Hi from Bim

I have been looking /investigating the Stratos for many years, Litton, Transformer, CAE etc, but have never been in a position to be able to build one. From the first time I had seen it in magazines in the 70's I had been captured by its stunning beauty (if such attributes can be used to describe an inanimate object) :rolleyes: and above all its simplicity. I joined late last year, but had to try to come up to speed by scouring the Club and other sites before posting here, so that a constructive comment could be made. Not being located in the UK, I knew it would not be a simple task to even acquire a donor vehicle (no Alfas here) so I'm still looking for that before I get too excited about a kit. I hope that his a suitable approach.

Henry

Welcome. Visited your fair island a few years ago. All I will say is make sure you spec suspension setup for gravel not tarmac!! :) Oh, and fit A/C.

You might be better looking at a Toyota donor and going for an LB if an Alfa donor is out of the question?

Thanks Chris, I hope that you had enjoyed your trip. I'm trying to source an E153 box now, then will look for either the 1MZ or 2GR power plant. is a Toyota engined Hawk out of the question?

Henry

Hi Henry, welcome to the club!

I'm pretty sure that Hawk don't offer a Toyota specific chassis and that's not likely to change until the supply of Busso's dries up. Or Gerry stops selling ally Cobra replicas!I know that Gerry has sourced engines/boxes to go with a car when exported, they just get mounted in the chassis for ease of shipping. If you're handy fabricating engine mounts there's no reason you can't fit it yourself after ordering a kit without any mounts. Simplest route, if you're set on Toyota, has to be a Lister Bell I'd have thought?

More importantly I'd have thought you need to check that you register and use a self built kit car in Barbados? If you can't then you might have to consider buying a ready built one or a turn key car and import that?

Guy

A Toyota version of a hawk is a non starter. The layout of the lower chassis rails in the engine bay means the rear wishbones can't be fitted. You'd have to cormpletely redesign the rear suspension. You can see a pic of the Toyota spec chassis on Lister bells website, their wishbone pickup s can be seen. Hawks reverse wishbone inner pickup point needs to be I side of that frame.

Thanks John and Guy. I see what you mean, the Toyota engine/gearbox combination seems to be wider in the lower chassis rail area, does this also make the rear of the car wider as well? I can fabricate the engine mounts etc. and was tending to the Hawk since I already had the Fiat 132 uprights etc which had been collected years ago, also had a 125 as well, 850 rear lights etc, so there are some parts which I guess could be used on either kit. The registration for road use here should not be a problem since it is road legal in the UK.

Henry

Makes no change to anything on the Lister bell at all.