I feel a bit like someone being mentored after rehab. Every day or two I get an email from Andre, along the lines of “you haven’t touched a drop, have you?“. Although instead they are more like “how’s the build progress“. And I must confess, I do find myself running out and doing something on the car, just to report back with some progress. Unfortunately progress on the car has resulted in neglect on the blog, so this may be a long one. I recommend just looking at the pictures.

The fuel tank has a very nice hole in it, to fit a fuel gauge. However, our’s is going to make use of the more technological “dowel dip stick” method, which doesn’t need that hole. So the hole was covered. Note the engraved “1” to help future lining up (because it wasn’t really machined to micron specifications). It will be sealed using some sort of petrol-proof sealing ring/paste.

I started feeling bad about the way the scuttle had been mounted. So I welded up the old bottom holes, and fitted riv-nuts to the top holes. So the scuttle is now mounted using riv-nuts. I think it’s a better solution, although sub-optimal to damage the chassis powder coating.

Then we took another shortcut, buying the windscreen from Wiekus. It’s beautifully done, far better than we could. Part of the package is the rubber seal along the bottom, which ensures a very neat fit with the scuttle. It is his own custom design, specifically with an angled groove for the base of the windscreen.

He also supplies a printed cutout sheet for the support arms, which I glued to a piece of 1.6mm alu to make temporary brackets to mount the windscreen.

Fitting the windscreen to the scuttle is fairly straightforward. First I wanted a straight line on the scuttle, so I clamped two pieces of wood to the chassis, rested the ruler on them, and drew a line on the masking-tape-coated scuttle. This was a useful reference to ensure the mounts were properly horizontal.

Then attach the rubber to the base of the windscreen and shift the whole thing around on the scuttle until there seems a reasonable fit and roughly even spacing on both sides.

Then comes the scary part – cutting the rubber. I tried a couple of knives; it needs to be sharp and have a thin, flat blade. The best ended up being a super-sharp serated Victorinox kitchen knife (don’t tell the missus).

I put a thin layer of oil on the blade, which prevented it from sticking. Because you want a nice smooth edge running down between the bracket and the scuttle, fading to nothing, you must extend the rubber a bit past the end of the windscreen. Simply cut in a straight line down. It might take a couple of practice goes to get it right, but Wiekus gives you a bit of extra length to make some mistakes first. Once you’re satisfied with your abilities you can cut the other end (no going back after that). I purposefully cut it slightly too long, to fill the gap with the bracket.

Although the fit is slightly imperfect, it should come right once the rubber is stuck down on the chassis.

The windscreen was on the critical path, because it needs to be in place to fabricate the roll cage, which is done at the same time as the exhaust, which is done before the wiring and the cooling brackets. Now the car can go in for its exhaust.

The final fuel lines have been put in, although the last couple of holes must still be drilled for the p-clips. This includes replacing one of the original lines, which clashed with the gearbox. The gearbox won. It always wins.

I put my new MIG welder to use, welding the engine mounts to the chassis plates. Fixing the engine position means you can move forward in several other areas.

Once the engine position is finalised, the prop shaft can be manufactured. Ours was done by SAJCO in Strijdom Park. Frankly, they were amazing. The only specification they needed was the length from the gearbox oil seal to the diff input flange. I took them our yoke, which they didn’t fit but was useful for spline sizing.  There are at least two input shaft sizes in the wild for the Ford Type 9/Type E box, so you need to get this right.

I also gave them an old Sierra prop shaft, which they took some parts from including the flange to connect to the diff, and some of the tubing.

The amazing part? I dropped the bits off at roughly 12h30. At 15h30 they phoned me to tell me it was ready. Very impressive.

Using a suggestion from Deon I made an adjustable alternator bracket.

Start with some accurate small pilot holes. In this case I wanted an 8mm groove, so the pilot holes were drilled 7mm apart:

Then drill a set of bigger holes – 7mm now:

As you can see, the holes start to run into each other:

After this, drill with the 8mm drill bit. Then file the points down to make a flat groove (it’s quite easy at this point):

Who needs a milling machine anyway.

