Hello!

@e-j-scott Welcome E.J.! You've quite an impressive CV. I've had a couple of SR8s including the 2009 SR8 that I currently run on track days here in Central Florida. There aren't many SR8 guys that do their own maintenance, so having another hands-on SR8 guy here is awesome! 

Please tell us more about your car: equipment, color, track plans, etc. 

John

Hello Mr. Parsons,

Pardon my ignorance but I don't know what CV" stands for, lol! That stated, thank you for your response and interest. I (we) look forward to building relationships with other like minded nut jobs.

I can't elaborate much about the SR8 as I don't know much about it yet. We purchased it from Spring Mountain a couple weeks ago and haven't run it yet. We probably won't until spring. I'll strip the car and go through it first.

As a sidebar: The folks at Spring Mountain couldn't have been more fabulous to deal with! They treated us with absolute respect and were and continue to be tremendously helpful. The transaction simply couldn't have been any easier or more enjoyable.

The car appears to have been well maintained mechanically and, as far as I can tell, never hurt. It has a fresh engine and gearbox so that's nice. Currently it's red, black and white but that'll be changing to our team colors. I haven't decided yet but I may convert the car back to a manual shifter. I like "driving" (and teaching "driving") cars. But...to some degree we have to accommodate what others want.

Along with me personally just playing with (driving) the cars we have an exclusive arrive and drive program we're building. It's very low volume and highly catered. We have zero desire to turn it into a "job". We just have a lot of fun helping others make dreams come true. At present we have a small fleet of Shifter Karts, a Spec E30 (great trainer), the Radical SR8 and a '95 Reynard F3000 in F-1 (3.5 liter 750 HP) trim. We aspire to add a Radical SR3 and an older (manually shifted) Swift Atlantic car. We tote our goods about in a 34 foot Renegade stacker.

Shop wise we're fully equipped sans a dyno. We could manufacture a Radical from scratch in house. We manufacture many of our own components for all our cars including bodywork (from plug to finished component). We also engineer and manufacture most of our support equipment. Making stuff is what we love doing! We recently added high line tire changing and balancing machines so that's a neato addition. We also built access and parking for several transporters, have room for many cars and even built a guest house with it's own entrance, drive and deck for our clients to stay in.

One of our goals is to house, maintain and provide track side support for a client or two. One advantage we have is that we can do everything in house to a superb standard and with almost no overhead so everyone wins!

So...there's a bit about us.

Please, we'd appreciate you telling us more about you! Feel free to email us directly. I'd love to be able to pick your brain about your SR8's and your experience with them.

Oh...and "us" is my lovely better half Annalece and myself.

Kind regards,

E. J.  

@e-j-scott, welcome to the Registry and congratulations on getting your SR8!  I think once you try driving the car you won’t want to convert it back to a manually shifted car.  The paddle shift system is very nice out on the track.

Hello Charley,

Wonderful to make your acquaintance. It appears this may actually be your site. If so, bravo! We have numerous proprietary sites that we write our own code for so we can relate to the effort you likely put in. Thank you for providing this site!

Respectfully, if this SR8 were for my use alone it's never do a lap with a paddle shifter. I've driven a plethora of race cars in all levels of configurations. Certainly I understand the ease, convenience and lap time advantage of paddle shifters (and ABS, traction control, active suspension, cockpit (and engineers in the pits) adjustable everything, rev limiters, bla, bla, bla.) Personally I simply happen to be a great fan of skill far and above technology when it comes to driving cars. In my opinion one of, if not "the" greatest talent a race car driver can possess is good footwork. A close second is the ability for a driver to take the car that's under him in the moment , as it is, and optimize it. There's a grand difference between "driving" a car and "riding in" a car. It's just my personal preference to preserve the human skills of as much as I can. When I engineer products (and time permits) I still use a slide rule and draw prints with a pen. Often I navigate with a Thomas Guide and actually have to pay attention to where I'm going. I still use my eyeballs and senses to park a car as opposed to waiting for an alarm or looking at a view in a camera. Certainly I get the beauty of technological advancements but a great deal of them are massively depleting (have massively depleted) skill sets and the pride and self-respect that accompanies them. So I choose to preserve them...but I realize I'm the absolute minority! However this is the premise behind our exclusive arrive and drive. We cater to the very few that want to learn to control a car. Not so much to those that want to experience technology. 

This stated, I want to be clear that I have great admiration and respect for the advancement of technology in the context of those that create it.

Thanks again for providing this site and allowing a weirdo (aka not part of the majority) like me participate!  🙂

E. J.    

@e-j-scott, it’s great to meet you also.  I am glad to hear that you are enjoying the site.