LocostUSA.com

Finished welding the frame. Received my 14" Diamond Racing Stock car rims. Received the Protech shocks. Received the nose cone from C.O.L.D.
Now let me think out loud. The tires are 195 60 14" with a radius of 11.4". I'm shooting for a ride height of 4.5". I mock up the diff height at where it should be at 33% of the shock travel from compressed (total shock travel is 3") static load and it's very close to my ride height. Measured up and fabbed the trailing arms and installed them. I've positioned the trailing arm frame bracket so the trailing arm is horizontal at this mocked up ride/diff height. Make sense so far???? I'm open to feed back.
Moved the diff up and down thru the shock travel and all the yoke does at the end of the torque tube is rock, it doesn't move forward or rearward any noticeable amount. If it does it may be 1/16" or so which to me is nothing.
Next project is the panhard, then the torque tube mount bracket and the tunnel.
As always pics are worth a thousand words..........

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Perry

'If man built it, man can fix it'
"No one ever told me I couldn't do it."
"If you can't build it safe, don't build it."

Perry's Locost Super Che7enette Build
Perry's TBird Based 5.0L Super 7 L.S.O
Perry's S10 Super 7 The 3rd
Perry's 4th Build The Topolino 500 (Little Mouse) Altered
Perry's 5th Build the Super Slant 6 Super 7
Perry's Final Build the 1929 Mercedes Gazelle

C.O.L.D. is still around? Wow! I thought they were LONG gone.

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The Lethal Locost
The Lethal Locost 2 - Even More Lethalerer

Yeah, bought the COLD nose from Chris Bush, easy to deal with but he sounds very busy. Ordered it and 2 weeks later I'm test fitting on the frame.

_________________
Perry

'If man built it, man can fix it'
"No one ever told me I couldn't do it."
"If you can't build it safe, don't build it."

Perry's Locost Super Che7enette Build
Perry's TBird Based 5.0L Super 7 L.S.O
Perry's S10 Super 7 The 3rd
Perry's 4th Build The Topolino 500 (Little Mouse) Altered
Perry's 5th Build the Super Slant 6 Super 7
Perry's Final Build the 1929 Mercedes Gazelle

Couple of pics of the panhard rod I fabbed up.

_________________
Perry

'If man built it, man can fix it'
"No one ever told me I couldn't do it."
"If you can't build it safe, don't build it."

Perry's Locost Super Che7enette Build
Perry's TBird Based 5.0L Super 7 L.S.O
Perry's S10 Super 7 The 3rd
Perry's 4th Build The Topolino 500 (Little Mouse) Altered
Perry's 5th Build the Super Slant 6 Super 7
Perry's Final Build the 1929 Mercedes Gazelle

Make sure you have ALL the travel in the tranny tunnel that you need for the diff. I had to cut the horizontal tube above the diff out of mine and raise it a few inches - AFTER it was built and on the road. Epic PITA. It looks like you have more shock travel than axle travel in the tunnel.

A Lotus/Caterham 7 has about 13" in there.

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The Lethal Locost
The Lethal Locost 2 - Even More Lethalerer

I will 2nd the increase rear tunnel height. It also make life a lot easier for the routing of the E-brake cables into the tunnel. You need BIG radius on the cable bend entering the tunnel if you want the E-brake to actually work. Required to pass inspection in Canada?
Dave W

Looking good Perry. Looking at your pictures, are you going to be able to get that top rear shock bolt out when the body panels are on.

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Graham,
www.earleymotorsports.com

I moved the diff full travel of the Protech shock (3") up and down and it doesn't come close to the top or bottom of the rear tunnel horizontals. I have the shocks at 2" above full colapse at my predicted ride height. So right now the diff can drop 1" and raise 2".
As for the emerg brake cable routing, I can cross the cables (the right brake will exit the left side of the tunnel and vice versa for the left brake cable. This will allow for a greater radius bend from the hand brake lever to the diff tubes. As it is the cables will exit the rear of the tunnel and have to loop forward to come into the front of the backing plate, kind of like an S bend. Another alternative would be to exit the side/bottom of the tunnel and run the cables under the seats through the floor and attach to the backing plate????? This could turn out to be an interesting problem. I'm thinking under the floor plate on each side of the tunnel would be better than exiting the rear of the diff tunnel.
Definately need an e brake to pass inspection.
Anyone have any pics of the way they did their install?

_________________
Perry

'If man built it, man can fix it'
"No one ever told me I couldn't do it."
"If you can't build it safe, don't build it."

