Getting to the matter at hand
If the factory thinks that the Rivette mod is unsafe, as Asbojohn says...that's pretty important information...though it's hard to know if that's sour grapes on MMC's part, or true fact, as the Rivette letter voiced a lot of frustration very forcefully.
This thread has been a bit amusing, in that I can imagine TM as a once placid community of trad owners respectfully discussing their vehicles, then along come these Visigoth M3W owners who barge in and start breaking up the furniture!
I really am sympathetic!
For what it's worth, Caterham owners in the U.S. seem to have a lot, if not more, problems with their cars as we M3W owners. The price of a new Caterham in the U.S. is pretty comparable to a M3W, but they know they are buying a kit car that is assembled in the U.S. by dealers (or owners!) of quite variable skill, so as a group they seem pretty tolerant, probably because as a group they tend to be mechanically inclined and enjoy tweaking their cars.
The thing I like about this possible bump steer fix thread is that it's a homegrown, grassroots solution to a known problem that injects a dose of do-it-yourself into the M3W community that's been lacking here in the 3W section of TM, it seems like the trad section had scores of tech discussions about mods and fixes. This is the reason I always enjoy Blake's posts, as he's obviously someone who really enjoys improving his car, and goes out of his way to share his experience with the community. We need more of this, not less.
With all due respect, I can only read so many posts asking "what color should I choose" or read about somebody enjoying his car during a drive, before I get bored....and to be honest, there's a lot of that type of discussion in the M3W section of TM.
I've read a lot of griping by many, many owners about bump steer, but when we finally get a thread that had the potential to start a vigorous debate about the merits of a potential solution, the whole thing gets lost in the noise because the OP was a bit indelicate in phrasing his post. We should be encouraging people like Rivette to post the details of his fix, and then we can all weigh in as to whether it is crap, or whether it's something to consider. We can do it respectfully or forcefully, and if the mods need to crack a few heads from time to time to keep us all in line, that's their job, but lets have some fun talking about and fixing our cars, and let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Unfortunately on this particular subject, the ship has sailed, and I suspect we'll never hear from Mr. Rivette again, and so instead of having the benefit of a technical discussion from someone who may have some technical knowledge and experience with improving our cars, we'll resort to PM's and emails and never have the opportunity to share with the group...
I'd happily tolerate some indelicacy here at TM if it meant that I'd have the opportunity to really learn something about my car, but I suspect I'm being a bit American (and Texan) in this regard, and that many here feel quite differently
Just my 2 cents...
