Building a kit car - why put in all that effort to end up with a car which looks like it was built in a shed, drives like it was built in a shed and is worth considerably less than the time and effort put in. Good question, and one which we asked ourselves frequently. But the Kit car industry is growing and so we decided there must be something behind it so we decided we'd give it a go.

Now, we could have just gone out and got a well known, bolt up kit. But hey, where is the fun in that. No, we have decided to try the low cost approach and have opted for a Robin Hood Project 2B kit. Now, these aren't as well known as your Caterhams, Westfields, DAXs or Chesils. But they have a certain reputation within the kit car world. The car gets it name from the fact that the chassis is constructed from tubular steel (2B=tubey, get it). The company has a history of producing Locost style roadsters - to the initiated these are kitcars based around the Lotus 7 roadster concept.

The kit we bought was the very basic one, which currently retails for £1345.38 including VAT. Several upgrades are available, including Stainless panels and independent wishbone front suspension, but as our goal is a sub £2000 build budget we gave these a miss. So, having placed our order, all that remained was to travel up to the Robin Hood factory and collect the kit...

	This is the kit, you pay your money and wheel away this kart full of fun and a checklist. As you load up the kit you check off all the bits (if you can figure out what they are) and you can ask the staff for any missing/dodgy bits (we had an air bubble in the fiberglass nose cone which needed changing.
	Most people turned up in large transits/lutons (the chassis is quite long) but we opted for a Volvo and a trailer - in retrospect it would have been easier to have a transit as we spent lots of time faffing about with getting all the panels in the back of the volvo without damaging them.
	The chassis is the biggest part of the kit, made from tubular steel and created from several continuous sections which are welded together at strategic points. It isn't that stiff in certain places and we hope that the addition of the sierra subframe will stiffen it up.
	Getting all the other bits of the kit in the back of the car was a little difficult as some of the body panels are quite long as is the exhaust etc. The solution would be a bigger car or trailer, but best of all a van. Having said that, a couple of guys packed their kit into a Laguna estate with the chassis on the roofrack (which appeared to be made of wood)...don't know if they made it home.

	The Kit contains some fiberglass mouldings (nose cone, front and back wings) but the majority of the bodywork is steel - unusual for a kit car. The kit is available in Stainless Steel for an extra few hundred pounds, but we are so cack handed that we figured painting the kit would allow us to hide a multitude of mistakes. This may turn out to be a mistake and we now can't figure out how to fit the bodywork and paint it properly...
	The Kit also contains a huge bag of fasteners (which still don't cover the whole car) some dodgy carpet, bits of angle iron (for the handbrake we believe) and custom bits like radiators, steering column, wheel, windscreen....etc
	Hmmm, lots of steel panels of similar shapes and sizes means figuring out what is what can be difficult. As all the panels (excluding the bonnet) are flat and have to be shaped as you fit them it isn't always obvious what they do. All the panels are plasma cut and this doesn't give a great finished edge to the cuts, so some finishing is required. When you view the instruction video you'll realise that some finishing needs to be done to the panels before fitting anyway.
	Hmmm...I think these must be the....answers on a post card please (clue, they are something to do with the front suspension)