It’s some progress – haven’t touched a drop (of not working on the car).

B

As previously shown, we have used the existing brackets on the Locost chassis to mount the radiator. However, the folded ends on these are not at the same angle as the radiator. It’s probably not such a big deal, but I found these rather pleasing rubber mounts from RS electronics (part number 237-1720). They’re not the cheapest, but they fit the bill rather well. Well, not really. New mount plates needed to be made, but that wasn’t hard using the old ones as templates. So the lower mounts of the radiator are now rather snazzy.

We’ve made the upper mounts out of thin steel bar. We’ll be welding these on sometime soon.

Because we had a reasonable idea of the radiator, we started looking into the radiator hoses. Some time ago D got us some 32 mm aluminium tubing. We chose this thickness because it’s the same as the radiator outlets. The Rocam water inlet and outlets are 27 mm, so reducers will be needed. Our plan is to use the aluminium tubing to cover the long distances, and then a collection of radiator bends will be used to fit it all together. It pays to shop around when it comes to hoses – the first autozone we went to wanted 3x as much a Midas round the corner. And Autozone is normally cheaper. We found two useful parts, one with roughly a 90 degree bend (RH7172), and the other with slightly wider (around 100 degrees, RS7307). We’re still looking for the 32-27 mm reducers, although there are several radiator hoses that will cut the mustard. Basically just go spend half an hour at the counter at Midas, looking through their radiator hose catalogue (it’s got a lot of useful detail, but the pictures can be misleading).

Andre posted the somewhat intimidating suggestion to remove the idler solenoid. His reasoning is solid though – you can save weight, and make your life easier should you have to remove the intake manifold. The deal is this: the Rocam plastic intake manifold has 5 bolts at the top, and 2 (Torx head) at the bottom. Once the engine is in place, you cannot reach those lower bolts. So best to remove them beforehand. However, this means the manifold has less support – so you need to make it lighter. The two easy things to remove are the idler solenoid and the AMP sensor.

Both will leave holes behind that need closing. I decided that the AMP sensor weighed very little, and did a pretty good job of sealing it’s own hole, so I left it in. I made an aluminium plate to cover the idler hole, as shown in the pictures below.

You can also remove the steel inserts in the lower bolt holes, which saves some more weight. You can also cut the lower mount points off (no going back after that though).

Before you can take the air manifold off, you have the get pretty committed regarding the wiring. Ford has done an excellent job of hiding the purpose of each of the wires – all the coloured wires join to a common point, with a black wire exiting. This leaves you with a mass of black wires. The only way to figure out what’s what is to open it up and trace them through. You’ll need to do this anyway if you want to remove the idler solenoid. And you’ll have much neater wiring if you shift it all around so that it terminates at the back of the engine.

It’s not hard, start by cutting off the retaining cable ties (if you do this intelligently you can probably just put another cable tie through the old hole later). You will also need to remove the big 16-way Rocam plug – you really won’t be needing all those connections. I cut and re-soldered the common point of the injectors, so that the wire pointed in the right direction – optional methinks.

The sensor on the top of the engine is the TDC sensor. Apparently this is not needed. The sensor that IS needed is the crank position sensor, which points at the flywheel. Rather useful is that the plug from the TDC sensor fits the crank position sensor, finally some Karma. Best of luck if you want to use both though.

It’s possible to put the wiring back together quite neatly, terminating in the right place. The plan is to use wire crimp connectors for the new plug.

We’ve lined the gearbox up with the diff, using the highly technical “two magnets and a piece of string method”. It’s too hard to explain here, but there are several books available and a few (expensive) training courses. Probably worth it though.

Once aligned we were able to measure the spacers needed for the gearbox. These, along with a piece of steel for the engine mounts, were kindly machined for us by Johan. The truth is that you really do need some fancy machines to build a Locost, but also that there are some really awesome people out there that are willing to help out. If you’re stuck in Siberia, but with a great desire to build a racing car, you’ll be needing a lathe.

