Sylva Jester

Sylve Jester

This is the Sylva Jester Kitcar, the car was designed so you could use all the components off the Mk1 Fiesta (in this case it was a Mk1 fiesta XR2).
This is Jester No3 the third built by the factory, this is the actual car that is used in their advertising, and was featured in ‘Kitcar’ magazine.
We bought the car as a non runner, and saved a packet in doing so. it had problems, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted, so day 1 starts with me sitting out on the drive bonnet open pissing down with rain and a cheap car cover draped over me and the car, a bit of fettling and we got Sylva Jester the engine to at least turn over, but wouldn’t quite bite, then we found that someone had put the HT leads on the wrong way, and with this fixed, she fired up, but staying running was the problem, she wouldn’t keep running at all.

This was beyond my capabilities at this stage so we put her in the garage with the instructions of ‘Fix It’ we ended up sticking a new twin choke Weber carb on it, and everything was hunky dory (well sort of, it would run ok, but never quite right) we then decided that the piddly little exhaust didn’t suit the car, and had a nice stainless system made of for it, this makes it sound nice and rumbly, but not too load, unless you hammer it a bit :-).
then the Obligatory Cat 1 Alarm system was added, for peace of mind
Sylva Jester Next she started with a familiar knocking noise at the front wheel, which was a dead strut, so again we guessed that replacing all of them would be a good idea. (and a hint here, if you need something like this doing, you can get a bigger discount and haggle better in the winter months when trade is slower for the tyre/suspension guys)
the Next problems to show there ugly head were a horrible flat spot and overheating (the bane of kitcar owners world wide 🙂 ).

The flat spot was duly sorted when it was sent to Aldon Automotive in the Midlands where they had it on the rolling road, it turns out that the engine had been bored out to 1700cc from the standard 1600cc.
We decided it was cheaper to tackle to cooling problem ourselves, and Sylva Jester methodically went through, what the problems could be, it turn out that the fan on the rad was insufficient or didn’t work, we had never seen or heard it running, so we purchased 2 x 8″ Kenlowe 2000 series fans and an independent fan adjuster so we could set it to come in, when we wanted it to. now these are not cheap, But they are worth every penny and they shift phenomenal amounts of air.
We then decided that the piddly little exhaust didn’t suit the car, and had a nice stainless system made of for it, this makes it sound nice and rumbly, but not too load, unless you hammer it a bit :-).
then the Obligatory Cat 1 Alarm system was added, for peace of mind
Sylva Jester
Next she started with a familiar knocking noise at the front wheel, which was a dead strut, so again we guessed that replacing all of them would be a good idea. (and a hint here, if you need something like this doing, you can get a bigger discount and haggle better in the winter months when trade is slower for the tyre/suspension guys)
the Next problems to show there ugly head were a horrible flat spot and overheating (the bane of kitcar owners world wide 🙂 ).
the flat spot was duly sorted when it was sent to Aldon Automotive in the Midlands where they had it on the rolling road, it turns out that the engine had been bored out to 1700cc from the standard 1600cc.
We decided it was cheaper to tackle to cooling problem ourselves, and Sylva Jester methodically went through, what the problems could be, it turn out that the fan on the rad was insufficient or didn’t work, we had never seen or heard it running, so we purchased 2 x 8″ Kenlowe 2000 series fans and an independent fan adjuster so we could set it to come in, when we wanted it to. now these are not cheap, But they are worth every penny and they shift phenomenal amounts of air.

we were due to send it in for its MOT and some minor jobs and the damn thing was dead, which turned out to be a couple of bad earths ( bane(No2) of kitcar owners world wide 🙂 ) .
it had its MOT, it runs well, it cools even better,

It does have a stereo but what’s the point, you can hear it anyway

It also has full weather gear, but it is horrible to drive with it on. so i don’t 🙂

So what’s next?
well it still has the 4 speed box off the XR2, we will change this to the 5 speed box off the Escort, but does require the chassis to be cut and welded to accommodate it, so quite a big job, so maybe next year 🙂

The interior is fine but could do with a little tidying up, again not an important or rush job, just one of those we will get round to it soon (ish)