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PostPosted: July 31, 2014, 8:09 am 
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Matt, I see your using what appear to be the plastic quick zips to hold your radiator fan in place. I was going to go that route as well due to it being a quick and easy solution. After reading several pages of forum recommending hard/flexible mounts due to either the plastic zips breaking or wearing through the aluminum on the rad, I changed my mind. I don't know if that is your final solution or not, just thought I'd mention it.

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PostPosted: July 31, 2014, 10:57 am 
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Location: West Chicago,IL
I thought that the plastic mounts were shady at best. However, I only had ~50 bucks invested in my Civic radiator and expedience won over sound engineering on that issue. 4 years later, the mounts are still doing fine. Now that I said that, I'm certain that something will give soon :cheers:

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PostPosted: July 31, 2014, 10:23 pm 
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Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Trochu wrote:
Matt, I see your using what appear to be the plastic quick zips to hold your radiator fan in place. I was going to go that route as well due to it being a quick and easy solution. After reading several pages of forum recommending hard/flexible mounts due to either the plastic zips breaking or wearing through the aluminum on the rad, I changed my mind. I don't know if that is your final solution or not, just thought I'd mention it.


rx7locost wrote:
I thought that the plastic mounts were shady at best. However, I only had ~50 bucks invested in my Civic radiator and expedience won over sound engineering on that issue. 4 years later, the mounts are still doing fine. Now that I said that, I'm certain that something will give soon :cheers:


Unsure if I'll change it or not: it's in the back of my head to do something more solid, certainly. Honestly, it'll probably be a "I'll get to it once the car's driveable" thing, which means it'll probably get fixed when it breaks. I'm actually a little miffed at myself about that: for the price of the fan and radiator separately, I could've purchased a whole unit with a fan shroud too! Next time!

I got some good advice from the local brake line place this morning. I'm going to measure some lengths and get a bill of material put together for them to make/order/pull off the shelf.


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PostPosted: August 1, 2014, 9:41 am 
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Location: Under the weather. (Seattle)
Glad to see you back at it Matt! :cheers:

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PostPosted: August 11, 2014, 10:45 pm 
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She's a CUTIE! And as smart as Daddy, I bet. Never let some silly car get in the way of family.

Bummer about the bike. Glad you're OK. If you haven't taken the AMA Motorcycle Safety Course, do it. Even if you're retiring the motorcycle, the lessons I learned there help me in EVERY driving/riding/pedaling scenario. I didn't take it until I'd been riding for 20 years, and still learned plenty. It's fun, too, and saves on your insurance, to boot.

As for brake lines, I am very pleased with my four, long A/N flex brake lines. One connection to the MC, one to the caliper, and you're done. Easy-peasy. No mix of SAE/Metric adapters, hard lines, bending, etc.

So what did you do with your fancy electric car for four months without a charger? Really long extension cord?

-dave

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PostPosted: December 13, 2014, 3:44 pm 
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dhempy wrote:
So what did you do with your fancy electric car for four months without a charger? Really long extension cord?

There was a 110V outlet right next to the garage door that provided a 1.1kW charge (3-4 miles range added per hour charging). Not practical for full discharges every day, but for the back and forth to work and city errands, it was fine.


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PostPosted: December 13, 2014, 4:28 pm 
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Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Alllllll right. Right after I posted my last update on why I wasn't working on the Lotus and how I was excited to start work on my brake system, my bathroom failed in its duties of managing water appropriately. Bathrooms really are for having water come in in specified locations, and exiting in other specified locations while carrying away something. My tile tub surround was not a specified location to have water exit

Demoed a bathroom down to studs, rebuilt a bathroom. I had pros do the drywall and tile, but most of the rest was redone by me. I had a bunch of friends help with demo, which was fun.

Adding to the stress of having our only bathroom under construction, during that whole process, I was interviewing, accepting a job offer and prepping to move to a small automotive company (you know the one) in the San Francisco bay area.

The last bead of caulk was drying when I drove south. Oh well, my tenants will have a nice bathroom to use.

I totally forgot to actually get done-done final pictures with the trim up.

So, I'm now renting in a land far away. I did upgrade the size of my garage to a 2 car, but the infrastructure isn't nearly as what I had (no compressed air manifold, one electrical outlet instead of 6). I'll make do for the time being and get to work on the car.

The job's relocation package allowed for two cars to be shipped down, one of which could have been the Lotus project. Unfortunately, their shipper wanted an enclosed trailer, which was far too much money for the allowance. A friend and former colleague now lives down here, and he was driving his truck up to Portland anyway last month, so he rented a U-haul trailer and brought it back down. That's service!

I also build some shelves to get crap off the floor as well. It'll eventually reside on the wall, but for now, it's in the middle of the garage waiting for some wall work to be done.I also have a call into an electrician to get some more 110V outlets and a NEMA 14-50 plug installed for EV charging. I'm going to just run nylon air line for semi trucks between my compressor and my hose reel. That'll be good enough for now and not involve a whole lot of installation.

I'm going out there as soon as I finish this post to do some more work on getting the place ready for more fabbing.

Feel free to arrange a time to stop by if you're in the Sunnyvale, CA area.

