Sy Kaback (Grand Prix Imported Cars/Weathermatic Corporation) E. Rutherford, New Jersey
Lotus build card indicates:
Model & Chassis No. 7/B1135
Engine Type & No. 8G10RS/15271
G/Box Type & No.                 
Carbs. Type & No.                 
Body Red
Agent Kabach [sic]
Customer                 
Axle                 

I met Sy personally just prior to his passing away. A very interesting guy, unfortunately no specific recollection of my car, and the dealership records were lost in the collapse of the building they were housed in. However, I wrote a sort of a biography about him. Read the whole story here

Ray Walle Z & W Mazda, Princeton, New Jersey - 1st known owner 1962(?) thru ?
Received car without engine(?), installed Spitfire 1147cc (997cc)
Autocrossed successfully on the East Coast

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2009
Learning the proper spelling of Ray Walle's name was a great benefit to my research -- Thank you!
Ray Walle lost his life in a car accident in 1975, but I have found some references to him. I am persuing the source of the information I found on a downhill skiing online forum in which the members were comparing their skis to sports cars:

"In the mid 60's there was a guy here in NJ, Ray Wally [sic]. He brought over those lil' British TVR's and stuffed a 289 Ford under the hood. He smoked the Ferraris and Vettes at Lime Rock (short and tight) .... just don't run on a course where the big dogs could stretch their legs.

Lotus Super 7 ..... po' boys race lotus ....Griffith TVR (289 Ford Cobra motor) ............ wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee Ray Wally [sic] sucked my headlights out in one of these."

John Heseltine Z & W Employee ? - 1973
Car appeared for sale at Z and W Mazda, was yellow with black nosecone

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2009
I have received word that John Heseltine, UK-based photographer (heseltine.co.uk) was certainly an owner of Lotus Seven 7/B1135. I am currently corresponding with Mr Heseltine.

Ed Moses 1973 - 1984
Purchased from Z and W for $1,900.00
1147cc Spitfire engine destroyed, installed various others, ending with Twincam
Sold, upon receipt of 3 year assignment to UK working at Ford, for about $4,000.00

In 2005, I made contact with, then met Ed personally who filled in what he knew of the car's history prior to and during his ownership, including the earliest photographs of the car below.

New Jersey Autocross attended by Ed Moses 1973.
Top photos car retains its black nose and presumably yellow body/wings.

Ed and his grinning Granny.
Solid color suggests car may now be all orange.
(Paint chips and edges corroborate the multiple color combinations reported)

Note absence of exhaust on usual side of car.

October, 1978 Letter (to Ed Moses from DSK Cars) that was included in packet provided by a later owner. Note reference made to the Spitfire engine.

Ted Byers 1984 - 1996
Purchased car with tired Twincam
Contacted Lotus Seven Register(?) and learned it should have 948 BMC motor
Sold Twincam to fund building a 948
Offered for sale in Hemmings, sold to a "buyer of questionable interest, probably a speculator"
Car apparently sells at auction

I looked for Ted at the address on the title. He had moved. I stopped at a performance auto parts store and asked if they knew of him... they did, but protected his privacy, taking my phone number. Ted did phone me, filled in history of his ownership, subsequently sent a packet of papers relating to the car (see of my discussion with Ted below)

photos/documents received from Lotus Seven Register, as sent to the register by Ted Byers (note personalized license plate) and comprehensive description of Ted Byers work on the car.

AutoMetrics (body shop), Eric Schick/AutoEurope (exotic car dealer), Doug Davis 1996 - 2000
Autometrics appears to have bought the car at auction in about 1996, did not re-title
AutoEurope apparently got the car from AutoMetrics, did not re-title
Doug Davis 'bought' the car from AutoEurope, did not re-title in his name
Doug Davis then 'trades' the Seven

I met an owner of AutoEurope, Eric Shick, who, although a Lotus fan and dealer himself, did not seem interested in the history of the car at all. Also met Doug Davis, a very colorful character who provided a pile of spares for the 948 engine and the original rear fenders of the car.

John Donohoe August 2000 - present
Bought from Doug Davis, through AutoEurope, most recent name on title: Ted Byers.

Photos of the car as it sat in the showroom at Auto Europe. Emailed to me by Scott Appleford in summer of 2000. Note wide wheels and rear wings, red leather steering wheel, Simpson 5 point race harnesses, alloy rocker cover, and Optima battery with enough power to start a 427 Cobra!