Perry's Locost Super Che7enette Build
Perry's TBird Based 5.0L Super 7 L.S.O
Perry's S10 Super 7 The 3rd
Perry's 4th Build The Topolino 500 (Little Mouse) Altered
Perry's 5th Build the Super Slant 6 Super 7
Perry's Final Build the 1929 Mercedes Gazelle

Subscribed, this one's looking great.

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Ford 5.0 into an M3
mikaelvroom.com | @MikaelVroom

What's your rear spring rate? How much do you and your passenger weigh?

Trust me, you will likely want more than 2" bump travel in this car. I started with 2" as per Ron Champion's book, but I found it wasn't enough and it bottomed a lot.. I now have 2-3/4" in mine with an unknown amount of spring pre-load.

Just make sure you ~more~ travel at the diff than you do at the shocks - you want the bumpstops to hit, not the frame.

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The Lethal Locost
The Lethal Locost 2 - Even More Lethalerer

Hey Skinny, I ordered the coilovers from GTS Tuning. Rears are 175# and fronts are 275#, this is what the Lotus 7 used (they tell me). So the rear will compress 1" at 350#. I weigh 240# and the wife 140#, thats 380# plus sprung weight. I'll most likely be looking at heavier springs. But these current springs are a starting point and I expect to tune the suspension later with other spring rates, thats the easy part. I lack the mathamatical expertise to figure all that #@*&%$ on paper first, I'm a nuts and bolts guy, so I pay a little more for it in the end - big deal, like I say in 100 years it won't matter to me any more. For my next build, I will be definately following your footsteps and building my own coilovers. The next build you say? yeah, I have 2 sons, 28 and 30 years old and they will each get a 7 from me.

_________________
Perry

'If man built it, man can fix it'
"No one ever told me I couldn't do it."
"If you can't build it safe, don't build it."

Perry's Locost Super Che7enette Build
Perry's TBird Based 5.0L Super 7 L.S.O
Perry's S10 Super 7 The 3rd
Perry's 4th Build The Topolino 500 (Little Mouse) Altered
Perry's 5th Build the Super Slant 6 Super 7
Perry's Final Build the 1929 Mercedes Gazelle

I wonder if that panhard mounting to the frame will be strong enough? Both the bracket and where it's connected to the frame. I see there is a little diagonal on that lower frame rail to the rear bulkhead. That's a help. Are you going to weld in a steel floor?

The load on that rod would be the weight of the rear of the car times maybe something like .7 - 1.0 g', depending on how hard you plan on cornering plus a safety factor... Just for a starting point, imagine cycling a thousand pounds there...

Off the top of my head, I don't remember what other folks have done here or what the plans call for, but maybe it's worth looking at some other pictures just to be sure..

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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.

I see your point, Horizenjob. I will make the panhard rod 1" dia, thats close to the OEM one. I will weld in a 1" sq tube to horizontally to cross tie the 2 removeable frame brackets, that should spread the load some. Some gussets will be in order too. Again, this is going to be a street cruiser, hopefuuly no great G force cornering. Thanks.

_________________
Perry

'If man built it, man can fix it'
"No one ever told me I couldn't do it."
"If you can't build it safe, don't build it."

Perry's Locost Super Che7enette Build
Perry's TBird Based 5.0L Super 7 L.S.O
Perry's S10 Super 7 The 3rd
Perry's 4th Build The Topolino 500 (Little Mouse) Altered
Perry's 5th Build the Super Slant 6 Super 7
Perry's Final Build the 1929 Mercedes Gazelle

I ran a 1" x 16ga square tube Panhard on my old '72 Capri. Never had any trouble from the rod, but keeping the chassis brackets attached took several iterations. Bumpy Arkansas roads just beat the welds left/right until they broke. So I welded on load speaders, which let the "coat hanger effect" work the edges until the whole chunk it was welded to broke out. I finally wound up with three triangulation braces, with bolted-through backing plates instead of just welds.

That tube is going to flex all the time the car is moving. It'll probably fail near the welds. You need to triangulate close to the rod end, and keep an eye on it for the first few hundred miles before ignoring it. Most of mine failed around a hundred miles.

There's not a lot of side load on the Panhard, but it just keeps working at its attachment point all the time.

In my case I ran a diagonal piece of 1 inch dom tubing from my panhard bracket to my frame at the tunnel as well as a bit of reinforcement with some 1/8 inch plate to the panhard bracket itself.

Al

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Super Seven 3.4