Phakisa. Apparently the name means hurry up, or overtake, or something. To the Locost crowd it seems to mean fixing race cars, talking rubbish, avoiding ants and having a jol. And braaing. Nou.

It’s near Welkom, which is a boring drive from Joburg. Properly boring, and I’m a Vrystater by birth. Viva Cheetahs.

Open practice was on friday, and so Andre was keen for the club to meet up for breakfast at 5am at a Wimpy somewhere. I told him to sod off, I’m on leave, and 5am is does not exist when you’re on leave. Oh, and I don’t have a racing car so I don’t need to get to open practice.

When I finally got there (around 11am, a civilised hour) Juan had already broken his front fenders and starter motor. Johan had changed the colour of his car (never be seen in the same dress twice) and Michael needed to undo some lightness that he had added (i.e. put duct tape over some holes).

There’s something very cool about a pit bay full of smelly cars, noisy engines and screaming rubber.

Hermann and I were pit crew, which means that Hermann helped with the technical stuff, and I adjusted mirrors and took photos. Clearly these guys had read this blog and didn’t trust me with even a screwdriver. Eventually Michael let me check his bonnet catches. He has real issues with loose bonnet catches – my guess is that as a kid he was mercilessly teased for an open fly and that’s manifesting as psychotic adult insecurities. Or he doesn’t want to die in a fireball as his bonnet blows up into his windscreen. But I think it’s the fly thing.

Gerdus was driving number 48, so it was very cool to see the yellow 007 hurtling round the track again.

Open practice ended on a scorcher of a day, so it was time to gaan braai. Or sit in a circle peering into laptops analysing lap times. Riveting if you’ve actually done a lap, less so if your primary achievement was being promoted to bonnet-catch-tester. I drank some beer.

Finally we could start the braai. Wood was burned, Juan’s family brought salad and rolls (amazing people), rubbish was talked, the wood burned.

Then we ran out of wood, before we ran out of meat. Problem. But being the Vrystater that I am, I had more wood. So we made more fire and flame-grilled our meat. Andre felt that good luck would shine his way if he made a burnt offering. He took a beautiful piece of steak and destroyed it on the fire. Dead. Like a charcoal briquette. He’s afrikaans, surely he knows how to cook meat properly? Even my Vrystater credentials couldn’t convince him that what he was doing was an offence to the memory of the cow that unwillingly provided the meat. I still don’t know how he actually swallowed that piece of cremation. Win for the carcinogens then.

With an early start for the race day a fairly early night was called. Some earlier than others, albeit ineffectually. The Gerdus family found out the hard way that tents a fortress do not make. Especially not against a Neil. Eventually in what can only be called noble self sacrifice Gerdus got up and had another drink. Revenge came the next day…

Saturday. Race day. Up at 7am, engines already screaming. Qualifying for the Lotus Challenge was just after 8am, so it was time for coffee and stretches. My bonnet fingers were going to be well limbered for action later.

Juan’s starter was still toasted, so he had to be push-started. Bonnet fingers don’t push-start cars, so I supervised. Two laps in and I’m practicing my pan-and-snap photo method. Where is the yellow 48? Over there, on the other side, stationary.

Metal fatigue sucks. The alternator mount point on the engine brackets had snapped off completely, shredding the fan belt and stopping the water pump. A few seconds later the engine overheated and the radiator vented its juices – mostly over Gerdus’ feet. He was fine (hooray for Nomex), but I was sure that was his racing over.

Not so – never underestimate the dedicated race-car builder (re-builder, re-re-builder). Engine supported, bracket out, a welding machine (and welder) found, fixed, driver’s briefing, reassemble. Oh, and at the same time Juan was off to a nearby Midas for a new starter motor.

By this stage Michael’s starter was beginning to behave badly, and he kept losing 4th. Maybe it would self heal…

Time for the first race. Andre found himself wondering why some pillick is parked in his grid position. It makes a real mess of things when someone’s in the wrong slot. Problem eventually solved South African style (park in someone elses slot) and the race starts. Broooom, they’re off, they vanish, they reappear, they vanish. Phakisa is apparently amazing to drive, with flowing fast corners and long straights. But it’s not the best to watch, with not too many viewing platforms. So I suggest building a car and checking out the track from the tarmac.

A few laps in and the green car (Johan) is trundling down the pit lane with a broken front fender. As he turns into his pit the fender shifts and cuts through his brake line. That sucks. His race is now surely over. Not so! Lots of people are willing to help out, and a new brake line is made up. Hermann springs in, his hydraulics expertise a real benefit in this situation. I check Johan’s bonnet catches. Quickly, expertly. They’re fine.