We were also able to swap our “too small” prop-shaft yoke with Johan’s “too big” yoke. This was sent through the rust removal electrolysis method, and now it’s all shiny:

Onto further bodywork changes – we’ve fitted the scuttle. We’ve gone with four 6mm bolts, all the way through the chassis top bar. Basically we fitted the nosecone first, then put the bonnet in place, and finally squeezed the scuttle in the right spot. Then it’s the usual process of mark, measure, reattach, mark some more, drill one hole, reattach, mark some more, drill some more, take it off, drill, mark, reattach, measure, swear (because it inevitably doesn’t fit afterwards), drill bigger holes etc.

We also reassembled (take 3, I think) the suspension. This was because… WE GOT WHEELS!

It is just so cool to have our racing tyres on our fancy rims, all ready for a rolling chassis. If we had:

• Steering column welded
• Steering wheel
• Brake lines attached
• Brakes attached
• Seat in place
• Suspension bolts on
• Wheel nuts

we’d have a car we could push down the road

The specs of the wheels are:

Rims: 15″, 6.5″ wide, ET35

Tyres (Locost formula regulations): Dunlop Direzza 03G 195/55/R15 from ATS

I also got a “standby” water temperature sensor (TS906SA) from Midas. Costs around R70. The plan is to fit it as a backup sensor in the heater outlet (these have to be plugged anyway). Some machining will be needed.

That’s it for the present, moving forward…

B

So March came, and March went, and some building happened. It started with the steering column and the bush mounting it to the chassis. The hole that it has to go into is too small, and it’s in some fairly robust steel plate. It’s a fairly hefty job making that bigger with the proper tools and, well,we don’t have the proper tools. So we did what any good boer would, and made a plan (Ons het ‘n plan gemaak). That plan involved a couple of U-shaped pieces of aluminium, which slotted together to make a tight fit around the steering bush. These were then bolted to the original mount point, making a very solid mount for the steering bush. A picture is worth a thousand words (see above). The bolts, as shown in the picture, are arranged in an optimal pattern for strength and stability. The layout was determined using a genetic algorithm on a beowulf cluster with 16453 cores.

The steering linkage needs to be lengthened, so it’s chopped in half first. The steel round-bar is 15mm indiameter, making it perfect for 19mm tubing with a wall thickness of 2mm. This is pretty common stuff, and you’ll need about 500mm. I have 5.5m still available, so let me know if you need a piece.

Below you can see the basic idea of what needs to be done, using a piece of curtain rail to line things up. In case you were wondering, curtain rail is not recommended for your final steering link.

We also upgraded our steering rack mounts. Previously they were simple steel flat-bar brackets and poly-bushings. While this is perfectly adequate ina road car, ours is meant to be a racing car. So we got ourselves a set of the new Locost-supplied aluminium brackets.

These are fairly solid and tight-fitting brackets,and should improve the feel and rigidity of the steering immensely. We’ll also be looking to upgrade the steering column rubber jointing at some stage.

When we were fitting the engine, we chopped quite a lot off the bell-housing. To cover the holes and add a bit of the mechanical strength back, a plate was cut and drilled. This will be attached using 4mm HT bolts. The remaining holes will be filled with fibreglass.

We’ve made some progress on mounting the radiator. First the aluminium edges were reinforced with another strip of aluminium. Then we got our radiator fan; just a simple aftermarket fan from Midas. It fits quite snugly.

Our main concern is that once full of water, the radiator is going to be quite heavy. It is also going to be bumped around a lot, so you want it to be securely mounted.

The chassis already has two mount points welded in place, and it was possible to bend these to be in the right position for the radiator.

Four small rectangles of steelplate were fashioned, both to mount the fan to and to mount the radiator to the chassis. We still need to weld the upper mount brackets to the chassis to finish off the radiator.

