It should be no real surprise, but I LOVE the aesthetics of the seven. The stripped out, racy look of a clean seven is a great thing and I'm a massive fan. Raptor seem to have created a little identity all of their own, with the standard "look" for a RR235 being something along these lines:
Predominantly orange, black stripe, black cycle wings, black cage, carbon wrap on some of the exposed parts, aero screen.
Colour: As it so happens, I really like the Orange, so I am going to stick with it for mine. However, I am going to change a few bits and pieces to make it more individual.
Stripe: Going to keep the colour a surprise for now, but this is the main cosmetic change for me. I may then wrap a few other things on the car to match.
NOTE - IVA. As part of the process of getting the car legally on the road, you have to get it certified via a process called IVA (Individual Vehicle Approval). What this does is basically check that the car is safe and roadworthy, you then get a certificate, and then you can register, tax and drive the car. What it means in reality is that you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get the initial certificate, so the car that I build initially, may not be its final form. (Once you have obtained the IVA cert, you can then change a load of things). As an example, for the wing mirrors to pass IVA, they need to be big clunky items, but once you have passed you are well within your rights to change them for a more elegant set. So here I will talk about what I want to do in the long term.
Dash: I want to make it as clean as possible. Ideally I want to put all the buttons on the steering wheel by using a Blinkstop Freewheel:
HOWEVER as you can see from the pictures, thats waaaay out of budget at this point so I'll keep that as an aspiration for a later date. Instead for now, I am going to use a standard stalk off ebay for a few quid that can do indicators, lights, hazards and horn, and then have a few small buttons on the dash for things like engine start, foglight etc.
In terms of instruments - again, there is a gold standard which is this:
But given that it's over £1200, it'll have to wait. Possibly for ever!
For now, I'm going to use a much simpler, smaller and cheaper unit along the lines of this one (I haven't decided exactly which one but if it's not this it's something very close):
Sure - it's not as flash, but it doesn't blow the budget out of the water all by itself!
The dash will also have a couple of things extra - USB charging, and post IVA it will have a phone mount for navigation, and a couple extra touches I'm mulling over and will show you eventually.
Steering Wheel - I already have one!! Its a second hand, suede, 300mm wheel. I got a cheap one because I have a feeling I might want to go slightly smaller once I have the feel for it - 280 seems a nice size but I'll worry about that once the car is registered. A nice wheel is somewhere between £100 and £200 so its enough that I don't want to buy one and get it wrong.
Screen - I'm going with an aero screen for a couple of reasons. Its much easier to pass IVA for a start - if you don't have a windscreen you don't need wipers or a demist heater. Also, it feels like thats how these cars were meant to be driven! If in the long run we decide a "proper" windscreen is needed I will retro fit it, but I understand most people like them without. You also apparently can't run a full cage with a screen, but I have some potential future ideas to do something interesting with this, as I might consider a full cage.
Seats - as I said before, the comfortable, heated seats that look like this:
work out at £1600 for the pair, so unless some killer bargains come up second hand on padded ones, I'll get on the road with some similar to this instead:
which are actually surprisingly comfy and much cheaper (they can be had for 2-300 for the pair), just not as luxurious.
Mirrors - IVA wing mirrors will be big clunky ones, but then I am thinking of swapping them out with some nice, elegant race spec ones. At this point I don't think I am going to use the ones with the integrated indicators that Raptor offer as an option (see pic of car at top of the post) as I think they are a bit ugly. To start with I'll use side repeaters on the body of the car instead, but I may reconsider if I think they are significantly safer from a visibility perspective.
Center mirror will be just a little one on a post - whatever I need for IVA and to see behind me! Not sure there is anything terribly exciting to do differently there. If I add a full cage at some point in the future, you can buy these great big ones that clamp to the cage which look great but thats an idea for another day.
Other interior trim - I have some colour coordination ideas that I'll keep to myself for now, but outside of that I am not going to push to decide the exact look and feel of the car until I actually need to install it!
Lights - final thing for today is the lights. Headlights - I'm going to use standard set up as at the top of the page - they are called dominator lights and I managed to pick up some second hand for cheap. Eventually again I'd like to swap out for some nice LED ones - they aren't that expensive but most of them won't pass IVA hence starting with these standard ones. Indicators will be standard motorbike indicators (again, see top pic) but for IVA they have to be on long stalks to get them much closer to the wings.
Rear lights, I am going with some LED all in one units for lights, reverse, sidelight and indicators, and a separate LED foglight. They are nice, clean, bright units and should look great.
I think that'll do for today, not sure what I'll do for the next post, at the moment I am sitting on my hands to prevent myself from phoning raptor every day to ask if it's done yet!
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