Locost Build

Friday 7 May 2010

Aw fer the love of god

Engine seized on Dot's Freelander
MR2 Making some godawful noise at motorway speeds.

Sunday 8 November 2009

Well That's all I could recover

The posts below where recovered from WayBack Macine

Since then, We moved from Edinburgh to Fife, Many thanks to Fergus and others for helping me move the contents of the garage.

The house took a couple of years to go from a complete hole to what it is today, and we are more than happy living here.

With the house fixed up we then started on other projects, The garage roof for a start, then the errecting of a big hut to keep all sorts of stuff that was keeping the garage being used productively, then I started working on a bike, which itself stalled due to parts unavailablity, however that problem has just been solved within the last week with parts winging their way from Holland.

The only thing that has happened with the car is I stated to cut out the brackets for the suspension from 50x3mm SHS, needless to say I've done a few and then got sidetracked again.

The fact that I've resurected this blog probably means that things are starting to come back to car building again.

So watch this space!

Wishbone Ash it

Originally Posted 20/4/2005

Bollox to them

I made a jig and cut my steel to make the wishbones.

Being the real impatient sort I strted to screw the top balljoint in to the bone before it had cooled, it must have cross threaed cause it stuck in like that stuff to a blanket, to the point of damaging the threaded tube in the process of removing it, anyways after a Plea on the locost builders website I got loads of useful advice and I have bought a suitable tap and managed to rescue the fabricated wishbone, although I’m now not happy with the bush tube alignment and am going to make a much better jig that will keep these tubes in alignment

I think the bones made out of the oval section steel will look quite nice, check out the photo and form your own opinion.

wb1

Minor Problems

Originally Posted 1/3/2005

Goddamit, I’ve bought a Morris Minor, originally to be used for donor running gear, however it just looked kinda cute so I’m giving consideration to fixing it up and using it as a wee runaround, sort of a rolling restoration, really depends on the condition of the chassis in places other than the location of obvious accident damage, photo to follow.

Update:- Looks more and more like the Minor is going to be a Donor, so its time to rip out the engine gearbox and back axle, should end up nice and period looking though with a slightly underpowered engine and wire wheels, black plates and hopefully road tax free.

Update 13/06/11
Black plates are a no no, no chance pf free road tax. :-(

The Sun came out

Originally Posted 3/2/2005

Well the sun came out and with it the desire to go back into the garage, its official! the work has restarted, over the last couple of days I managed to cut out the small panels where the rear trailing arm mounts are, will be finishing them off tonight ready for fitting. After I’ve picked up the cat from the vet, Poor charlie, the operation to get her bits removed went awray in the recovery stage and had to have her insides sewn up again, apparently she’s learned the harmonica and is playin the blues, in lockdown

Feels good to be back at it.
Apart from the cut finger.
Mental note:- engage brain before picking up sheets of steel.

“Been a long time since I wrote some scroll”

Originally Posted 10/11/2004

Ahem sorry about that!

So its been a while and not a lot has really been happening, a couple of modifications have been made to the chassis. To give a more lotusy appearance I’ve dropped the back of the rails at the occupants elbow down a little to be in keeping with the original 7.

I’ve managed to cut out the floor and shaped it to fit.I’ve decided to plug weld the floor to the chassis. This involved punching a hole every in arounf the perimeter of the plate to weld to the main frame, and a few other places besides, the old hands are hurting now. The bloody punch kept falling appart as I was using it (cheap tools cost you dear) oh and the nibbler also broke but was replaced by machine mart without protracted negotiations.

After puching out all the holes I did a few practive plug welds on the piece of scrap, only to find I can’t plug weld to save myself, the welds were just not strong enough. Turning up the welder was causing the ring main RCD in the garage to trip out, so I’ve rigged up a line of the back of the main RCD wich seems to be stayin up without problems. Also purchased a spot wled shroud from weldco and had a wee practice with the welder set to max power I performed a couple of welds which required substantial wacking with a hammer to break, and tore out metal from the tube so I’m now happy that I can do it but am thinking of rigging up a spot timer before welding the floor on just for consistancies sake.

Looks like LeMans is a bit of an optimistic target for completion but hopefully next summer at some time is the current estimate.

Body Work

Originally Posted 20/9/2004

Nosecone, Swept front wings, and rear wings have all arrived and taken up residence in the house.Starting to received complaints from “Full Stop” about my project being evident in every room in the house so I thought I should move the bodywork into the garage, couldn’t resist this photo oporchancity

All photo 067