Although the picture above may look like a piece of fine art, it is in fact a fuel-line reducer (thanks Ronnie!). Unfortunately instead of displaying it in aglass case, it’s going to be hidden under the chassis covered in oil and grime.

The fuel pump has been mounted, and now needs to have the piping finalised to complete the fuel line loop. As you can see in the photo above, the various parts were marked to make reassembly easier.

The picture above shows the fuel pump in place, as viewed from below the chassis. The low-pressure filter is included simply to protect the pump from any metal shavings or other rubbish that might exit the fuel tank. The high-pressure fuel filter will be mounted under the bonnet in the engine bay.

Finally we started to mount the bodywork. The nose-cone is mounted with two 6mm bolts on each side. These attach to the chassis using 6mm riv-nuts. The radiator is a tight squeeze inside the nose-cone, but it does fit. It’s amazing how much smaller the car seems once the nose-cone, bonnet and scuttle are in place.

That’s pretty much all the progress to date. Still a lot to do!

B

During the week D drilled most of the remaining holes in the chassis – not a small job, which gets worse as your drill bit gets blunter and blunter. One of the reasons we had not yet put the floor on was that it would restrict access for drilling these holes. With them done, we could now consider putting the floor on.

Before placing the floor, we finished the top holes for the side panels. This just involved fitting the side panels, measuring and marking the holes, and then drilling. We have decided to only fold the side panels over the top, which means the pop rivets will be visible. Although this detracts slightly from how pretty the car will be, it also saves 258g. Using a conservative model, this is worth 0.08s at Zwartkops. I just made that up.

To make life easier, we again turned the chassis upside-down. Silicone sealant is used as a glue, to minimise vibration noise and to seal the panels. The chassis was thoroughly cleaned prior to applying it. The laser film was removed from the floor panels (main panel, as well as the small front one). The panels were then carefully placed on the chassis and the previously-drilled were holes lined up. Mainly for a cool photo we placed all the pop rivets, and then began the big job of making the attachment permanent. This is hard work with normal, manual, pop-rivet tools. D had a Stanley riveter, which is designed specifically to nip off the tips of your fingers as the rivet is popped. Mine was a Fragram one, which was marginally better.

We had not drilled the holes for the bottom of the side panel yet (i.e. there were no holes along the outside edges of the floor). It was now time to temporarily fit the side panels, and drill these holes. We did these one at a time, since it was useful to have the other side of the chassis open for access.

The panel was fitted over the floor (the previous fold did have to be opened slightly to make this easier). Several pop-rivets were inserted along the top edge (which was underneath) to ensure we had got the alignment right. G-clamps held it in place. Then we used ratched straps to keep pull the bottom in, tight against the chassis.
The positions were measured, and then holes were drilled through both the folded edge of the panel and the floor, into the chassis. We will leave these panels off as long as possible, to ensure good access to the chassis while we sort everything else out. At this point we declared that the long saga of the side panels is over. Well, sufficiently for now.

The chassis then got flipped back over, to finalise the fuel lines and brake lines. We placed the gearbox to roughly see whether it would clash with any of the lines, and unfortunately it became clear that there would be a problem with the top fuel line. We had to remove two of the p-clips and then bend the line again. In the process we almost pinched it (too tight a fold). Fortunately we managed to un-pinch it, and the line has not cracked. A couple of bends later and it’s looking good – possibly even more secure than the last time. Of course, research has shown that s-bends in your fuel line assist with cornering and straight-line stability.

Original fuel line layout	Modified layout

The brake-line connections were then tightened, and the final p-clips attached. The only ones still to do are near the cylinders – we’ll hold off on those until the pedal box is correctly placed.

We also received our steering rack. We got it from Locost SA, although it’s been on order for several weeks. At one stage I tried to get a friend to bring one in from England. Unfortunately that plan was mucked about a bit by a volcano in Iceland, and some over-zealous health & safety officers. Looking at the size of it though (the rack, not the volcano), it might have strained the friendship a bit.