At home in my yard the day after we bought it in August of 2000.

and the following summer of 2001, back to orignal details, prior to header and original silencer

2005 Contact with previous owner Ed Moses

Ed Moses reports that the first known owner of 7/B1135 was Ray Wally who obtained the car possibly without an engine. Walley was the 'W' of the 'Z and W Mazda' dealership in Princeton, New Jersey. He installed an 1147 Triumph Spitfire engine on an Austin Healey Sprite gearbox. Wally drove it to New Jersey autocross championships in the 1960s. Ray sold the car to an employee of Z & W named John Heseltine, and while attending Princeton University in 1973, Ed Moses spotted the car sitting in the forecourt of Z & W with a for sale sign. Ed picks up the story:

"I bought the car for $1900 with a scruffy but usable trailer, the odo indicated something like 6,500 miles. But the miles were tough. It was yellow with a black nose when I bought it, still had the Spitfire motor, narrow fenders and 145-R13 tires. I kept a log for a while, and fixed one thing a day for about three months. When the speedo broke, I threw away the log and just continued to fix it.
 
I painted the car orange and black in 1974 and it was my only car for one year. However after my parents saw what I looked like after the 900 mile drive [from Princeton] to their home in Alabama, they allowed me to buy a tow car. So here I am running around in the mid 70's with a classic 1966 Dodge Charger towing the 62 Seven. I appreciate it now more than then."

The three day trip to his parents house left Ed with a horrible sunburn where his short pants left the tops of his legs exposed. Though apparently not too concerned about the sun, Ed actually did most always wear a helmet when driving the car, to relieve the wind buffetting if not to provide some protection in case of the unthinkable accident.
 
Ed upgraded the stock 1147 with a mild cam (lumpy 1000 RPM idle and 8000 RPM redline) with high flow silencer -- the resonator off an E-Type Jaguar. "You could drop a quarter down the header and it would go all the way out the exhaust." He recalls duelling with a Pantera on New Jersey's back roads. The Pantera hurtled through the tight curves, but Ed stuck right on his tail. When the road straightened for a stretch on a bridge over the river, the Pantera took off like a rocket, leaving the Seven in its dust. Across the bridge however, was a sharp pair of curves, posted at 25 mph. Ed 'got a little sideways' going through them, but once he did, there was the Pantera -- reeled in once again.
 
"I had some success autocrossing in NJ and Alabama with the capability of the car far outweighing the driver skill. However, because I drove it on the street, I knew how it would perform better than the guys with specials who only drove them at competitions. When I came to Michigan, I tried to autocross here, but the Michigan rules put all Sevens in the class with Corvettes, even though I didn't have a big motor."

In New Jersey, the Seven was classed by displacement without regard to manufacturer.

Ed was making do with the Spitfire motor, but one day had a minor electrical problem - the cooling fan failed. This led to an overheating of the engine, and the post mortem revealed that the circlip holding the wrist pin in number 3 cylinder let go, allowing the pin to run up against the cylinder wall, ovalling it in short order. As a machinist friend of Ed's was tearing it down, he was surpised by the minimal diameter of the cylinders. After taking proper measurements, they determined that the motor was in fact more of a 997 than the 1147cc Ed had always assumed he had!

Coincidentally, an acquaintance of Ed's had recently borrowed a friend's brand new Mazda with R1 rotary engine, and proceeded to push the car beyond his skill, rolling it car in the process. Ed had recently read the June, 1974 article in Road and Track about installing the Mazda Rotary engine in a Seven (yes, the article about Jim Gallagher), and so snapped up the almost new drivetrain of the rolled Mazda.

Ed went back to Ray at Z & W to learn what he could about the rotary, and Ray was able to supply him with a trick Weber carb and intake manifold. Ed got as far as mounting the rotary, a quick and easy fit. It was only when he attempted to reinstall the steering column that Ed was driven back to review the article on Gallagher's car - Gallagher's was left-hand drive! On his earlier right-hand drive car, Ed's steering column was impossible to install as the intake manifold for the rotary lay directly in its path.

Eventually, when a friend of Ed's turned up with a totalled Lotus Cortina, the Seven got upgraded to a 1600 Twincam engine and transmission. Serious engineer that he is, Ed enjoys pointing out that the Lotus 'twin cam' was in fact a 'three cam': The original Ford block was designed as a traditional pushrod motor, with the distributor driven off the cam running in the usual place - the block. Of course when the twin cam head was developed, the distributor still required driving, hence the original cam shaft (or rather a plain shaft with distributor drive gear, or 'jack-shaft'). Nonetheless, with the twin (or three) cam exhaust requiring new plumbing, Ed was happy to finally re-route the exhaust out from under his own elbow. He didn't route the exhaust out the left side of the engine bay but rather down and along the underside of the car. Though the installation itself was successful, Ed reports "I never was able to get the balance back. Too young and stupid."
 
In about 1980 the car was painted red.

"I sold it in 1983 or 4 on my way to England for a three year job at Ford. For not much money actually compared to what they go for now. (I think it was around $4000) My wife's comment was that it was a great car and she had fond memories, but the Miata is as roughing it as she thought we could stand."

