Hi all, This seemed like the best place to say hi (mods, please correct me if that's not the case. Maybe there should be a new members section?).
I'm really interested in building a Locost but not immediately- need to get a few life-hurdles overcome first, like securing a workspace among others. I'm thinking at max, two years from now might be my start-time assuming things go smoothly. Until then, I'm doing homework and learning all I can. I'll be doing a lot of lurking here initially, but don't worry, I *will* jump in and ask questions and participate in general.
My gearhead-background: I grew up loving cars (and well, anything with an engine really!). In my childhood my dad had several Sunbeam Alpines, and we had the first BMW car in my hometown, which my parents imported after buying it while on vacation in Europe in '71. We had very few American cars during my growing-up. When my parents split, mom took the BMW and Dad took the Sunbeam and an old Plymouth. Mom then had a couple of VW Rabbits, while Dad went nuts with Sunbeams, married a woman who had a '71 Beetle, and then bought a '74 Alfa Romeo Berlina that needed a lot of TLC. A few years later he bought a '76 Alfa Spyder. I learned to drive a manual gearbox in those Alfas! My first car was a '73 Super Beetle, followed by a Datsun 510, then while overseas in the Army I had an '81 Mini. Since then I've had a beat-up '77 Chevy, a couple of Honda products, a pair of Mk IV Golfs including a GTI, an '86 Lotus Turbo Esprit, and now I have a Gen 2 Mazda 3. I'm also into motorcycles and have owned nothing but BMW bikes; currently I'm on my fourth, an R1200GS. My first bike was a frame-up refurb of a very neglected K100RT! I grew up helping Dad keep all his cars running and he taught me well. The Esprit was the most challenging thing I ever dealt with, but it was really rewarding to succeed with as well. I'm also a licensed but lapsed private pilot, service engineer for industrial machinery, and a musician.
Not sure just yet what the details of my future Locost will be, but as I'm a big strapping guy (6'4"/250 with wide hips) I think it'll probably be one of the enlarged-plan variants. I also want to keep the budget lean with some notable exceptions, like having somebody else weld the frame. I'm not scared to weld things in general; I just know that my skills are limited and for something so crucial to my personal safety as a car-frame I have no problem at all deferring to an experienced professional.
Enough of my rambling...I'm looking forward to digging into things here and learning lots of cool stuff about how to build the scrappy lil' sports-car I've been dreaming of!
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