Placing the steering rack highlighted that the right front brake line may be in the way. Oh well, more rivets to be drilled out and moved.

Both front uprights have had their wheel-bearings fitted, although lessons were learnt while doing the first one. Needless to say the fit was extremely tight on this one, and the bearings had to be drifted on the whole way. The “Front Uprights” page has been updated, with lots of photos, to show how it’s done. It is a very messy job, but not too difficult.

In preparation for the assembly of the suspension, the drive-shafts have been assembled. These are those bits filled with bright-blue grease. They just needed a last bit of grease squeezed in, and then to be assembled. The gators (boots) have been held on with double cable-ties. Hopefully that is secure enough, and by doubling up there should be very little space for grease to get through.

A

last job that I’ve been avoiding was cleaning and taking pictures of the diff magnetic filler plug. This has been soaking in paraffin for months. Finally I got round to doing it – there were quite a lot of metal filings attached. These were rinsed several times in paraffin, and then I took some pictures. I wasn’t able to attract all the filings from the plug onto another magnet, so I took a picture of what remained. Maybe this will be useful information at some stage.

Things start getting interesting now…
B

This weekend we made the first proper, can’t turn back moves. First we drilled holes in the chassis, lots and lots of holes. Then we put in pop-rivets; ok, not so many pop rivets. Bearing in mind this thing cost more than a fancy digital camera, it was quite a first step (when last did you drill a hole in your camera?).

However, before we drilled any holes we decided to finish the side panels. This story is getting old, and it just needed to be finished.

We managed to get both sides finished, including top and bottom folds. They are not likely to win any awards for panel-beating excellence, but they will do the job. I would recommend that anyone thinking of doing the side panels themselves – at least get the top fold done by the machine shop. You can get it folded along the whole length, and then just chop it as you need to.

Once the side panels were finished, we moved on to the brake lines. We had already more or less finalised the shape of the brake line tubing, but they were only held in place with cable-ties. Also the section exiting the tunnel (above the diff) needed improvement. So a bit more bending was done there, to make sure the lines cleared the diff mount point and didn’t have to be forced into the T-piece. Then the first p-clip was folded over the tubing, the position marked with a center-punch, and the hole was drilled. It is quite satisfying to fix it in place with a pop-rivet – until you realise you’ve mistakenly used an 8mm p-clip for the 5mm brake-line…

Because we still have to tighten up all the bolts, and possibly put in mount-points for the T-pieces, we have not put in all the brake-line p-clips. However, all the ones in the transmission tunnel have been fitted.
We then got to work on the fuel lines. To maintain an even flow to the fuel injectors, most cars have two fuel lines – a feed and a return. Ours is no different, so we had to find space for two lines. We decided it would be better to fit one at the top of the tunnel, and the other at the bottom. You really want it out the way as far as possible, so lots of bends were put in it to tuck it behind the support struts. The top fuel line is possibly a bit far over, but hopefully it clears the gearlever and prop-shaft.
Bending fuel line is not easy – although it is similar to brake-line, it is thicker. Thumbs and knees were very sore by the time we were happy with these lines.

We saved the easy part till last – the wiring loom. All this consists of is 7-core trailer wire, which has been covered with flexible split sheathing. We are taking a bit of a risk – if the wiring fails for whatever reason, it will have to be completely removed and refitted. Time will tell if this is a bad decision.
The wiring loom was run along the bottom of the tunnel, on the driver’s side (i.e. the opposite side to the fuel lines). Although the separation won’t do much if there is a fuel and electricity leak, it’s better than wrapping them up together. To attach the loom to the chassis, the 8mm p-clips of recent fuel-line fame were used. With their rubber cover removed they fitted perfectly over the 10mm loom.

