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

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

And now it’s late and I want to go to bed. But stuff HAS happened – we have bought some bodywork. How very exciting – this represents the first stage of commitment, and we’ve bought basically the last things we need: bonnet, nosecone and scuttle (that’s a dash section). It’s bright orange, but we may respray it later.

Who is we? Well, it started as an idea between D and B. I’m B. “Ever been to a track day?” asks B. “No”, says D, “but I’m keen”. Several track days later (including a severely scored MX5 rim from the kitty-litter), and “Let’s start a racing team” says D. “Great” says B. “Let’s buy a formula Vee car” says D. “Great” says B. But it looks like a very expensive way to start racing. “What about locost?” says B. “Great”, says D. You get the picture? First we were going to buy a pre-built machine, but we’ve taken a team decision to build our own. Lots of reason are behind this, I’ll elaborate in another post. The point is, we have now got bodywork. Maybe I’ll take a photo.

Oh, another design decision is a big red “Start” button in the middle of the dash. Check us on this later!

Till next time,
B