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Learning how to build Lotus Seven replicas...together!
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PostPosted: October 10, 2010, 10:47 pm 
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Joined: March 1, 2009, 5:32 am
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Build looks great! I bookmarked your build, looking forward to seeing how well the Hayabusa shocks and rocker arms work out for you.


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PostPosted: October 17, 2010, 3:44 pm 
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Location: Upstate NY
Not much done on the frame this week. I'm waiting for a parts order from Jack to arrive. Till then It's work on other things like modifying and painting a new rear bumper for my Saab and getting the yard work done.

Taking the advice of fellow Locost guy foxk56 (thanks dude), I signed up on the Thunderbird owners forum (TCCoA) and asked around for a ford 7.5 IRS differential. It didn't take long till a guy from Buffalo, NY said he would sell be one for $50 if I was willing to come get it. So I shuffled off to Buffalo this AM and we removed it from a parts car in his garage without any trouble at all. Nice guy with funny local circle track stories. Worth the trip. It even has the correct final drive I was looking for, 3.27:1.

I'll clean up the diff casing and set it aside to be rebuilt using a TracLoc unit later this winter. Now to find some 1/2 shafts with the stub axles and CV's still attached so I can workout whether to cut and re-spline the Ford parts to mate with the Miata uprights/hubs, or have new custom 1/2 shafts built.

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PostPosted: October 17, 2010, 4:44 pm 
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Location: Binghamton, NY
Sweet! I wonder if it was the same guy as I bought my stuff from? I seem to remember him mentioning he had another if I wanted it.

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PostPosted: October 17, 2010, 4:56 pm 
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Same guy. Races T-Birds on the oval outside Buffalo. Like most V8 guys however he had a hard time fathoming a #1000 car powered by a motorcycle engine. Once I explained we turn both left AND right he started coming around. :P

Great guy to know in the future if Ford diffs become popular options in Locosts.

Thanks again for the lead.

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PostPosted: October 24, 2010, 8:06 pm 
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A box of stuff arrived from Santa Jack this week so I got to spend some time fabbing the control arms and getting the mounting tabs in place. Didn't take too long as I've built a pair of Kinetic style arms before and had a template for the LCA re-enforcement plates already made up. The thing that takes the most time with these arms is getting the holes drilled for the lower ball joint in just the right spots. Once that's figured out, the rest goes pretty quickly.

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If there is interest I could do a seperete topic on building these arms. Their pretty easy to build.
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I was able to hang the arms on one side on the car using the PVC tube provided in the kit and it looks good. I checked the track width from the frame center line and was more than a little surprised to find it within a 1/4" of the planned length. Either I finally did something correctly, or I just got lucky for once.

The rest of the control arm parts should arrive from Rod End Supply early this week. Then I can finish hanging the control arms. If the weather holds maybe I'll take the frame outside and put some wheels on it to see if the suspension actually goes bouncy bouncy like it should.

I got out early on Saturday and drove to a swap meet at an area dirt track. These happen at most tracks this time of year and I HIGHLY recommend them. It's amazing the deals you can find on stuff that you never knew you needed. Granted, most of the stuff would never work for our cars, but a lot of race car stuff in universal. For instance, I picked up 2 Kirkey seats for $80. A pro level circle track seat that I may use or just sell, and an economy seat that will work just fine as a passenger. Neither are clean and pretty, but it's amazing what can be fixed with Simple Green and a scrub brush. I nearly grabbed a new 12 gal metal fuel cell with all the lines for $50, but passed because I wasn't sure it would fit. Just the fittings alone where worth that, but I don't need one yet.
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PostPosted: October 27, 2010, 6:26 pm 
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Location: Upstate NY
I dropped off the Miata front uprights with a local machinist friend to have the steering arm hole reamed out to 5/8". I had considered the various traditional solutions for the tie rod arm/lower control arm interference issue and decided to go with a 5/8 shoulder bolt and high misalignment rod end. This seems to be the most useful solution as it also allows for bumpsteer adjustment at the wheel.

I picked up the uprights today to find, as expected, he did a perfect job. I brought them home and put the front arms together for the first time. Everything actually looks pretty darn close to how it was designed. Scary!

Current weight as seen in the pic; 108#
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PostPosted: October 30, 2010, 7:20 pm 
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Well, I've experienced the first official f-ck up of the build. It was bound to happen, just hadn't expected it so soon. But that's the nature of mistakes, you never see them coming.

I was messing around with the front end, running some string and taking some measurements to get an idea of where the steering rack will go, when just by chance I took a measurement of the distance between the hub faces. The number didn't seem right, so I did it again. Then I stood back and did some math in my head. I went inside and opened the build book (binder with notes), and then I said some bad words. I was glad the kids weren't home because there where some really good ones. (Including Italian, Dutch, and French ones) The track width was suppose to be 55.5" (stock miata width) but instead it's just over 51".

Some how, I'm still not sure how, I made the control arms 2" too short per side. Total screw up. Time to start again. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

I think I might have messed up by subtracting the wheel offset (40mm) from the overall length instead of adding it on, but even that doesn't explain it. It wouldn't surprise me if when I go back through my notes I find messed up by changing a 9 to a 7 or something stupid like that. Either way, I'm not happy.

So I'm going to step back from the control arms for a little while and work on something else. Perhaps I'll work on the rear section for a spell, or maybe play with the steering wheel/shaft location. Either way, I'm going to need to take a deep breath and remember it's only a matter of buying, cutting, and welding more steel.

