Discussion
I've lurked around Readers Cars for a while now umming and arring whether or not to do a post, I've not seen many cars of the kit variety in this section so thought I would help raise the profile of them.
My original love for wanting one started back in the early noughties when Fifth Gear had the Tiger Racing Z100 on trying to get the 0-60 record, seeing a twin-engine home built car do daft things was right up my alley!
Skip 20 odd years and I was finally in a fortunate position to have enough space and funds to crack on with a build, during the covid era I managed to get some money down on a GBS Zero.
I'd had my eye on a GBS for a while, they're local to me and they were really welcoming when I'd gone over to have a look years prior. I preferred the overall proportions of the car and look of it compared to other kits on offer too.
Many people will always say 'why didn't you just get a Caterham' but for me I wanted to do the full build from chassis up, plus its not something I envisage getting rid of any time soon so the depreciation was less critical for me. Also price wise, a similar spec Caterham at the time was a fair old chunk of cash more than the GBS offering.
Anyways, to the kit...
GBS offer what they call the Ultimate Zero Kit which is basically a new car with the 2.5 Duratec IL4 engine, you can spec lots of other options and recently I've seen that they offer a sequential box which sounds interesting. The extra bits I went for was.
- Plated Sierra LSD
- ATR (their own in house company) dampers
- ATR front brakes
- ATR ITBs
- Carbon dash
- Composite bucket seats
- Lightened flywheel and clutch
You can buy the kit in 5 stages which is what I opted for. GBS normally offer the car fully panelled with brake and fuel lines fitted, I'd asked for the bare chassis to start from.
I got the first 2 stages home and got busy cracking on.
All the panels they provide are machine cut so everything goes together quite well, there's plenty of fettling needed to get things just right though.
By this point the car was mostly waiting for paint, I'd used my own local guy instead of taking it back to the factory but I needed to wait a few months for a slot (it turned into a big slot....).
My original love for wanting one started back in the early noughties when Fifth Gear had the Tiger Racing Z100 on trying to get the 0-60 record, seeing a twin-engine home built car do daft things was right up my alley!
Skip 20 odd years and I was finally in a fortunate position to have enough space and funds to crack on with a build, during the covid era I managed to get some money down on a GBS Zero.
I'd had my eye on a GBS for a while, they're local to me and they were really welcoming when I'd gone over to have a look years prior. I preferred the overall proportions of the car and look of it compared to other kits on offer too.
Many people will always say 'why didn't you just get a Caterham' but for me I wanted to do the full build from chassis up, plus its not something I envisage getting rid of any time soon so the depreciation was less critical for me. Also price wise, a similar spec Caterham at the time was a fair old chunk of cash more than the GBS offering.
Anyways, to the kit...
GBS offer what they call the Ultimate Zero Kit which is basically a new car with the 2.5 Duratec IL4 engine, you can spec lots of other options and recently I've seen that they offer a sequential box which sounds interesting. The extra bits I went for was.
- Plated Sierra LSD
- ATR (their own in house company) dampers
- ATR front brakes
- ATR ITBs
- Carbon dash
- Composite bucket seats
- Lightened flywheel and clutch
You can buy the kit in 5 stages which is what I opted for. GBS normally offer the car fully panelled with brake and fuel lines fitted, I'd asked for the bare chassis to start from.
I got the first 2 stages home and got busy cracking on.
All the panels they provide are machine cut so everything goes together quite well, there's plenty of fettling needed to get things just right though.
By this point the car was mostly waiting for paint, I'd used my own local guy instead of taking it back to the factory but I needed to wait a few months for a slot (it turned into a big slot....).
Excellent. Been a fan of these for some time now and they are also localish to me. I had the same experience as you when visiting the factory, nothing is too much trouble and everyone there was really friendly. There open evenings are well attended and highly recommended.
I'll be following the build with interest. Look forward to the next update.
I'll be following the build with interest. Look forward to the next update.
After some waiting, more parts arrived.
This meant i could crack on with a few bits until I had to cart it off to get sprayed.