By this stage it’s pretty flippin hot. You’d think that my Vrystater blood would stand me in good stead. I’m dying, to be honest. Fortunately I find an ice-cold beer and another life is saved. There are some advantages to not racing.

Michael is still struggling with 4th. You can hear it as he heads down the straight, since he’s having to jump from 3rd to 5th. Maybe it’ll self heal.

Race two is upon us before we know what’s hit us. My bonnet catch check is quicker than ever, I’m almost ready to upgrade to push-starting – baby steps.

I manage by this time to find the big viewing tower from which I can take photos. I completely screw up two awesome photos of the starting grid line-up, by using the wrong light setting. Fortunately I spot the error before I ruin the really good shot. That one I ruin by simply missing it. Out the corner of my eye I see a yellow streak where there shouldn’t be a yellow streak. I just manage to see Gerdus, at full speed, going completely sideways in the dirt. By the time I click the shutter he’s straight again, although still on the dirt. He manages to catch the slide and get back under control. Hard-core.

Racing over, with Gerdus achieving highest top speed – way to go number 48 – and Johan hot on the heals of Andre. Michael’s 4th did not self-heal.  But now it was time. Nou gaan ons braai.

No racing on Sunday means no holds barred on Saturday night. When the TLR guys let their hair down things can get pretty wild. Hell, there was talk of supercharging Toyota 4AGE’s, stiffer anti-roll bars and radical ideas on adjusting bump and rebound. Cray-Zee. At the Locost Formula campsite things were a little more civilised. Except when a chair got burnt. Or the hail storm hit Hermann’s tent. Or the marshmallow fight started (ja Koos, jy weet wie jy is). Or the angle-grinder came out. That’s not a euphemism.

A high point was when some crazy dude did doughnuts in his sedan (I assume it was his). Doughnuts in front-wheel drive cars are quite boring. Unless you make a front-wheel drive into a rear wheel drive – BY DOING THEM IN REVERSE. Much appreciation was shown when it turned out that HE was a SHE! Let’s face it, a guy doing doughnuts, even backwards, is a bit pleb. But chicks doing them is just plain hot.

Sunday was pack-up and go, quite sad. It was an awesome weekend, thanks to everyone for making it so much fun even for a non-driver.

Who won? In the Locost Formula rankings, Gerdus was 3rd, Michael 2nd and Andre 1st. Overall Andre came third in Class C. But it was a total win for the Locost Formula.

B

(That’s not our engine, BTW…)

The nervousness probably began when I decided to figure out the pins for the starter motor. So I put it on my desk in my study, connected up what looked right, and tapped it to the battery. Click. The solenoid when on and off, but no spinning. This was by design, I wanted to make sure I got that part right before committing to the big cable. So next it was to wire up that big copper lug. Ready, steady, go – flip sakes, that thing is a beast. It jumped about 10cm into the air, and came crashing back down onto my desk. If your finger was in the wrong place it would be chewed to bits. And that’s JUST THE STARTER MOTOR!

So the previous post stuff all happened, bringing us to Tuesday night. Engine start night. There are so many hose clamps that I was pretty sure we’d forget to tighten one of them.  Start attempt #1:

What happened? The engine is all set to go, the necessary switches are flipped and I’m about to hit the start button, when I decide to glance at the fuel tank area. The spreading pool of flammable fluid is evidence that the predicted loose hose-clamp is on a fuel line. Sucky.

So a 10 minute stoppage is called, while the fuel is mopped up and the air is cleared. Then it’s back to setting the switches and pushing “start”. Or rather, the tiny red push-button switch.

There were definite signs of life, the branch was getting warm and you could smell half-burnt fuel. But no success. The coil connectors seemed loose, so they were re-attached and a third attempt made.

SUCCESS! What an awesome feeling, and what a cool sound. This is going to be a fun car to drive. Of course, we’re still a little way from there yet, but a big step closer.

We were worried that the engine did not idle – it’s computer controlled, so it really should. Then we realised that it seemed to be getting no air through the throttle, because it was completely (as in almost sealed) shut. A quick call to the guru (Andre) confirmed this, and he recommended taking off the vacuum hose from the air manifold to the cam cover. You can see this in the next video – it just lets through enough air for the ECU to do its job. With this done, the car started like a dream, and idled perfectly.

