Hi there!
My name is Nick. I'm a track enthousiast and trackday organizer from Athens-Greece.
Here is the story of my Westfield. I hope you find it interesting.
Back in 2007 I bought my Westfield from UK.
It was a Megabird, with oversized pistons and increased capacity, and some engine/gearbox modifications.
I drove the car with my girlfriend all the way back to Greece, without any weather gear (the car that I would buy should had a full roll cage, so no hood/doors), just wearing our helmets and some custom hand made weather-proof clothes. We definitely wanted to have an experience of such a road-trip.
It was the end of October of 2007, and during our road-trip returning to Greece we faced some very bad weather conditions. We drove across UK, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Italy.. the weather was terrible, so it was a very long journey.
Unfortunately it seems that the previous owner of my Westfield "forgot" to tell me that the engine had some oil consumption, so as soon as we arrive to Italy we found out that the engine had run out of oil. We also face some other transmission problems during our trip, but we finally get back to Greece.
I had then made a video of that trip, describing some of our most unforgettable moments with our new Westfield. You can watch that video via the following link:
http://vimeo.com/2625276
The car was fantastic in the track, but less enjoyable (actually a pain in the ***) for road driving.
A few years later, on 2010-2011, I decided to convert my BEC Megabird to a Duratec powered one.
You can find in the link below some specs and a short build diary of the rebuilt. I'm sorry but the texts are all in Greek, but you may find some short descriptions on the title of each post, and of course you can see some photos.
See my blog here: bugs.trackday-special.gr
You can also watch a video of my second run with that layout (Duratec + H pattern gearbox (on my left-hand which is not so convenient for us here in Greece)). It was the beginning of our effort to set-up the car from the beginning, since there was a big change in weight distribution (and a total weight difference of +50kg) and a huge impact on car's behavior and balance.
Nevertheless, we succeed the best lap time of the day on all categories (we run at an amateur category, since Westfield and Seven-type cars do not have homologation for professional racing in Greece, but our lap times was also better than the "pro" racing cars lap times) with a difficult to drive set-up.
Here are some of my Duratec Westfield specs:
Engine: Ford Duratec 2.0 - 198 hp @ the wheels
Gearbox: 6 speed Caterham C400 - H pattern + 3.6 final drive ratio
Diff: LSD 7" tran-x
Brakes: Alcon 4pot 247x20mm + balance bar / Golf rear calipers
Suspension: Westfield widetrack oval A-arms + Protech shocks
Chassis: Westfield BEC, customized with extra rigidity braces
ROLL CAGE: full roll cage by “Custom Cages”
Exhaust Raceline 4-1 header + Simpson Race silencer
Wheels: Compomotive CXR 7x13 (front) | Compomotive CXR 8x13 (back)
Tyres: Michelin 200/54/13 or Kumho V70A (front) | Michelin 22/54/13 or Kumho V70A 235/45/13 (back)
Weight: ~565-570kg
ps. I apologize if I've put this thread on the wrong board.
Sorry for the long post!