lookeda bit more subtle for road use I would be very tempted...

Subtle? It's fine on the road, you can pootle along in 5th with it ticking over if you like. Perfectly driveable. It's just that all the performance can't really be used unless you're on track... you can still have fun with a lot of it though

[anonymous-user]

S47 said:

I agree with 'Battered' however the front rocker has been a known prob since the very first cars, even the upgraded rocker breaks This issue really ought to have been sorted, since they inevitably break when you are really pushing on and can lead to very nasty accidents through no fault of the driver - Be careful I've seen this happen to a mate on 2 occasions whilst I was folowing him - each time he and the car survived, but I wouldn't want to own a fury Knowing I'd drive it like I do My 1970 lotus 7 which has never had similar probs.
Of course for smooth circuit racing they are fine

Out of interest, where the did the rocker break? I was aware they made an uprated one (that I think has a single crossbar on the top?) but as mine has the old-style ones I think I might reinforce them a bit with some large triangular plate gussets across the top and perhaps a plate wrapped around underneath if there is room.

[PaulKemp]

I'm just about to hand over some cash for an old in need of some love Fury, front rocker issue is not an issue most of the time so I will look at strengthening later.
Frequent use, no different to owning a Triumph Spitfire or MG Midget.
Hot exhaust, the guy I'm buying from lined the sill with heat mat and vented it, problem much reduced, protect the fibreglass sills, don't wrap the pipes.
Looking forward to developing this one, only problem I'm trying to solve is the live axle when I have a Sierra ATB available

[battered]

Sounds great. One thing though, I hope it's a bloody sight better than a Spitfire!

[Huff]

Re: exhaust through sill - the solution mine uses developed by the original owner, was to cut a large holes through the front sill pod diaphragm, and then neatly scribe an external opening that matches the silencer profile offset +0.5" through the external skin - can be seen in pic posted previously.

This means the high pressure in the wheelwell/engine bay 'sees' an exit (useful) and some of it flows along and out; the proof it works is that - while the passenger gets a leg warmer in cold weather - none of the sill panels/frame adjacent ever get above hand-hot, without heat mat, and however hard I try.

[Fury1630]

battered said:

The fire risk is poor and should have been thought about but the suspension and the axle mounting fault/fragility is the sort of thing you can expect in a kit. They don't have huge R&D budgets and they are fitted with a variety of engines, gearboxes, power outputs, etc. A bit of owner fettling is to be expected. After all, it's not as if the likes of Caterham are perfect and they have been doing it for much longer. My Caterham had a number of inbuilt faults. Some of the desgn was simply poor.

The fire risk is POTENTIAL, I've never seen or heard of one actually catching fire, there are stories about cars with exhaust wrapped manifolds smoking a bit. I've seen pictures of burnt out Cobras - never a Fury.

Never heard of a rocker breaking either, maybe the older un-braced ones, designed for a road car with a crossflow? The later cars including mine have a rather nice braced tubular affair. I was following a seven a couple of months ago when the front suspension collapsed, so in can happen to any car if the conditions are right. Comparing an earlier car with mine there have been several chassis improvements mostly due to racing experience.

Weight - my Fury weighed 590kg at SVA with a full tank, full size curved screen & doors. There are a lot of Seven types heavier than that.

Edited by Fury1630 on Tuesday 9th August 12:25

[pigeondave]

The rocker problem (I believe) was also due to seized shafts.

There was, on the old chassis an upgrade of using mini rear link needle bearings within the rocker. This sort of worked but wasn't the best solution as only really two of the needles were in contact with the shaft that goes through. This was evident when i pulled the whole thing apart and saw the dents in the shaft.

You cant do this on the newer chassis as the top rocker can be moved forward and back to adjust the caster. With this adjustment the tabs that stick up are too far apart for the mini bits to work. I've gone back to a well greased bar that goes through the middle of a plastic top hat bush.

The main thing to look out for on a IRS car would be rear chassis condition, don't be afraid to get under the car and give it a good poke. I believe that back in the day a handful of race weight chassis made it on the road. These are lighter but you will rip the suspension mounts off the chassis due to the thinner wall SHS. Also it might crack and it will rust from the inside out.

On tour this year we saw a little finger size hole in one of the chassis. This was only found after the driver said that the rear all of a sudden felt less planted. What had happened was that the lower chassis tube twisted outwards and changed the geo. He still drove the rest of the tour, just at half speed.

These cars are driven hard and when looked after can provide many miles of fun hard driving. One of the BEC's have made it round every year no problems.

Im not trying to put anyone off. Just don't think all cars are alike. The bad ones are bad just like every make of car.

I have a live axle car so no need to worry.

[ugg10]

Also worth saying there are two different IRS versions. The earlier ones (like mine was, c2000) were a lower wish bone only and top strut tower mounted, similar to a McPherson strut, the later ones were traditional double wish bones. Talking to Mark Fisher, he preferred the earlier type for road holding and comfort but they ended up being too expensive to make so went over to the traditional double wishbone system.

[Turn7]

My Fury was a Fisher IRS, and it used a nylon type bearing in the rocker assembly.

Never had any issues on about 50 odd track days.

[jeffw]

There is a open day this Fri/Sat at the new Sylva Kitcars at Mallory Park. Ideal opportunity to come and have a look at various Jeremy Philips cars which are attending.

[anonymous-user]

Good to hear that the rocker breaking is not such a major issue - I checked the movement of the rockers before I bought the car as Steve at Fury said it was important to check they move OK and were not seized. I also removed the bolts and applied loads of copper grease to prevent them rusting. I might well still modify mine to have a cross-brace at the top though, just for peace of mind.

[AdiT]

jeffw said:

There is a open day this Fri/Sat at the new Sylva Kitcars at Mallory Park. Ideal opportunity to come and have a look at various Jeremy Philips cars which are attending.

Was just going to post that. There'll be both my R1 engined full screen spider body car and pigeondave's zetec engined classic body (doors) Furys as a min.

[battered]

JimSuperSix said:

Good to hear that the rocker breaking is not such a major issue - I checked the movement of the rockers before I bought the car as Steve at Fury said it was important to check they move OK and were not seized. I also removed the bolts and applied loads of copper grease to prevent them rusting. I might well still modify mine to have a cross-brace at the top though, just for peace of mind.

Sounds like this ought to be an annual maintenance item. Strip, clean, inspect, regrease. Renew if knackered. Should last for ever then. As with so many bits of cars, if you can be bothered to dismantle something and regrease it every so often than it will last indefinitely, a la Golf Mk 2 rear brake calipers, and those on a million and one other cars.

[pigeondave]

You dont have to pull the top rocker apart, just have a grease nipple on the rocker and pump the thing full of grease. Thats all I do. Every year pump a bit in till clean grease comes out.

Ive heard that one Fury owner put a long spiral down the metal tube for the grease to go along, but that seems a tad excessive. I just filled with grease.

Remember, the plastic top hat inserts are supposed to slip on the bar, and the bar is clamped in place. The bar should not rotate.

If youre really nervous about it all i suppose you could machine a top hat insert down to accept some of these

http://www.igus.co.uk/iPro/iPro_02_0001_0000_GBen....

I saw the idea on Tim Hoverds Fury pages years ago. You'd probably also need the correct bar to go with the bearings.

Edited by pigeondave on Thursday 11th August 13:53