LocostUSA.com

[EDIT 05/14/2011: Ron lost interest in the project in mid 2002. I hauled it out of my shop into the yard, and then over to his house in bits over the next couple of years. At that point, we had a rolling chassis and he was supposed to do the wiring.

Various things happened, and I never got started on my build. Three weeks after I started this thread, Ron's wife called to tell me he'd died, and she wanted me to have "all that car stuff."

A couple of months ago my wife reminded me that I'd never built her car, and now that I'd shed the race car and other projects, now would be a good time. I'm not quite sure when my 7 became her 7, but spousal buy-in is always valuable.

I found this forum, and started this thread to show that I've done this (at least partway) before, before starting a thread on a new build. Then this one drops back into my lap.

It will be midsummer before I can get over to Ron's and see how much of the car I can find. His wife says it is spread out over a couple of rent-a-sheds and a storage building in the back yard. If I can find enough of the pieces I'll go ahead and finish it. I'm fairly sure it's all there somewhere; Ron seldom threw anything away. Eleven years later it's not the car I want to build, but it's almost done...

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I got turned on to the Lotus 7 in early 2000.

I was intrigued. Like hundreds of other people who've looked at a Seven, I thought, "Hey, I could build one of those." Colin Chapman reportedly did his first car in his living room; hell, I had a pretty nice workshop and a lot more tools than Chapman did then.

One problem was, I already *had* a project - the Kelmark, which was fairly far along in the parts-collecting stage. However, there was a sizeable amount of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about welding up a chassis from scratch. Not to mention all the details of a fairly complex mid engine, 4wd layout. A Seven, on the other hand...

I'm subject to sudden enthusiasms. Most of them don't go anywhere, but it beats watching TV. Anyway, I talked about it to fellow car geek Ron Melson, who I've known since high school. Ron dug up a bunch more stuff on Sevens, including some decent chassis and suspension drawings. I kept thinking about it. I had a 1971 Capri with an almost-new 2.0, but the body was succumbing to terminal rot. I'd already planned to retire the car at the end of the year, and I didn't have anything else to do with the driveline... if I scavenged as much stuff as possible from the Capri, I might be able to build a Seven for, say, somewhere between $500 and $1000.

I didn't want to jump tracks with so much invested in the Kelmark, but a Seven would be simple enough for me to get some practice and confidence, and I could always sell the Seven clone after I was done. I talked about it with AB, my wife, who objected strongly. No, there would be no selling it. *She* would drive it. When would it be finished?

Ron and I built the wooden cockpit mockup in June. I'm bulky and I've had knee surgery; I wanted to be sure I could get in and out of a 7 before I spent much more time making plans. Ron came over and we used some scrap wood I had in the shop to make the mockup. A Series I 7 was 39.5 inches wide. Current Caterhams are 42 inches. The mockup showed that was awfully tight; we decided to use 46 inches. That was fortunate, as it worked well with the widths of the rear end front end bits we wound up with.




I was in no particular hurry; I had plenty of irons in the fire already and funds were short. Ron was saying he'd like to have a similar car. He decided to scrap his 1984 Mustang and use it as a donor for his car. And he was willing to buy the materials and start right now.

That was fine with me. I could have all the "learning experiences" on someone else's car. After years of hot rodding, this was the first time I was actually starting a build completely from scratch, without a least a body or chassis for a guide.

We weren't planning to build an accurate Seven replica, just to use the basic idea and build our own car. Sort of a 'stand-off scale' Seven. We knew the 5.0 would be overkill for such a small car, but "Free is a quality overcoming many faults."

Our initial plan:
1984 Ford 5.0 V8, T5 5-speed

Mustang steering knuckles, power rack, instruments, steering column, pedal assembly, brake booster and master cylinder, parking brake, and wiper mechanism

15x7 wheels, 235-70/15 tires from the Mustang

1985 Nissan Maxima semi-trailing-arm IRS, disc brakes, 3.36:1 ratio

estimated weight: 1500 pounds

That left a lot of details unstated, deliberately. We would make further decisions as we went. Lots of the parts we scavenged from the Mustang were bigger and/or heavier than we needed, and other stuff was sometimes not optimal, but we were going for expedience instead of perfection. We'd both had enough terminally stalled projects; we intended to get this one on the road quickly.

Ron's first investment - $60 worth of 1" square steel tubing from a salvage and remainder yard. That's my Kelmark body sitting on a trailer in the background.



If we had only known... the tubing we got was rusty and had to be cleaned before we used it. And it turned out to be hot rolled. It's the same strength as cold rolled, but nasty to weld. We found out later we could have got new cold rolled tubing for less money. [sigh]

Ron spent close to 8 hours with the disc sander and wire wheel cleaning the stuff up.



We had already decided to build the 7s when Ron's wife got him a book called "How To Make Your Own Sports Car for #250". [British pounds] The book, by Ron Champion, described the construction of a car similar to a Lotus 7, called a 'Locost'. We had already deviated substantially from the Lotus/Locost layout, but the book was a great source of tips and techniques, one of which was to use a sheet of plywood to build the chassis on. Ron snagged a sheet of 1/2" ply and we used the tape measure and chalk line to mark the outlines where the lower tubes went. We slid most of our stock of 1" tubing between the sawhorses and plywood, leveled everything up, and used a lot of C-clamps.



It's not a heavy machined steel surface plate like the fancy race car and street rod shops use, but it's close enough. We were within 1/32" from end to end, which is a hell of a lot closer than Detroit gets! One of the major realizations from the project was that we didn't need perfection; sometimes "close enough" really *is* close enough.

