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Learning how to build Lotus Seven replicas...together!
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PostPosted: May 12, 2011, 12:48 am 
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Joined: May 11, 2011, 11:04 pm
Posts: 12
Location: Portland Oregon
Hi out there. This is my first posting. I started on my locost about a year and a half ago. I started with a 76 Mustang II 2300 four banger. I made my frame from the Haynes book. I wanted to try to make most of it myself including the nose and the scuttle. I made them out of 22 gage steal. Well I also had this great idea to have a curved windshield with no frame - just having the bottom of the glass sit in a build-in channel on the scuttle and the stanchions. We'll I think it looks great but, I have now cracked two windshields. The first one I picked up at the local Pick n Pull out of a 68 Karmann Gia. I cut it using a CRL 100 grit two step bit. It took a long time to cut but looked good - but I cracked it pulling it in and out of the channel. I got another one from an 80 Mazda pickup (close to the same curve). Well, I broke this one on the first cut. I have decided to go with the Kinetic windshield. I spoke with them and they will sell me the kit with no glass. They will first send me the stanchions and hardware to bolt them onto my scuttle. I will then make a paper pattern of the windshield shape that will fit my scuttle, send it to Kinetic and they will make the frame for me. I will then have a piece of flat windshield glass cut to fit the frame. Sounds good to me. I am givin up on the glass cutting stuff. Too much work and too risky. Here are some pictures of my build at http://www.flickr.com/photos/64lotus7


Last edited by 1964FordGalaxie on May 16, 2011, 12:26 am, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: May 12, 2011, 9:43 am 
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Any chance you got a picture with the curved piece in place before it broke? You get an A for effort anyway. It would be nice to work out a curved windshield, but sounds like it needs support like a full frame and stanchions...

Welcome to the forum....

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PostPosted: May 12, 2011, 9:52 am 
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You got one completed and were test fitting it?
Hats off dude, you have far more patience than I do :cheers:
What I have managed to figure out is that the act of cutting introduces microfractures in the edges of the glass. ..
Maybe a thin wipe of adhesive rubber on the edges immediately after cutting to hold the edge together and protect it from bumps?
Single layered wasn't tooooooooo hard but laminate. .. darn good job getting even one done!

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PostPosted: May 12, 2011, 12:02 pm 
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Do the glass guys actually heat the edges after cutting to melt the lamination film and stress relieve the edges? In principle the free-standing glass should work - the 'Zipper' 32 roadsters all used free-standing 'super bug' windshields that were either chopped or narrowed, if not both.

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PostPosted: May 12, 2011, 12:21 pm 
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Location: White Rock, BC, Canada
It's my understanding that you should only use new glass for it, and even then it's still high risk to break. Seem to remember the guys who cut glass expect a 1/3 failure rate. I'd really like a curved windshield on mine as well but we shall see when it comes time for that.

Thanks for posting your results. Always good to see someone else's experiences.

Cheers,
Cory

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PostPosted: May 12, 2011, 12:22 pm 
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Warren Nethercote wrote:
Do the glass guys actually heat the edges after cutting to melt the lamination film and stress relieve the edges? In principle the free-standing glass should work - the 'Zipper' 32 roadsters all used free-standing 'super bug' windshields that were either chopped or narrowed, if not both.


Hmmmmm, interesting thought, just the perimeter would be pretty easy. The interweb provided DYI windshield trimming methods I've seen all said "too much effort" to me. ..
I imagine you could find a clear heat applied tape of some kind to use for an edge wrap/protective skin too.

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PostPosted: May 12, 2011, 3:38 pm 
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Joined: August 13, 2008, 10:36 am
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Location: Lynchburg, VA
Diverting a little from curved to two-piece.

You can make a nice shape from two pieces joined at the middle
angled back as was done in the early fifties back >>

No cutting, no breaking, fun.


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PostPosted: May 14, 2011, 12:27 am 
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Joined: May 11, 2011, 11:04 pm
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Location: Portland Oregon
I have some pretty good pictures of my build, I just can't figure out how to attach them yet. Can anyone offer some instructions to this none IT guy. Thanks


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PostPosted: May 14, 2011, 2:57 am 
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Location: Edmonton, Alberta
Create a photobucket, flickr, or picasa account, and upload them there. You'll be able to post them anywhere you want, email links, and sort/organize the pictures. Plus, once you've started a picture hosting account, you never need to learn how to post pictures on any new forums you join, or deal with size limits, since you've saved them all in one place.


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PostPosted: May 14, 2011, 6:47 am 
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firebat45 wrote:
Plus, once you've started a picture hosting account, you never need to learn how to post pictures on any new forums you join, or deal with size limits, since you've saved them all in one place.


...which will usually go away in a year to eighteen months if you don't send them money or regularly access the account.