During the week D had already drilled almost all the holes in the rest of the panels, so at least that job was done. However, the floor still needed to be drilled. We flipped the chassis over to do this, which is infinitely better than trying to drill the hundreds of holes with your hands above your head. It was also an ideally parallelised task, using two drills; this sped the process up considerably. While the chassis was downside up, we also drilled the holes for the underside panel at the front of the car.
Once the floor was full of holes we flipped the chassis over again and drilled the driver-side transmission tunnel panels. Then we’d both had enough, and called it quits.

B

It would seem we were a bit optimistic regarding the side panels – the hope was that they would be completed by last week Tuesday. Needless to say it didn’t happen, although I really think we are almost there. The driver’s side panel has been completely cut out, and the top fold is done. Just the bottom folding is needed. The passenger side has been about half cut out, and the front fold is done.

A new trick we’ve been trying is to anneal the panel before folding. This involves heating the panel with a blow torch, and then allowing it to cool slowly. The temperature is indicated with soap – in our case good ol’ Sunlight liquid. When it turns black, it’s at the right temperature. This makes the folding much easier and more distinct, but tooling marks (i.e. when you bash it with a hammer) show up more easily.
Why is it that we tend to realise that we’ve made a mistake an instant after it’s been made? A split second after sending that sms/email bi!tching about the boss, you realise you sent it TO the boss… It’s the same with cutting anything – 3 seconds after you make your final committing cut, you realise you’ve got it wrong. In our case, we cut the left panel exactly the same as the right – meaning the scratched non-laser film side would have to face out. Fortunately there was enough length to fix the mistake – phew! But it did slow us down a bit.

A comment that must be made – do not underestimate how long it will take you to do the body panels. Every piece must be carefully measured, cut, adjusted, cut some more, cleaned, sanded, water-papered, placed, marked, measured, calculated, marked, punched, drilled, drilled, cleaned, drilled, riveted. And if you need to put in a fold, you can add soaping, heating, clamping, hammering and cleaning to the list. There are anything from about 10 to 13 panels (depending on how you do it) – that is a lot of work. Buying the pre-cut, pre-folded panels is definitely worth considering if time is a factor in your build.

We have also largely shaped and bent the brake lines. To form curves (that don’t pinch the Bundy tubing) we cut a 50mm circular disk from a piece of chip-board. This was bolted to another piece of scrap board, and served as a shape against which the tube could be folded. A spare piece of tube was used to “calibrate” the folding tool.

Basically a couple of different folds were made, and the actual tube length “consumed” in the loop was measured. A couple of lines were then marked on the board to indicate where folds would need to be made to form a loop that consumed a given amount of tube length. This made it much easier to plan how to fold the tubing to finish with the end connector in the right place.

Below is a picture of our Locost SA fuel tank. Although we were very tempted to try to get one made (using the off-cuts from our paneling), we decided that it just wasn’t worth the effort. One reason is that apparently aluminium welding is not tolerant of gaps (unlike steel welding, in which it’s fairly easy to fill a gap). This meant that if our cutting was imperfect (highly likely) then it may not have been possible to weld the tank.

You may have noticed that the pictures on the website behave a little differently now. I really didn’t like the way that clicking on any of the picture jumped you straight into Flickr. This is a requirement of the Flickr terms of service. I have now begun the process of migrating to PicasaWeb (a google-based picture hosting site). It is not a small job, but I think it will be worth it. As a result I’ve been able to install the “Lightbox” plugin, which is what controls the pictures in the new funky way. Please let me know what you think.

It’s been several weeks since the last post – and I think it’s fair to say that the lack of progress on the blog is as a result of fairly heavy work on the build. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

One of the things keeping us busy over the last week or so has been to sort out and finalise the parts that go through the transmission tunnel. Once all the panels are in place, access will be a lot more restricted. The parts are fuel lines, brake lines and wiring loom.

