In truth it’s less of a barn find and more of barn remembrance. The car is owned by Kev Leaper of PPC Magazine who we do various work for. This is a westfield XI, a copy of the Lotus XI. This car has been graced with bigger arches and a bonnet bulge to accomodate it’s vauxhall XE ‘redtop’ engine. It’s a fair deviation from how Lotus intended it to look but I thiink it looks like a rolling work of art, assuming that is you can see past the dust, rust and cobwebs.
The plan id to get it race ready, no mean feat but one we’re all set for. So far we’ve got it running and resolved a few cooling problems. The next obstacle was freeing off the brakes which wasn’t too hard, but then found that they wouldn’t bleed back up again. The master cylinder had seized so once that was replaced and several tight bleed nipples freed off it had brakes once again. Now we’re down to the nitty gritty of getting it set up and all those little details that take so much time but I can’t wait to see the car back on the race track
We have worked with some guys in recent months in developing their MG track cars. One is an MGZS multi purpose family car come track day hack which interestingly is a diesel with enough torque to snap your neck thanks to a thoughtful remap and neatly installed intercooler. The other is an all out stripped bare and nicley set up MGZT V6. This has been built on a budget and has come to us to have some of it’s rough endges smoothed. With both cars looking good we headed for Donnington for some driver training. Wet weather made for an exciting day but great fun was had by all for a very small outlay.
