LocostUSA.com

Thought I'd send in a couple pictures of my new shop. Trying to think thru what I'd like my Locost to look like and since I'm going thru a painful learning curve, I thought that might be entertaining for you folks to watch. So here they are, the first one shows the parts, useful and otherwise, starting to accumulate in the background and a member of the peanut gallery. The second picture shows a closer look at where the rear suspension is going. This is setting up for IRS but will also be suitable for live rear. At the moment a design goal is to avoid using all the tubing around the diff/transaxle making up a box. I am going to try to use a trailing radius rods / transverse links rear to accomplish this.

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

Forgot to mention, workshop courtesy of Google Sketchup also the learning curve I should add...

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

That Google SketchUp is a pretty powerful little program, especially for a freebie. But, I know what you mean about the learning curve as I'm using it to help me with some of the mods that I plan to make to my car once I get started on it. Your design is looking good so far. Keep it coming.

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Mike - Read my story at http://twinlakesseven.blogspot.com/

Here's another picture. Looks pretty much the same but most of the tubes have been redrawn and adjusted in various ways. Learned painful lessons about tubes and arcs that aren't really round but made out of little lines. And how these things don't enjoy being mated because the little lines that look like curves aren't and don't want to line up. I suspect my education has hardly even started. In the old days you could just beat your apprentices until the moral improved, but that's not working for me.

Looks like this car's momma might have spent some time near the local circle tracks... Because race car.

I didn't get the front height right because I must have referenced off the wrong thing. I am also going to change the upper wishbone mount by moving it onto a vertical member so that it is more adjustable for different spindles and ride heights without adjusting the frame much.

Also need to read the roll cage specs again..

Amazing how many hours this stuff takes. I grabbed the model for an R1 shock from Killernoodle - he must have put huge hours into that. I also grabbed the Caterham duratech model. Not finding many useful models though. I am making some extremly basic model for the spindles, just basically the bolt holes.

Ngpmike, what type of changes are you working on? Thanks for the encouragement.,,

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

Yo Marcus-
Quit standin around w/ your hands in your pockets and ya might get sumthin done around here!

JDK

Better sweep those sesame seeds off the floor or Pook will never accept you as a peer.

Marcus,

My mods aren't anything earth shaking. I started with a McSorley "Book" frame drawing, then swapped in a Gibbs front frame assy. I also downsloped the cockpit side rails (N1 & N2) similar to an original "7". As a matter of comfort more than anything else, I plan on changing those rails, as well as the top rails on the trans tunnel, to round tubing. Finally, I'm modifying the structure aft of the seat bulkhead to accept the IRS from my Miata donor. Most of this I could probably just do "in steel", but since I can't actually start on the car yet I decided to learn to use the CAD and do it on paper for now.

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Mike - Read my story at http://twinlakesseven.blogspot.com/

Oh, one more thing, or maybe two. Depends on how you look at it. I'm planning to move the scuttle and dash board back a few inches, ala tailwind. This is partly for aesthetics, and partly for structure. I want to make the dash frame tie into the frame uprights and the trans tunnel as well as the forward structure to help the torsional rigidity of the cockpit area.

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Mike - Read my story at http://twinlakesseven.blogspot.com/

Progress is slow, but it's happening. The guy in the back ground was creeping me out. He always has his hand in his pockets. That means he wasn't messing with my junk, but I'm not sure about - well I just got rid of him. Now I have a wooden dummy which I can pose, but it looks like a lot of work to do that.

I made up a simple model of the Wilwood MII front spindle. Just the axle stub and mountings for ball joints / rod ends. I put a rear wheel on front, they are 9" wide, 4 inch backspacing steel oval track jobs. The scrub radius looks much to large, but I'm not sure where the WMS is, I need to find hubs I guess and draw one up too. Maybe I'll draw up the Miata instead. I an going to have a huge pile of parts in the background, just like a real shop.

I made up a model of a Hewland transaxle, again pretty simple. I'm thinking more on the lines of Passat, but I had a Rhino case in the basement. It would be fine for a stock Duratech/Zetech. It is ~7.5" from bell housing face to driveshaft centerline. At first it didn't seem to fit, but I think my rear wheels were too far forward.

Ngpmike do you have models for the Miata rear uprights and diff? If you do I could use them and also work on a more normal rear end.