When I join a new forum I usually go to the oldest threads first (I want information, after all, that's why I signed up...) and step back forward. For a few forums, the archives are more useless than not. Something way cool was shown and discussed back in '03, but all the pictures are little square 404 blocks now, and the user who posted them hasn't logged in since '07, for example.


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PostPosted: May 14, 2011, 7:54 am 
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Welcome to the looneybin. My first car was a '64 Galaxie 4 door 289 with Cruise-O-Matic trans. I loved that car, as most guys do their first car. My brother had a '64 2door 390 4-speed.

I'm a big dfan of uploading the this site for many reasons I won't go into. One of the few nice things of Windows Vista and 7 is a program they added under Accessories. It is called "Snipping Tool". I can't remember if it is loaded by default. You may have to extract the program manually from your Vista cd or archive.

It acts as a "print screen" and a cropping tool all in one and saves the image as a jpg. Just have what you want to upload showing on your screen, open Snipping Tool, and draw a window around what you want to upload. It is that easy. It works on the "image" on the screen so it works on websites and any other program that runs under the Windows environment. If you can see it on te screen, you can make a jpg of it.

You can do the same thing without "Snipping Tool" by simply clicking the "prtscr" button on your keyboard. It puts an image of what is on your display onto your Clipboard. You can then open MS Paint and paste the entire page in. Crop the image and save. I've been using this technique for over 20 years. But I find Snipping Tool so much quicker and easier.

Both methods save the jpg in a ~50-100K filesize and will show up on the locost site in the actual size it was when you cropped it.

Of course if you are not using Microsoft programs, then it is not any help. Hopefully, there are similar programs you can use.

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Visit my ongoing MGB Rustoration log: over HERE

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PostPosted: May 14, 2011, 9:38 am 
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rx7locost wrote:
One of the few nice things of Windows Vista and 7 is a program they added under Accessories. It is called "Snipping Tool".



It's called GRAB in the Mac world. Or in other words no matter your platform there's a way to do it nice and easily and yes loading the pics directly to the forum is the very best way!

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PostPosted: May 14, 2011, 10:35 am 
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I design machines that form and manipulate glass for my job, and I've gleaned some knowledge of laminated and non-laminated glass working techniques. Cutting glass definitely introduces micro-fractures at the cut edge, and flame working those edges afterwards seems to be the best way to alleviate those problems. Flameworking windshield glass with that plastic layer might be kind of sketchy though.

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PostPosted: May 14, 2011, 12:09 pm 
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Yes, the Grab and Snipping Tool are good choices, since they get just what's on the screen. My camera gives me 2816 pixel wide images which are too big for this forum (and my monitor as well) so I photoshop them down (to 704, usually, which divides the dimensions by four). Please don't upload photos bigger than 900 pixels wide, because even if they're within the memory limits for the forum, it forces us readers to scroll side to side to view it, and to read any messages on the page with the photo.

The only thing wrong with "Grab" is it saves in .tiff format, which isn't an accepateble format fot this forum's software, and "Snipping Tool" also does some bigger-than-necessary uncompressed format; I generally convert them to medium quality .jpg and out of plain cussed laziness, I'm demonstrating that by Grabbing a hunk of message from this very page.

Then save the photo on your computer somewhere, and when you're posting your message, Browse for it in the <Upload attachment> window under your text, and Bob's your uncle.

The only quirk is, if you're attaching a series of photos, you have to upload the last one first and work your way back to the first one.

Y'know, we should put a little tutorial on the FAQ forum for how to do this stuff. My first successful photo post took me about ten days and numerous e-mails back and forth with the founder of this forum.

PS to OP: send me an e-mail at work (click <Contact us> on the kineticvehicles.com main menu for how to do it) and I'll get a set of stanchions and hardware out to you.


You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

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PostPosted: May 14, 2011, 12:53 pm 
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The only quirk is, if you're attaching a series of photos, you have to upload the last one first and work your way back to the first one.


Jack, the photos can be uploaded in any order. Once uploaded, there is a command window just below the message body window that allows the photos to be inserted anywhere, even between text. They are listed in a drop-down window by filename. One could easily insert the first photo then the third, then the second if you have a mind to. The photos show up in the location that the curser is in when"inserted". That command window doesn't show up until the first photo is uploaded.

I'll have to look at reducing the filesize even further. I thought I was doing good at <100Kb. Thanks.

One of the nice things about using the snipping tool is that the photo shows up on these pages the actual image size that was cropped. If you "snip" a photo at 1/2 screen size, that is the size that shows up in this forum. Before settling on Snipping tool, I tried many ways using MS Picture Manager in which I could control the file size via JPG compression and pixel size, but never found a way that produced an expected image size on this forum. Sometimes they showed small and sometimes they were very large images. Just my ineptness I perhaps.

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“Any suspension will work if you don’t let it.” - Colin Chapman

Visit my ongoing MGB Rustoration log: over HERE

Or my Wankel powered Locost log : over HERE

And don't forget my Cushman Truckster resto Locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=17766


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