The next day I decided to get a video of the idle, as well as record the sound using a proper microphone (rather than the silly little thing in the camera). I managed to then overlay the new soundtrack on the video, to bring you what she really sounds like:

You will need a set of decent speakers for this, since most of the sound is really in the bass range.

A huge thank you to Andre, who has been a massive help the whole time. I’m pretty sure his regular assistance and guidance played a major role in our Rocam not ending up like the engine in the first video.

Thanks for watching.

B

So we’re about to start the engine, tonight. Which is a rather hectic jump from plugging up the hole in the fuel tank and putting on the windscreen. In fact, that catchup has become so big that I’ve been unable to write anything on the blog because there’s just too much to write. It’s also rather boring, albeit hopefully useful. So instead I’ll try to put up pages of the useful stuff when I get a chance, and rather just start blogging again from where I am now.

Deon, hero that he is, has mounted the water pump pulley on the alternator. Details here.

We had a button clutch made. This thing is awesome, and it turns out there’s more to clutches than you might think.

Also mounted the hydraulic slave cylinder for the clutch release. I really hope I did my maths right, but it seems to be ok.

The roll cage and the exhaust were manufactured. This is a mission because we don’t have a trailer, or a car powerful enough to pull it. A plan was made.

The electrics have been done. This is not a small job, it is in fact quite a big job. I’ll try to write up as much of my experience as possible; hopefully it will provide a starting point for your own system. You are building your own car, right?

The seats are in – the driver’s seat slides, but the passenger seat is fixed. It’s quite a brainteaser getting these things in, since the seat covers the area where you need to drill the hole. I’ll put in a page showing how I did it, in case it’s useful.

On to the engine starting. It’s very exciting, but it’s also quite a mission. First up there’s the ECU. Wiring it up is covered under the electrics page (or will be). The ECU itself also needs to be calibrated and a suitable map put into it. Andre supplied me with a startup mapping file, but it turns out that it’s from V2 of the XMS4A-2A. Mine (same model) is V1. The software for my model is a tiny bit different to his. My software can’t read his file, and his software can’t talk to my unit (it’s quite rude about it actually). It gets even stupider than that, but you get the picture. Eventually I managed to get screenshots of his mapping file, which I then MANUALLY typed into my mapping file. Number-by-number (no copy-paste, and only idiotic block setting). There are two main tables, 384 numbers in each.The software is crap in a very special way. Fun.

At least the hardware seems solid, and perhaps the V2 of the software is an improvement – it would have to physically poke me in the eye to be worse.

Calibration is not too hard once you get the hang of it. Engine temp is a bit of a mission, I ended up using good old “y=mx+c”

But before you can think about starting the engine, you need to think about cooling. This means not only the pipes to the radiator, but also plugging all the spare holes meant for creature comforts.

Johan did us the massive favour of machining some awesome aluminium stoppers for the heater hose holes.

They fitted very snugly, but then were also held in place with rubber hose and clamps. One of the stoppers was designed to fit a standard temperature sensor. This will serve as a backup sensor, part of the instrument panel.

Next on the to-do list is to make sure you’ve got oil pressure. This means putting oil into the engine (if you took yours out) and then turning the engine over using the starter motor until you get pressure.

Best idea is to remove the sparkplugs so that there’s no compression. This is less effort for the starter motor, and not too draining on the battery (don’t use your racing battery). Also, you might want to take special care that you’ve got the hoses on the right way round. There is a non-return valve in the filter, and you will get zero flow the other way round (and you might damage your pump). Don’t ask how I know all these details.

After this we checked that there was fuel flowing. We simply linked the feed and return lines, and put cheap filters at both ends to catch any dirt from inside the fuel lines. Have a few fire extinguishers handy until you’re sure everything works ok.

The fuel needs to be ignited, so that means checking for spark. Now you really get to see if the ECU is working. Sparkplugs, shorted against the engine (make sure there’s no loose fuel lying around) should show off pretty sparks.

To make it easy to turn things on and off, a simple dash was made. I also got to use a missile switch cover. That’s a real milestone in anyone’s life.

So, did we get the engine started…? Tell you soon

-B

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

Given this glaring omission in the otherwise highly informative episode, I thought I’d fill in the blanks. If you are racing against the clock (or the Stig) you might want to bear in mind that the handbrake shortening will slow you down somewhat (unless of course, you’re building a Caterham; for you it will just magically be the right length). However, it might be a stretch to claim it’ll add 2 years to the build.