The buyer was Ted Byers, with whom I made contact, after some effort, in 2002.

2002 Contact with previous owner Ted Byers

The last proper owner's address in Southgate, Michigan was on the title of the car, which I received when I bought the car. I went for a visit but the resident of the house (same house/garage as in the photos provided by John Watson who received them from Ted many years ago) had recently moved in and knew nothing of Ted Byers. Driving away, on a whim I stopped in an auto parts store called The Performance Super Store. The gentleman behind the counter looked at me strangely when I asked of there was an off chance that he knew a guy named Ted Byers, explaining that I now owned Ted's old Lotus Seven. While I told him this, he pecked at his computer keyboard, dialled the phone, and said "Hello, Ted? Call me when you get in." So I said to him "Oh, you know him then!" He said that he did and that he would give my phone number to Ted who would contact me if he wanted to...

March 23, 2002 Ted Byers calls and the story begins:

Ted bought the car from Ed Moses, who drove it as his every day transport while attending Michigan State University in the early 1970s. Ed drove around town, supposedly always wearing a crash helmet. He also drove the Seven to visit his family in New Jersey at least once.

When Ted took ownership of B1135, it had a 108hp Holbay twincam engine in it with a crossflow head and dual Stromberg carburettors. The bonnet had been "hacked away" to clear the Strombergs, and the dash panel had been cut into to fit a radio and a large Sun tachometer. A "horrible" roll hoop had been fitted, made from 3/4 inch schedule 40 pipe. The entire interior had been painted black, apparently with a brush. Tape "racing stripes" ran along the bottom edge of the body, when Ted pulled them off, the paint came off too, which he since retouched. The nose and wings were distinctly orange - not "Lotus red" but a much more orange shade. Evidence of this color remains in places on the car. Ted had the fiberglas parts re-painted black.

Not long after obtaining the Seven in 1984, Ted contacted John Watson, who maintains the Lotus Seven Register, and was toldthat the car was originally built with a 948cc Sprite motor - a Seven America. Ted told me "two identical cars will be sitting side by side and one will say 'restore me' while the other says 'modify me.' " Luckily for me, B1135 told Ted "restore me." From that point, Ted's philosophy was the same that mine has been about the car: anything that is changed should only be done to bring it closer to its original specification.

Ted sold the Holbay to fund the proper rebuild of a 948cc Sprite motor. The diagonal engine bay member had been bent to clear the Holbay Crossflow set-up, so when Ted removed that engine, he also removed and replaced that frame tube, using .60 wall 1022 steel tube in its place. He also collected three smoothcase transmissions from a friend in Ohio, none of which was functional. From the three, he was able to assemble two complete, functional gearboxes, one for himself and the second for his friend who supplied them in the first place! The gearbox retains its standard non-synchro first gear. Ted prepared the Sprite motor by having it bored .030 over - effectively increasing displacement to 997cc, installing bronze valve guides, new valves and hardened valve seats. He believes that the head was ported and polished at that time. He was also able to track down a pair of "proper "1 1/8 HS1 SU carbs which he rebuilt and installed.

As the car had shown no evidence of having a cooling fan, Ted's concern for some sort of assurance of cooling led him to install an overflow bottle so that expanded coolant would be recovered as the engine cooled. The differential and axle met with Ted's approval, but he did replace the seals at the outer axle ends. Watson Engineering (who prepares prototype exhausts for Ford and Aston Martin) was retained to produce the all stainless exhaust system from the standard Sprite manifold on out. The wiring was also in a state of disintegration, so Ted set about rewiring the car, using all Lucas components, right down to the bullet connectors.

In preparation for the purchase of a new home, Ted sold several cars of his collection, Including the Seven. The car was offered for sale in Hemmings Motor News and eventually sold to a buyer of questionable interest in Sevens.

I believe the car to have been bought at auction by an organization called AutoMetrics and it is not clear whether the individual who bought the car from Ted put it up for auction, or if it went directly from Ted's ownership to auction. Regardless, the car ended up with Eric Shick, who also happened to be the owner of Auto Europe, an exotic car dealer in Birmingham, Michigan. Eric had a friend, Doug Davis - an off-road motorsports event promoter, who was interested in the car, and who "sort of" bought it, though the car was never titled in his name either, which turns out to be a goo dthing otherwise I would not have had Ted Byers' name to begin with.

After "updating" the car with 6-inch Lotus-style steel wheels, low profile BR Goodrich Comp T/A tires (taller rears, lower profile fronts) aluminum rocker cover, 12 inch red leather steering wheel, bright red Simpson 5 point racing harnesses, etc., Doug tired of the car, "trading it in" on a Caterham Seven, which left the little Lotus sitting back at AutoEurope amongst the latest Porsches, Panoz, Lotus and Caterhams.