Of course, you can’t just get what you need, you have to start at the end and work your way backwards. So we’ve now got both the front and rear calipers, which are needed to get the sizing of the brake inlet. The size of the Wilwood brake cylinder outlet was a bit trickier, since there is a mysterious brass fitting attached. Two emails to Wilwood solved it, and the information is below. With all the sizes known we could order the brake lines; these have been delivered. We had plenty of much-appreciated help in this regard – the Locost community is awesome!

The sizing procedure involved:

• Initial length estimates of the bundy tubing- with a measuring tape
• Final length measurement – done using normal fencing wire and cable-ties
• Sizing of the inlet to the front calipers (it’s M10x1)
• Sizing of the inlet to the rear calipers (also M10x1)
• Sizing of the outlet of the brake cylinders (3/8-24, but it comes with a 3/8-24 inverted flare to 3/8-24 fitting)

  

The rear calipers are mounted to the upright using M10x1.25 bolts, whereas the front Bantam calipers are normal M10 bolts (I believe the thread is M10x1.5).

To start your wiring loom, you simply have to mount some 7-core trailer wire through the transmission tunnel. Autozone had the cheapest wire, R11/m (compared to Midas, at R35/m). Then some 10mm plastic split cable sleeving has been acquired (about R3/m) which will add another layer of protection to our wiring. You could go bigger on this, but we’re going to see if it’s possible to keep it slim.

A very informative forum discussion was quite conveniently started, on how to approach the wiring (link). Although much of that will be for later stages, at least it gives some guidance on where to start.

We’ve bought our fuel lines from Locost SA. These still need lots of bending before they can be fitted.

Our recently-acquired donor parts have been cleaned (handbrake, cable, seat runners), and the steering column was painted. I’ve started chopping the unnecessary brackets off the seat-runners, although this is quite a violent job. Lots of sparks spraying around the garage!

We’ve been hard at work sourcing the brake disks for the rear, and ultimately have decided to go the easy route – Locost SA.

On the car itself we’re almost finished the panels. This task should not be underestimated – you can spend 4 hours and still make what feels like little progress. The old adage applies – measure twice, cut once. The jigsaw has been superb, cutting at pace and quite neatly. A small amount of filing takes off the rough edge, and then you can get as pedantic as you like with water-paper to make it smooth.

What slows the process down is that the welds at all of the chassis joints sit proud of the surface, and thus lots of cutaways and adaptions have to be made to ensure the panels fit flat against the chassis structure. Another lesson learnt the hard way is not to assume that the chassis is exactly mirrored. It’s impossible to weld a perfectly symmetrical chassis, so each side had to be measured independently.

Something else we found was that even though it should fit in a certain place, it may not be possible to place your panel there. We made beautifully-size back panels, only to find that the chassis structure gets in the way while trying to place it. We had to cut one of the  edges off to make it fit. A similar problem was found with the front transmission tunnel panel on the driver’s side.

Thus far the only folding we have done is for the top of the transmission tunnel. To fold the aluminium, we clamped it between two aluminium square bars, and then slowly tapped over the folded edge with a rubber mallet. The trick is to use fairly gentle strokes, and work your way along the edge slowly and repeatedly. The rubber mallet didn’t even damage the laser film on the aluminium.

The next big job is the two side panels. This will involve some large folds, as well as some complicated cutting – we’ve been psyching ourselves up for it. Hopefully we’ll finish them on Tuesday. For purely technical reasons (not because it’s MUCH easier) we’ve decided to try a simple cutout rather than individual holes for each part of the wishbone. It’s likely to improve airflow through the engine bay, and hopefully won’t even be noticeable behind the wheel and front fender. Of course we’re open to counter-suggestions.

Winter is on it’s way, which means cold hands and early evenings. At least we’ve got our fire to keep us warm.

B

Last week started with fetching our freshly-cut aluminium panels. The problem of how to fit several square meters of aluminium sheeting was solved by the folks very generously letting me borrow their Syncro (Kombi). What a cool car – big and homely, but so manoeuvrable. Oh, and we met the chap behind the annoyed emails. He’s a good guy, but he does need a holiday.