Credit to Ross for this idea

Step 1: Get a handbrake (from a Sierra, in this case)

Step 2: Remove the rubber handles
They just pull off. They might be sticky with years of jelly-baby-slobber, sloshed coke and other unmentionables. Soak in warm water if necessary.

With the handles removed, measure the handle length from somewhere near the button to somewhere near the back of the handbrake lever. Make clear marking points, for reference. You’ll use this length to determine how much you’ve shortened the handbrake.

Step 3: Cut a piece out.
Now be careful here – there’s an important piece of metal in the center, so you want to carefully cut your way around the handle.

Now a confession – I actually split the handbrake first. I can’t remember if that was necessary to take it apart, but I don’t think it is (assuming you cut the piece out as shown above). If you want to split it, I did it by forcing two chisels into the groove (under the handbrake) and then clamping them together. This leveraged the tips apart, and cracked the weld:

Step 4: Widen the groove.
I used a grinder with a thick disk. Works well, lots of sparks.

The purpose of this is to allow the handle to slide over the rest of the handbrake, providing considerable shortening. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of this, but the final welded picture gives you a pretty good idea. I did quite a lot of testing and filing to make sure I was happy. Then I did Step 5, cut too much off, and so had to do more cutting and filing.

Step 5: Shorten the button rod (that’s the technical name, trust me)

Remember that measurement you made in Step 2? Now measure again to figure out how much you’ve shortened the handle. Warning, don’t forget that you still need to fold the end over, so leave enough for that!

Step 6: Reassemble.
This can be quite tricky, especially to get the handbrake button back in. Test first without the handle on, so you know what you’re trying to achieve. I had to slide the handle back further than first expected, to make the button catch.

Step 7: Weld back together.

The metal is quite thin, so be careful and possibly practice a bit first on something similar. If you’re MIG-welding, make sure to clean the metal thoroughly prior to welding.

Step 8: Put the handle back on.

I
I chopped quite a lot of rubber out from inside the handle, as well as the end that linked to the rubber sleeve. A Stanley knife helped, but the dremel ultimately was the answer.

Step 9: Behold the beauty in context

Beautiful might be a strong word, but I was rather pleased.

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

The wishbone therefore rotates on the poly-bush. This has two implications – firstly you can use bolts with fully threaded shanks, since the insert should not actually be rotating on the bolt. The thread of the bolt will therefore not damage the insert. The second thing is that the bushes need to be properly lubricated. This new set of wishbones gave us the opportunity to really pack in the red rubber grease. (Note – this does not apply to the shock-absorbers, which do rotate about the bolt). Many thanks to Chris for helping out with this sticky, icky job.

We got our engine mount brackets welded – big thanks to Ken of Zodiac Steel for assistance and doing such a good job. As soon as we had those sorted, we were able to properly see how the engine and gearbox would fit in. Needless to say, several adjustments to the bell-housing were needed, and we chopped some more bits off.

To fit the gearbox we needed to drill and fit the gearbox mounting plate. This is an H-shaped piece of steel plate, onto which the rubberised gearbox mount is, well, mounted. With the engine in place and the gearbox supported by a size-14 temporary mount, we could see if the mounting plate lined up with the mount points on the chassis. It was a wonderful moment when we realised that the fit is perfect. We marked and drilled the holes (8mm, although one was a slight miss, so it became a 9mm hole).

Feeling inspired by getting 3 out of 4 holes right, we marked and drilled the engine mount plates. We’d obviously improved our skilz, because we got 8 out of 8 of these right (no cheating here – 8mm holes for 8mm bolts, and they went in smoothly).

Checking the engine again, we realised that there was a risk that the starter would foul against the chassis. So it was another “engine out, attach part, engine in”. Only we realised a slight problem – the starter does not fit. There is a small sticky-outy bit on the sump that gets in the way. A couple of panicked phonecalls to Locost SA, and we confirmed that this needed to be chopped off.

It’s actually quite an easy job, but you don’t want to get all “power-tool” on it. The sump is aluminium, so if you get too aggressive you are likely to chop a hole in it. Another tool you’ll be needing for this job is a torque wrench that can handle 67N.m (thanks JR and Nick). The process is:

1) Remove clutch pressure plate (about 6-8 bolts, fairly easy).

2) Remove the clutch plate, to be left with the flywheel:

3) Remove the fly-wheel (6 bolts, fine thread), resulting in this:

4) Now you can get to the sump, and carefully cut the piece off. See pictures for confirmation.

