Project.Locost
Ibrahim’s Locost Build in Adelaide SA

Well today I had a nice sleep in….and when I got up I went straight to work on my baby in my second home away from home (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen our backyard… ).

Today, my goals were to weld the diff brackets on the diff and put that in place and also weld the front suspension mounts on the chassis and the two lower wishbones. Well guess what…It was surprisingly easy and here are the results (below). The actual wheels I have could not be put on the rear because the offset is slightly too great but the front is about 10mm wider than the rear…looks very wide when I put some wheels on the front .

The one thing which did not get done today which would have been nice was the suspension mounts for the rear. That will be the next thing I do along with the panhard-rod setup. Feels great to finally do some work were it can be noticed….rolling soon….

After a long time aiming for this moment, I finally got to the stage of needing to buy a set of shocks. I just picked these up after about 10 days in transport from the UK (Damper-tech) via Mike Laws. Fantastic price and product. I was told that the most common front-rear spring rates are 250lb front and 180lb rear. The shock length for both the fronts and rears is 12″.

I also received some mint condition second hand Westfield front guards purchased through the Oz-Clubbies forum which are 260mm wide with the gel-coat on them and mounting holes. Been too busy (lazy) to take any photos of them….you guys know what they look like.

We are both pretty busy with uni at the moment, learning some new stuff to make our Project Locost Analysis even better soon.
We would like to take this little bit of downtime to thank our Host: Duivesteyn Web Consulting, they have got our website as #1 on google for the searches “locost adelaide”, “locost fea” and #10 with “locost kit car”.

We are planning a further FEA analysis near the end of this year; I am doing my mechanical thesis on an FEA of a Formula-SAE Vehicle, and am learning heaps of useful ideas and modelling tricks to help a more accurate locost model dow the track.

Stay tuned, we will have a new post soon

Here is a photo of the westfeild petrol tank I have mounted with rubber and 25×3mm ally flat bar with M6×40mm long bolts. The tank took a bit longer to mount just because the original box of 35mm long bolts were a whisker too short so I had to go down to United Fasteners and swap a couple for some M6×40mm . Ahhhhh the run around….easy fixed but still a run around.

I have been really lazy with posting but because I’ve been too busy in the garage. I have finished the top and lower wishbones (almost except for suspension mount and extra bracing under the mount). I have also fully TIG welded the wishbone mounting brackets to the chassis.

I had a bit of extra time the other day and thought I’de get the steering rack mounts made and welded in place, so I did.

Going back a little while (lazy to get out my camera to take a photo) I received my whitepointer scuttle (two halves) and nosecone (looks huge) which really do help make visitors to my garage understand that it is actually a car that I am building.

I have also just finished my petrol tank mounting brackets and bent up some ally straps for it yesterday. Today I found a rubber guru who in two seconds gave me some rubber to fit on the rhs under the tank and some to fit over the ally 25×3 straps, (each strap held down with two M6 bolts). I will post photos of the setup tomorrow (I hope!!).

I just got back from a two week hitch in Moomba for work experience and just picked up my cobra westfield black vinyl seats, alloy-plastic radiator from a VW Polo, and a brand new starter motor to suit the RWD g/box (DENSO SRJ 138 - 4AGE starter motor). I also got my ally fuel tank back after getting the outlet moved from underneathe the tank to the side (photo explains it better) so that nothing fuel related is hanging out the bottom of the car.

Before leaving to Moomba I began making my wishbone jigs and also got a start on the top wishbones. I am yet to finish making my bottom wishbone jig. I worked out the rear track of the car from the inside of the rear wheels and measured how much longer I would need to make the front wishbones to make the front and rear track equal. In the end it worked out to be 20mm difference and so that is how much longer than standard I have made my front wishbones.

These parts definitely put a smile to my face after checking for another time and seeing that hey fit and look good while doing so. I definitely will get a start on my lower wishbone jig tomorrow.

Today I got time to work on the chassis, capping any open ended RHS, and finished welding any tack-welded RHS. The rest of the time I spent working out where to drill the holes for the trailing arms on the trailing arm housing(s) on the chassis. I made new A-frame stands for the chassis to sit flat on and then drilled 13mm holes 210mm apart in order to make the trailing arms move parallel. All I have to do is get the brackets welded to the diff now, which will be done sometime this week hopefully. Most of the time was spent cleaning up the MIG-welded rear panels both with a grinder and flap disc followed by the TIG-welder the smoothen out any edges. TIG welding is so slow but in the end so worth the extra time put in just because of how nice it looks when the weld is finished (flat and stitched).

Yesterday I ended up only cutting and re-welding the arm of the exhaust side engine mount which allowed me to line up the engine pretty well with the gear box attached. I did this because as it turns out, the engine mounts I bought are made for a much narrower car and if I were to use them, they required me to drill and bolt the rubber mounts through the lower engine bay chassis members which was never going to happen. I sat the engine back from the bars FU1 and FU2 about 15mm to the front pulley which i think worked out pretty well giving a fare bit of space for the steering column to come through. I also centered the end of the gearbox in the transmission tunnel. The high side of the sump was made 25mm lower than the bottom of the chassis and when the mounts were tightened and engine placed all its weight on it sagged about 2-3mm but I think its still good.

Yesterday I got an early start on welding the newly arrived gusset plates. The plates for the engine mounts and the driver side foot well were only tack welded because holes still need to be drilled for the engine mount isolator bolts and the holes for the master cylinders for the floor mounted pedal box.

After completing most of the welding I planned on doing yesterday I got some water based acidic degreaser and tried cleaning all the crap off the gearbox. It all came off and now looks almost brand new. Today I got called to collect the gearbox mounting plate, all I need to do is drill the two holes in order to allow the plate to be bolted to the gearbox mount.

I also just remembered that I bought a collapsible MOMO KE70 steering wheel boss kit. This means that the steering wheel I need to buy has to be a MOMO steering wheel with an ‘e’ marking on the back of it. I got the boss kit from Revolution Race-gear.

Today I only had a little time which I spent on the thing which has been bugging me for a while, which was the alternator side engine mount. The reason why it was bugging me so much was because the bottom left hand side of the engine mount plate did not have a hole (6.5mm) to allow the dowel from the block to go through and more importantly the alternator mount was in the way. The first thing I did was drill a 6.5mm hole 15mm away from the left hand side hole for the dowel. Then I marked where the alternator mount is in the way of the engine mount and drew a straight line on the mount, cut the corner and raised it about 12mm and re-welded it. Now the engine mount fits flat and lines up all the bolt holes perfectly.

Also today I took my brother to go sit in some seats at revolution racegear and he sort of decided for me that I should go all out and get the Cobra roadster 7 seats. Whilst we were there we bought a helmet that we can use for the clubby (I know its early) but we also need one by this friday because we have been invited to attend a private track day at Mallala where there will be a large range of exotic tin-top cars and we will have the chance to take rides in whichever we please depending on the owner of the car (and what he/she thinks of you).