Once the panels were safely back at the build, we decided to double-check the cuts. We were told that the actual cut would consume just 0.5mm of metal, so we did the layout quite precisely. We found that while it may be true that the actual metal loss is just 0.5mm, some of the cuts were over 10mm off. Some weren’t even straight. Fortunately it doesn’t look like any of the bits are unsalvageable, but it was a lesson.

Front calipers arrived, very cool. We had a lot of help with these, in particular from A.T.E. – great people. We also got the front disks (vented) and have ordered the rear disks and calipers.

The exceedingly messy job of packing the Lobro’s with CV grease has also been done. While it is probably less messy than the initial clean was, it’s still messier than a two-year old at a syrup festival. And with the grease being bright blue and staining everything, it’s even less tidy. Required items include a syringe and rubber gloves (read out of context, that sentence may get me into trouble).

We’ve now started cutting the panels to fit the chassis. While there are clearly a number of ways to do this, an absolutely awesome solution is to use a jigsaw with an HSS aluminium blade (Bosch). It neatly zips through the panels, is easy to control, and fast enough to get the job done. It also happily cuts off the thinnest strips (if the sizing is a little bit out). It isn’t quiet, so not good for late nights if you don’t want neighbours who hate you.

We started out using clamp-on guides to keep the lines straight, but it’s easy enough to get it right freehand. Hopefully the cutting will be complete by the end of the week.

It really feels like we’re building a car now.

B

We’re at the stage where things have to get really hands on before we can make progress. The two major things we need to do are arrange aluminium paneling, and fit the brake lines. Our intention is to do this “ourselves”, without buying the pre-made kit. While this should save us some money, it’s a slow process of finding out all the bits needed, what they are called and where they all go. You can’t phone up a hydraulic shop and say “I want a funny copper-coloured thingy that is part of the braking system”. They get rude. Yes, I found that out myself.

What we have done is bought some more bolts (bolt list will be created) and some rivets. We’ve also got our front wheel bearings. Much advice was given on the forum, with the conclusion that it’s better to spend more to spend less. They are Timken kits, and come quite well recommended. The left and right kits are different (142 vs 168), but the only real difference is that the hub nut for the reverse thread side is a different colour.

The kits include bearings and outer races, hub nut, oil seal and even a packet of grease.

As for the rivets, the chief concern has been the angle for countersinking.

I have read some posts that indicate that the angle is probably 110°, however I thought I’d check. So I took a macro photo with my close-up lens, strongly back-lit to cast a silhouette. Then I upped the contrast and saturation to emphasise the rivet, and measured the angle on the PC. There are probably better ways to enhance the image, but I thought the result looked cool. As can be seen from the picture, the best fit is 120°.

The amusing thing is that none of the hardware stores I called knew about this. The one that the rivets came from tried to sell me a 90° countersink bit, for R180. Nobody else could offer a suggestion on how to perform the countersinking. A comment from a colleague and a bit of googling provided the answer. General purpose metal drill-bits are usually sharpened to 118° – which is close enough. So some form of depth protection will be created (possibly a tube of the right length serving as a guard) and a normal 6mm bit.

Now to order the aluminium and figure out all the right bits for the brake system.

B

In my defense, I’ve been out of the country for two weeks. I was very fortunate to be able to spend a few days of my trip fly-fishing in Canada – what a wonderful experience. And I caught fish – three of them. One was over 24″, which is apparently quite good. I learnt a lot, and my fishing guide didn’t drown me (although at times I think he was tempted). The point of this slightly off-blog topic is that we have not been able to do anything significant on our racing car as a result.

The bright orange colour of the bodywork is less to do with taste, and more to do with finances. They were going cheap, and they can be repainted… But that decision is a LONG way off, so maybe they’ll stay orange.

The only other slight bit of progress is getting my hands on a copy of “the book”. It really is a useful document for figuring out how it all fits together (although we don’t exactly intend following the path of pure locost).

Onward and onward.

B