You might need to remove two of the sump bolts, but we did not. You will not be able to use a normal hacksaw. A junior hacksaw got close enough that the last bit could be snapped off. Then a file neatened it up. One of those blade-only hacksaws will work, as will a dremel tool.

5) Clean off any loose shavings.

6) Put the flywheel back on.

Use a touch of lock-tite (removable) on each bolt, then torque to 67N.m. (Following all the right rules for tightening sequence. I tightened, bit by bit, a triangle of bolts, then chose the next triangle as starting from the opposite bolt that I ended on. Clear as mud?)

Leave the clutch and pressure plate off for now – they’re not needed for a while.

7) The starter motor now fits very nicely:

After this the engine went back in – we’re really getting our money’s worth out of that engine crane. The starter is a tight fit against the chassis, but it does fit. We then tested the bonnet for clearance – the dip stick handle will need to be “lightened”, but the 710 cap is fine (thanks to the bonnet scoop).

While we were fitting heavy things, we decided to balance it all out and fit the diff. It didn’t fit, which is a painful thing to find out while trying to hold that stupidly heavy piece of metal in place. The grinder was called to service again, but not quite vigorously enough. We actually think we might leave it as it is, since with a couple of spacer washers it fits fine.

EDIT 2011-02-25: It’s actually recommended by Locost SA that you rather grind away the webbing on the diff, than the diff mounting bracket. The theory is that the diff is more over-designed than the chassis mount point. We’re holding thumbs that it all stays together.

With the diff in place, it was possible to see how the gearbox and diff lined up. Badly, it turned out. The gearbox was shooting mortars clear over the head of the diff. Undismayed we put some longer bolts in the gearbox mount plate, and dropped it by about a centimeter. This lined it up perfectly, so we’re almost ready to order the prop shaft.

A small miracle happened during the week. We’ve been searching for ages for a solution to our alternator problem. We have a small, awsome little alternator from a toyota forklift. Unfortunately it comes with a v-belt pulley, not a 6PK pulley (which is used on the rest of the Rocam). Also, it doesn’t like high revs, and the test sheet shows its only able to handle about 6000 RPM for any extended time. The crank pulley on the Rocam is quite large, so if you put a small pulley on the alternator it is going to see some pretty high revs. This is NOT good, and others have mentioned burning similar ones out. So we want a big pulley which will fit the thing. The solution is a 6PK water-pump pulley, just like the one on the Rocam. If you attach this to the v-belt pulley, you are sorted. Well, we’ve been to several scrapyards looking for pulleys, with no luck. It seems you very seldom find a water-pump pulley separate from a water pump.

I posted for help on the forum (as I should have done first) and immediately found one pulley, and a suggestion to try Ford for spares. “Maybe they won’t be so expensive” – yeah right. So I got hold of Ford (it’s really worth telling these guys what you are doing, often they are very helpful) and I found out they do supply the pulley on its own. The price: r50 .11 ex VAT. I figured there was a number missing there – surely it’s R500.11? Nope, they ordered the part for me, and it came to R57 incl! Amazing. Even the guys at the parts desk were amazed (they showed me a much worse pulley for R900). The part number is XS6E-8509-AA if you want to find your own. I’ll post more info if it successfully gets attached to the v-belt pulley.

Our engine bay is now getting quite full, and we are becoming more and more convinced that the sequence we did the build in is just wrong. The brake and fuel lines really should only be going in once the immovable objects have had their say. As part of this blog I’ll put together a suggested build sequence.

Phew, long post! Till next time, happy building. Don’t forget, more build pictures here.

B

We’re back and busy! Our chassis got back about two weeks ago, and so it’s been a matter of chopping out the bits of life that had intruded on the build process. This weekend and past week have been the first opportunities to really get stuck in, and we’ve made some good progress.

The first thing was the chassis and work area. Messy, dirty, dusty. Seems the chassis travelled from Durban on an open trailer, during a storm. More like a mudslide, given the amount of dirt on it. The layer of dust on everything else was evidence of how long it’s been since we did some serious building.

Once we’d given everything a hose down and wipe, we were able to get stuck into the work. The big thing that’s been on the cards is the engine mount brackets. I managed to go to a scrap metal mechant and buy a length of tubing and angle bar. I also got some real insight into where all the bridge railings and street signs are ending up. We already have the upper brackets for LocostSA – they are awesome.

So we just need to construct the lower ones to meet the engine mount at 45 degrees. To achieve a nicely accurate 45 degree angle, the first approach was to use a piece of angle-bar with plate across the hypotenuse. However, we decided that it would be better to construct the whole thing out of plate steel.

