Team Kraftson

Here are several pictures of our Elva Courier Mk IV T Type, chassis #1188 with IRS, owned and driven by my son, Donald.
1st place

As best we can tell the car was originally owned by Terry Visger, who raced an MGB for Joe Huffaker in the late 1960s and who intended to prepare the Elva to race on his own. There may have been an interim owner but the person who owned and raced it for most of its life (the SCCA log book begins in 1976 with a races at Sunburst and Riverside, CA) is Mark Brannon. He and the car were invariably in the SCCA National Championships (Runoffs) through September, 2000 and that year he set the EP lap record and qualified on the pole but was moved back for exceeding noise limits.


The log book in 1976 shows the car as weighing 1650 lbs. without fuel or driver. It had quite a heavy fiberglass body. Today, with Mark's substantial efforts at lightening and the carbon fiber body which we had fabricated using molds that came with the car when Donald bought it in June, 2001, it now weighs 1690 lbs. with the fuel and 220 lb. driver. The whole body, except the steel doors which must remain original, weighs less than 100 lbs. now - and is as strong or stronger than the original fiberglass.


The engine in the car, originally built for us by Huffaker Engineering, subsequently modified by George Bauchman and me, is the best we've ever had to date, making over 180 bhp from 6000 to 7500 rpm, which is the range we use on the track. Peak power is 185+ and torque is over 155 ft. lbs. prepared to SCCA EP specs - over 100 hp/liter on gasoline, naturally aspirated with two 1 3/4" SUs on a five port head! George Bauchman, of Midwest Motorsports, just outside of Toledo, OH and Craig Chima, who purchased the Brannon's other Mk IV T Type (his is the Sebring version), have done the most recent and effective engine development on the BMC B series engines of which we know.


Craig won the SCCA National Championship (Craig's third) with one of George's engines in 2002 and has been wonderfully helpful to us as has Joe Huffaker, located at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, CA, Dave Headley of Fab-Tek in Cortez, CO, Mark Lelchook of Performance Welding Headers, located in the High Sierras east of Sacramento, who built our stainless header system, and Harlan Gustafson, of HG Associates, near here in Limerick, PA, who has been faithful in helping us develop and dyno our engines with his massive inertia dyno facility.


A few other things - our gearbox is a beautiful dog-ring extremely close-ratio racing work of art made by Steve Schwitters, using an Alfa case with Hewland gears. We have converted the car to RHD because the tracks on which we race are almost all clockwise and the driver weight on the inside is, we believe, an advantage not many other EP cars can use (our logbook pre-dates SCCA's ruling that all cars be LHD). The car is suspended on Penske shocks and Hypercoil springs supplies and tuned by Joe Stimola of Locust Valley, NY.


Our team, which I've managed, is a great group:

The result of all the work by so many is a fabulous car, a joy to drive, and draws a lot of attention on the trailer and at the track. Donald went from Driver's School to the Runoffs in 2002, his first year of racing, a feat rarely accomplished in the SCCA - despite too many DNFs for various reasons. We sat out last year because we needed to pay attention to our businesses but look forward to a somewhat more relaxed season this year - but with a much higher percentage of wins!


More pictures and information can be seen at our web-site www.TeamKraftsonRacing.com

Sincerely, Ray Kraftson

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