I thought Pat's attitude was unfortunate. He mentions his mates turned to cannibus and abandoned the project, but it doesn't occur to him he might have been the cause!
So far as I'm concerned if someone wants to build a Locost and put a picnic basket on the back and drive around the countryside instead of racing for a national championship, I think that's great!
Quote:
I really didn't know Pintos were great handling cars. Back in my day, they were a joke. I don't know, maybe they changed them.
I've looked at Miata, Subaru and Pinto parts so far, there are models in my SketchUp project that you can overlay on one another or try using. The Pinto parts are available in different pin heights and different KPIs from multiple sources. The various associated parts are widely available like ball joints, bump steer adjusters, hubs in different bolt patterns, rotors of many sizes, varieties of calipers and adapters. You can go from a $29 integrated hub and rotor to probably $1000 for high tech alloy parts per corner.
So far I'm actually using the Pinto parts. The Miata part is very similar but has about 1" less distance from the steering axis to the wheel mounting surface. That's probably good because you get a bigger choice of wheel offsets to play with. The Pinto part with the 2" drop pin puts the lower BJ closer to the ground which is good. You can't easily modify the Miata part for this because the mounting boss is at a 27 degree angle, so you can't just weld an extension on the bottom like a Spitfire upright.
I'm trying to leave the jury out on these things until a few cars are built, these are just my observations so far from trying to use the units I mentioned in a model.
Edit:
I had a little diatribe here, but Justin said it better!