So the brackets consist of 3 plates. The base will rest either on the chassis support plate (cut out in the previous post), or a tubular support. The main part of the bracket will be the angled plate, with a groove cut in it for the engine mount bolt to slide through. A similar groove is cut in the vertical plate. To get a neat 45 degree angle, the plate was clamped to a scrap piece of angle bar, lying with its open ends down. The result was reasonably pleasing, although not to watch-maker spec.

We test fitted the engine, partly to see what our options were with the engine mount brackets, and partly to see how well it all fits. There really is not a lot of space in there. Word of advice, remove the throttle support bracket (that piece of pressed plate steel that the throttle cable slots into, it’s attached with Torx-head bolts) before doing this. It really sticks out, and chances are you’ll break it off on something.

Then we fitted the bell-housing, to figure out what bits of it to remove so that the engine sits far enough back. It’s pretty apparent that a couple of spots get in the way, and prevent the engine from sitting nicely back. The angle grinder was used to remove the unwanted bits. We are counting on the bellhousing being over-designed – so that our handiwork doesn’t cause significant structural weakness.

Several months ago we tried removing the oil filter arrangement, so that we could fit a Locost SA remote oil filter. No matter how we tried, one bolt remained unmoving. However, it was a case of the right tool for the job. We tried again using a ring spanner, and managed to crack it. So that’s half the job done – next is fitting the remote filter bracket. We’ll be needing longer bolts for that though.

Starting work again like this was a reminder of how much time even the smallest thing takes. When the chassis arrived back, it had new (customised) wishbones installed. We decided to remove them to clean the chassis. It’s a simple job to unbolt the wishbones, but it takes over half an hour. So although it’s been good, productive and fairly long hours, writing it all down makes it seem so little.

Hopefully we’ll be able to get really busy with the build. More to come!

B

So yesterday I posted about how we cut down the gearbox input shaft. Only it wasn’t yesterday, it was more than a month ago. That’s over 8% of the year since my last post. Life is passing by too fast. Many thanks to those of you who have been bugging me to write something

One of the reasons for the lack of a post is that not much has happened. Well, a big thing has happened actually. You see, several months ago we decided to assemble as much of the suspension as we could. The right-rear needed a fair amount of force to get it in, which was a tad worrying. Then we got to the left-front. We had already made a plan for one of the suspension bolts, to get it into the bracket. This was on account of there simply not being enough space for the bolt-head to get past one of the chassis struts. However, when we put the whole wishbone setup on, it was visibly apparent that there were alignment issues. We went back to Locost SA, and Brad was very helpful in offering a number of solutions.

Ultimately we decided to send the chassis back to the manufacturing plant to have the struts and brackets chopped out, and then welded on again with the chassis clamped into the jig. This is the only way to ensure we don’t just make the problem worse.

So now we wait with baited breath to see if our body panels still fit when the chassis comes back. I must commend Brad (Locost SA) for his openness and willingness to help. Manufacturing errors can creep into any process, and it’s how the company responds when errors are found that really matters. Top marks to Locost SA.

So what has been done in the meantime? Well, we’ve got our hydraulic clutch mechanism. It’s a standard part from a Ford Mondeo. Hermann has been hero again to organise the associated tubing and connections. This includes the inlet tubing and a “remote bleed” tube. The original Ford fittings are simply removed, and the new hoses attached. With this we have all our hydraulics organised.

A bit of work was done on the engine mount brackets. A piece of 4mm steel plate was sourced to be used as the chassis platform to which the engine brackets will connect. These were traced out before the chassis was sent off.

Then the tool-of-the-year, the jigsaw, was used to cut it out. I never realised just how useful a jigsaw is.

There are such a variety of blades that come for this thing! It zips through wood and aluminium, and is no slouch when it comes to plate steel.

Special “high-speed” blades were purchased, and a little oil was used just to try to keep the temperature down. The jigsaw (on a medium speed setting) was able to cut about 1 cm in 10 seconds – so a couple of minutes per cut. It did spray up a surprising amount of metal shavings, so eye protection is recommended.

That has been about it – we’ve been a bit on-hold with the chassis problems. I have been thinking a bit about the electronics, and will post some info when I formulate some conclusions. Please drop in a comment, as I would be interested in hearing feedback of any sort.

And don’t forget, if you want to see more pictures they are all on display at my PicasaWeb site.

B