GBS make their own looms for the car which helps massively, I did want to look at doing my own to get my skills up but it would have taken me ages and it probably would have needed modifications along the way.
It was routed in along with mounting the fuse/relay box.
It was at this point I went and got the really important bits! GBS import the engines from Mexico as we never had the 2.5 IL4 over here, they have become more popular here with people though as they are fairly torquey and can be easily swapped in place of the 2.0.
The gearbox used is the Mazda 5 speed from the MX-5, GBS offer this shifter assembly to move the shift point further back, looks pretty cool too.
I started dressing the engine with bits, again GBS offer the alternator mount and pulleys along with the blanking plate.
The flywheel, clutch and gearbox were built up ready for installation.
The next job was sorting the dash out, I'm ok with cutting into stuff normally but as it was a nice fancy piece of carbon I was doubly sure to take my time. I'd found during the build that it was trying to get a balance of speed versus quality, I wanted to get it all done as soon as I could but I didn't want to cut corners.
GBS offer these nice dials made by ETB, they had used Smiths for their gauges but during covid I think there was supply and quality issues so they moved to ETB. They're quite smart with in built 0-60 time and max speed menus.
I decided to use cardboard aided design for the placement as I hadn't even got the steering rack mounted properly yet.
I trial fitted the wheel to check I could see them and went in with the power tools. As you can see the controls are Sierra hand-me-downs, the kit is mostly brand new parts but some items like the steering rack, controls and rear diff are used items.
Next job was the balancer delete, its surprising how much weight this thing was! There's an oilway to block off then you're done.
The engine had to stay like this for a while, GBS were normally obtaining their sumps from Raceline but again due to supply issues they were going their own way and making them in house so I had to wait until their prototype was done testing.
I got the ECU mounted up with a homemade bracket, the ECU they use is a Life Racing F88 which is plenty for a car like this. There's quite a lot of features on it and luckily, as its mostly identical to Syvecs, I could find a lot of the info online.
I had to then get a cool pic of the engine with the ITBs fitted, was itching to hear what it would sound like.
This meant i could crack on with a few bits until I had to cart it off to get sprayed.
GBS make their own looms for the car which helps massively, I did want to look at doing my own to get my skills up but it would have taken me ages and it probably would have needed modifications along the way.
It was routed in along with mounting the fuse/relay box.
It was at this point I went and got the really important bits! GBS import the engines from Mexico as we never had the 2.5 IL4 over here, they have become more popular here with people though as they are fairly torquey and can be easily swapped in place of the 2.0.
The gearbox used is the Mazda 5 speed from the MX-5, GBS offer this shifter assembly to move the shift point further back, looks pretty cool too.
I started dressing the engine with bits, again GBS offer the alternator mount and pulleys along with the blanking plate.
The flywheel, clutch and gearbox were built up ready for installation.
The next job was sorting the dash out, I'm ok with cutting into stuff normally but as it was a nice fancy piece of carbon I was doubly sure to take my time. I'd found during the build that it was trying to get a balance of speed versus quality, I wanted to get it all done as soon as I could but I didn't want to cut corners.
GBS offer these nice dials made by ETB, they had used Smiths for their gauges but during covid I think there was supply and quality issues so they moved to ETB. They're quite smart with in built 0-60 time and max speed menus.
I decided to use cardboard aided design for the placement as I hadn't even got the steering rack mounted properly yet.
I trial fitted the wheel to check I could see them and went in with the power tools. As you can see the controls are Sierra hand-me-downs, the kit is mostly brand new parts but some items like the steering rack, controls and rear diff are used items.
Next job was the balancer delete, its surprising how much weight this thing was! There's an oilway to block off then you're done.
The engine had to stay like this for a while, GBS were normally obtaining their sumps from Raceline but again due to supply issues they were going their own way and making them in house so I had to wait until their prototype was done testing.
I got the ECU mounted up with a homemade bracket, the ECU they use is a Life Racing F88 which is plenty for a car like this. There's quite a lot of features on it and luckily, as its mostly identical to Syvecs, I could find a lot of the info online.
I had to then get a cool pic of the engine with the ITBs fitted, was itching to hear what it would sound like.
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