I believe it’s reasonably accurate to say that we’ve been making progress. It has been over a month since last post; the problem is that it’s tempting to just say “we’ll do one more thing, then I’ll post”. So it’s time to bring everything up to date on the current status. In no particular order, mind you.
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