I still think the transaxle will work, but may be missing a bunch of details. Do you think passengers would mind holding one of those outboard motor gas tanks on their lap? It would be fun to see the expression on their face. Then I could say it was just water after we were driving for awhile. Then later I could explain it had beer in it and stick the hose in my mouth. No, this is probably wrong.... Sigh.

I put a couple of rear suspension trailing radius rods on the driver side. Just for basic space checking now. Not sure if they should be long enough to bolt to front roll bar, that's about 34". I will have to look at the pictures of a Lotus Seven shipped from the factory with this setup. We had pictures on this site a year or two ago from the ebay auction for that car.

I just have simple holes for the front suspension in the frame now. In real life it will have "tear tabs" or a setup for adjustable front roll centers.

Oh, I got lost inside the Duratech today. Hmmph, no pistons or valves in there... It was free though.

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

Ngpmike I liked the way the tailwind version looked. Did you model a scuttle or are you just doing the frame?

The stiffness is best improved with a good tunnel and making sure the rest of the frame connects well to it. I am trying to do this with making the sides taller with the roll bar braces. I also want the tubes going forward to the front suspension to fit under the hood and scuttle. So I need sketchup parts for that stuff too.

It is not a bad idea to do a good job with the dash structure, but the cockpit is still the weakest link. On Lotus race cars you can see the do a good dash/bulkhead and then "sister" the upper rail with another member which makes shallow triangles where it joins at the front and back of the cockpit, does that make sense? Without that I don't think the strong dash will do much.

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

Marcus,

So far, I'm just working on the frame. Haven't yet learned to do the more "organic" forms with SketchUp such as a nose cone or scuttle. I do plan on integrating the scuttle frame into the structure forward, and into the trans tunnel. The cockpit sides will probably be beefed up with the side bars of a removable cage. Still mulling that one over in my mind. I would like the car to look like a real Lotus, but cage hoop behind the windshield is probably mandatory around here as we have a BIG whitetail deer population. As for the Miata bits, so far I'm just working with pivot points, roll centers, etc. There are some Models on the forum, not sure if they're SketchUp compatible though. Like I said before, I'm really new to CAD. For example, I drew up the top tube that curves around the back of the frame and now I can't seem to duplicate it. I can't remember what I did the first time! Oh well, maybe it's just a senior moment. I'm sure it will come to me sooner or later. Having fun with S/U in the meantime.

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Mike - Read my story at http://twinlakesseven.blogspot.com/

I see what appear to be a number of less common ideas being integrated into this design...Well, either that or it's just the learning curve showing through.

I'm very interested to watch it continue taking shape.

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-Justin

"Orville Wright did not have a pilots license." - Gordon MacKenzie

Still plugging away. Little stuff right now.

I added stub axles and a WMS to the rear uprights. I actually used the MII stubs from the front, but probably doesn't matter. The WMS is correct at least roughly. The diagram on our spindle/upright are ambiguous maybe. So we see the beginnings of some problems here. This is the value of doing modeling.

I had never noticed how small and short in height the Miata rear upright is. When you look at race cars they often use their custom uprights to move the connections out as far as the edges of the tire rim or so. So on my race car the lower mountings for the wishbones line up and basically use the same bolt holes as the lower transaxle mounting holes. Then the coilover is bolted to the mounting of the upper link. Con't do that either here. Already we have twice as many bolts and brackets as the race car would. We also need tubes for all that.

I am thinking of building some shelves in the back of "my messy shop" and we can file pieces there. So we can try some other uprights and see how they look, including something we could fabricate from a sealed hub unit or a sand buggy "micro stub kit". Soon I can put this stuff in the Sketchup public repo and then we can share all these parts and ideas.

Any ideas on other uprights? Perhaps what Gonzo is using? I would just a need a couple of basic measurements, we need the location of the bushing holes and the WMS to get going.

I am going to make a simple scuttle next.

Other changes. I put in the location for the starter motor on the transaxle bellhousing and an inboard brake disk which also comes with the transaxle. Do the Passat / Audi still use inboard disk brakes?

I've put rod ends on more tubes and added another frame tube or two. Starting to think about where the tubes go in the main roll hoop to take the suspension and transaxle mounts. So we need another rear upright or two to make general solutions...

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

The side with a bit more bracing and the [rooster] pit floor too. THe scuttle isn't placed quite right here, but I'm going to try and make a better scuttle anyway.

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

Yo Marcus-
You mean the rears? I'm using Thunderbird/Cougar IRS uprights. Are the measurements/drawings on here somewhere? If not, I can measure up a couple of 'em and let ya know...

JDK