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PostPosted: December 14, 2014, 3:25 am 
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Location: Alberta
I moved last year and thats kind of what the garage at my place looked like. Two dangling light bulbs, one outlet, no insulation in the walls, and no furnace for a 900 sq. ft garage in Alberta. Found a used furnace online, hired one of my dads friends to do the electrical work, installed some insulation and drywall, and drastically improved the garage for about $1,000.00.

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PostPosted: March 9, 2015, 12:41 am 
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Location: Sunnyvale, CA
It's been a while. Who knew that moving a house, car, family could be so much work!

Most of our boxes are unpacked, the garage is set up fairly well for working on things (and even has room for a regular car to park in when necessary!). Both regular cars now have California plates and my license is "in the mail" after I passed the CDL, motorcycle and general knowledge written tests.

Garage upgrades
I built shelves, both wall mounted and freestanding, for stuff-storage.
My landlord wanted to drywall the garage walls because of sparks and fire risk. We got that done early in January, and it's been nice.
I got my air compressor hooked up to the dryer circuit (one at a time, not in parallel) and the air lines plumbed.
I installed two shop lights and added LED Philips Instantfit bulbs. They're 14W each and arguably brighter than a standard 32W fluorescent bulb.

I had some around-the-house projects I needed to do first, but I've finally cleared my plate and was able to work on the Lotus this weekend. Apparently this was the talk of the neighborhood. I have had no less than 6 different parties come and ask about the car and what it was and plans and stuff. It's fun.

I got the right-side frame modification for the rear caliper done yesterday. I installed the park brake handle today. I need to order a few parts (clips), and fab up a cable support bracket and then I'll be able to have a functioning park brake. Routing and clipping the cable can happen later, but I'm super excited to be able to yank a handle and not have the car roll away any where.

I drilled out the rivets of the 2-1 front park brake cable bracket in anticipation of shortening it. I don't know exactly how much needs to get cut yet, but we'll figure that out when the time comes.

I'm again piecing out the brake system components. I think I'm going to do all stainless steel braid if I can help it, just for ease of routing and re-routing. It's really a matter of getting the right adapters to minimize component count.

It's good to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully I won't be such a stranger anymore.


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PostPosted: March 9, 2015, 3:53 pm 
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Joined: July 4, 2006, 5:40 pm
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Location: Novato, CA
Hey, Matt! Welcome to the neighborhood. I'll bring my car down one of these weekends. Got to get that thing on the road so we can go for drives.


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PostPosted: March 11, 2015, 2:13 am 
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Joined: September 2, 2009, 8:58 am
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Matt.
Good to see you're back at it. moving a partially built car is a real pain in the Ar$$ (btdt last weekend)

keep up the forward progress.

P.
(formerly of KY)


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PostPosted: March 14, 2015, 5:51 pm 
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Location: Livermore, Calif.
Matt-
I see you're back at it after your move to California. Welcome to the land of the "non-rain". Hope you brought some with you! I've been following your build for sometime and it's good to see a "small" move can't dampen your spirits about building a Locost.

I'm curious about your small automobile startup company your went to work for. It wouldn't be Tesla would it? Some small company!

Keep up the good work and best of luck.

Roy

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PostPosted: March 15, 2015, 3:39 pm 
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That's the one!

I ordered all of my brake line parts after a week of analysis paralysis. The only things I didn't get are the chassis hardlines, but I figured I need to get everything mounted first to measure lengths, etc. The local auto parts shop can apparently order per-inch hard lines pre-flared for the rounded-up foot length. Seems like a bargain to me!

I'll be excited to get the flex lines and tabs mounted for some progress. Exciting!


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PostPosted: March 28, 2015, 11:38 pm 
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I got my flex brake line parts from Summit. Whaddya know, I measured the fronts wrong (protip: measure at full wheel cut for better results!). I got the rear flex-to-chassis brackets tacked in and then started working on the park brake routing. I was originally going to hog out some of the brake line brackets for the park brake cables, but due to angles and whatnot, it was easier just to cut a sheet of steel with two slotted holes (a la Dave Hempy, without a mill) and weld that in with a couple reinforcement ribs.

I found a suitably sized bolt and drilled a hole through it and fed the shortened park brake cable through. I welded and ground it to fit, bought some bolts to hold the splitter together and attached it all.

I got the brake pads and rotors in, and the spacing correct for the hand brake operation, and whaddya know, it works! I can yank on the handbrake and the wheels stop, and if I release it, they spin! I'm supremely happy with that development.

This ends a two year mental/design block with my build. I'm excited for the rest of it to come together.

Side note: remanufactured calipers may or may not have correct: banjo bolt thread machining, guide pin hex sizing and other critical tolerances.

Fortunately, there's an Orchard Hardware and Pep Boys within biking distance of my house down here, so I'm able to acquire fasteners and (common) auto parts on short notice, which helped with some M4 hardware for the handbrake splitter assembly and fixing the caliper guide pin that was terribly out of tolerance on the remanufactured right rear caliper.


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PostPosted: March 28, 2015, 11:52 pm 
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Location: East st Paul, Mb
Good on Ya Matt. Keep'm coming. expecting these on a regular basis now. Your at that point where progress has substance. Very motivating.

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Build log http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=12374
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