Anyone have any experience with, or opinion about, using 0 offset wheels? That would put my track width back in the ball park, but I'm sure it messes with the handling in a very bad way.

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PostPosted: October 30, 2010, 8:10 pm 
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We are Slotus!
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Yo, Jonathan-
All I can tell ya is "Don't feel like the Lone Ranger" :shock: If I posted all my screw-ups in my build log, it'd be 59 pages long. :oops:

Like you said, go work on something else... It'll be alright in the morning...

:cheers:
JDK

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PostPosted: October 30, 2010, 9:19 pm 
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Maybe it's not a consolation, but your likely to do a better job the second time around on making the arms, and you get another chance to think about them a bit. Do some other stuff for awhile, really that's just a small screw up. It's also an easy fix. Imagine losing two inches off a finger instead of the control arms for instance, then we'd have to promote you to management.

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PostPosted: November 7, 2010, 8:46 pm 
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I took everyone's advice and after my control arm fiasco I stepped away from the front end for a spell to spend some time messing around the other end of the frame. Building the rear end seemed pretty straight forward, but in my well honed style, I made it much harder then it needed to be.

After lots of comparing others builds, carefully going over the various plans available out there, and generating various scribbles on my drawing pad, I came up with a vague idea what I wanted to do. It was going to work just fine too, until I saw a posting from lhsmx5 (Scott) where he built some custom pickups and used the stock Miata arms.

Well that got me thinking (always a questionable idea) that I've got this set of Miata arms just sitting here, so why shouldn't I just use them. I could save all the time and aggravation of building custom arms and some $ at the same time. So into the shop I go where I waste an entire evening building some not very trick brackets to adapt the LCA's. I rearranged the lower tube to accept these new works of art, clamped on the brackets, attached the lower arms, then stood back and admired my work. It was not impressive.

The next morning, after further reflection and a good nights sleep, I tore it all apart and went back to V1.2. Lets just put it down to momentary insanity. There was no way my cobbed together third world brackets where going to hold up, and the stock arms take up so much room under there. Even with my inferior fabrication skills, I think I can do better.

So here's a few pics of the progress I finally made. The last one (shot earlier in the day before all the bracing tubes where in place) has the diff located with the outputs lined up with the drive line (2.75" behind the front-top of the rear bulkhead). Seems like the input is kind of far fwd, but I'll deal with that later.

Also, as I was about to turn the lights off for the evening, I realized that I boxed in the space usually reserved for the gas tank on an IRS frame, and the space against the rear panel where a solid axle tank goes is only 7" deep. Hmmm, where am I going to put the tank? Guess I better move a brace or 2 to open up that space above the diff.

Next up is bending some tubes for the rear hoops. I'm planning on doing a little home bending with wood, heat, and leverage. Should be a fun experiment as well as an opportunity to burn down the garage.

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PostPosted: November 8, 2010, 12:47 am 
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I'm liking the progress, nice rear tube placement.


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PostPosted: November 8, 2010, 12:57 am 
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Try not to be too hard on yourself, every honest builder will admit to having done the exact same thing. I remember building up the front on my mid-engine car with its front-mounted fuel cell, congratulating myself on the how many tubes were completed, then noticing that the fuel tank was completely boxed-in... out came the Saws-all.

Then there was the time that I happened to sight along each side of the chassis and noticed that one front tire stuck out about an inch further than the other... yeah I said all sorts of things, too.

Mentally, realizing the mistake, cutting it off, and building it again is a real downer. I learned the best thing is to channel that anger into cutting off the old one. That way there's no longer anything to anxst over, and you're that much closer to correcting it.

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Last edited by KB58 on November 8, 2010, 10:32 am, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: November 8, 2010, 8:56 am 
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Thanks Kurt. Always good to remember everyone goes through the process. I remember reading the story about boxing in the gas tank on Kimini and thinking to myself,"How could he miss that?" I now have a much more sympathetic view.

2 steps fwd, one step back. Net gain: one step.

Cheers.

P.S.
I like the way the back of Midlana is evolving. I was concerned it would look too "dune buggyish", but it's not at all. Keep it up.

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"Go out hard, when it hurts, speed up." Matt Carpenter


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PostPosted: November 14, 2010, 9:29 pm 
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Got around to bending a tube this week. That might not sound that exciting to those of you with tubing benders, but for me it's an adventure. I have access to a bender for when I do the roll cage, but for the smaller stuff I'm on my own.

So I went third world on a piece of 3/4 tubing, and it turned out pretty well. I cut the radius into a 2x8, drilled a hole, rigged up a bending arm and follower, filled the tube full of sand, heated it up with a MAP torch, and bent away. Way too easy to bend 3/4 around a 4" die. So easy in fact I got cocky and went of it with 1" tube and a 2" radius. Needless to say it was less successful. Crimped it, then split it. Oh well, .500 isn't so bad.

Decided to build the bottom corner out of sheet metal pie wedges as seen on this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=8722&hilit=rear+tube+radius&start=15

Turned out ok and feels quite strong once the outside and insides are boxed in.

I built out the rear of the frame a bit longer then is common to make room for a gas tank. Jack McC was good enough to measure a tank for me so I could make sure the braces went in the right spots. The angle of the rear wall of the car might end up being a little less steep then the average Locost, but I'll have a place to put the gas tank.

Next up is fabricating the rear arms. Wish me luck.

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PostPosted: November 14, 2010, 10:13 pm 
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A case of scotch will give you an octane boost.

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