We used the Locost design for the front bulkhead. I made this fixture to hold the pieces. You can barely see the 1/8" holes drilled in the horizontal tubes. They are in the center of each tube and define the centerline of the chassis. The rear tubes have similar holes. This will let us check our alignment as we work on the chassis and provide a true centerline for welding the suspension pieces on and aligning the wheels.



The main tubes are all in place and I've unclamped the chassis so I can roll it around and weld underneath. It's quite flexible at this point as there is no triangulation.



Triangulation pieces are welded on here. The chassis had to be carefully leveled and trued, and I checked the alignment after every piece was welded in. The diagonals made it much stiffer.

One of the deviations from the Lotus design is the "kink point" at your hip, just ahead of the rear wheel. I think my layout is much stronger. Colin Chapman only had to deal with 50 hp on the first 7s; Ron's 225 hp 5.0 would turn a real 7 into a pretzel. You'll see later where I've added extra tubes for stiffening.



Here it is flipped back rightside up. Old cast iron intake manifold helps weight it down onto the leveling shims. It will remain straight after the diagonals are welded in. Welding puts all sorts of residual stresses into the structure; it tries to turn into op art as you progress, so you have to keep straightening it as you go. Once it's done it'll stay straight.




Sorry about the pictures. For some reason I could never seem to get a clear shot of anything to start with, and the scanner I used 10 years ago was no great shakes even then. I don't have the original pictures any more.

_________________
"There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one.
For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ..." Randall Garrett

TRX, Good looking build. Are you and/or Ron going to be at the "Midwest Gathering" in June? Marble Falls, Ar!

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

I was planning to drop by the one in Harrison AR and say hello, except it turned into Branson MO, and then I started hearing about reservations and name tags, at which point it all started sounding awfully formal.

Dave, so where are you in your Locost build?

Bill

No, No, No TRX the gathering is in Harrison/ Marble Falls, Arkansas!!!!!!!! Forget Branson. It is NOT in Branson. It is VERY informal. The name tags are for some of us OLD guys like me so I'll know who I am. You don't need no stinkin name tag ifen you don't want one. Just be there to share the se7en spirit. Russ

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You meet the nicest people in a Locost Se7en.

Right now, I haven't quite decided if I'm going to build another car.

Upside: my wife is emphatically in favor of building a Locost.

Downside: I just sold the race car and all the extra bits that went with it, and it feels sort of nice to only have to worry about basic vehicle maintenance for a while.

I'm just gumming the idea around the edges, making some sketches and cost sheets, and taking my time before I decide take on another project.

Well, okay then. [grin]

Meanwhile, concurrently with the chassis work, we stripped Ron's project Mustang of its naughty bits. The only day we had to do it was a nice sunny 109F Arkansas brain-frying summer day. We probably drank five gallons of water. Each. Not to mention getting sunburned. And grouchy. But we made it...



Ron's jacking the car up so we can get started. Or else the heat was getting to him already...



The carbureted 5.0 in its native habitat. It's an '84 model. The engine is old and a bit weak in the knees, but it has a new clutch and a good five speed. Ron's 281 destroker will replace the 5.0 after the car gets on the road.



The magic moment... well, for some reason we had a hell of a time getting the thing tilted just right to clear the shifter stub, but it was a great victory all the same. Anything is a great victory when the sun is frying your brains.



The 5.0 has arrived! You can see the chassis standing up against the back wall of the shop.



But wait! There's more! We planned to scavenge some of the front end parts, so we dropped the K-member, which turned out to be a real pain in the ass. We'd already disassembled the engine hoist and put it in Ron's shed, then we found out we were too tired to even drag the loaded K-member, much less lift it into the truck! So we reassembled the hoist...



The K-member in the back of my Mazda pickup. Do you care? Probably not. But to us... it was a major event. By this time we're sunburned, dehydrated, exhausted, and generally wasted. It's been a long, long day. I took a photograph to celebrate.



Back at my place with the K-member. We were too tired to unload it, so we blocked the engine and chassis in place to see how things fit. Not bad eh? The 7s put the engine way forward; we pulled the 5.0 back as far as we could.

Don't be fooled by Ron's thoughtful expression; I think he was passed out when I took this shot. At this time we're only two weeks from "go". Not bad eh?



...and that's the end of that long, long day!

Next week we're at the local (only 35 miles away) U-Pull-It junkyard armed with measuring tape and tools. It turned out almost all the potential IRS donor cars were right at 57 inches flange-to-flange. We picked a Nissan Maxima as the donor. It's 10 AM, barely 100 degrees yet.



The Maxima had semi-trailing arms and rear discs. The rear is essentially the same as the one under a 280ZX, except they had a lot of Maximas at the junkyard and no complete ZX rears.



Thirty minutes later. Four bolts, parking brake cable, brake hose, and twenty minutes of fighting the exhaust pipe out of the way. The whole wazoo drops out as an assembly. It cost Ron $100, and another $20 for the driveshaft.



In Ron's truck for the ride home. We'll be disposing of the crossmember and most of the arms later; the junkyard didn't care if we took the whole thing.



This is almost a month later. There's a lot of work here, but you can't see much from the picture. The motor mounts are done and the engine is bolted down; the cowl frame is built, and we've decided where to put the dashboard and steering column. Since cost is a big factor here, we've decided to use the Mustang's instrument cluster, which had to be scooted over to the middle to clear the column.



If you look you'll see that the engine sits quite high in the frame. This is deliberate. The lowest part of the driveline was the bottom of the bellhousing. We ground on that a bit, then made it flush with the bottom of the frame. We'd both owned severely-lowered street cars before, and neither of us wanted to get hung up on a speed bump again, or to fill the bellhousing with freezing slush so the engine wouldn't crank in the morning, etc.

From this angle it looks like the valve covers are higher than the scuttle, but in reality the hood line just missed the front edges of the valve covers. This left the carburetor, air cleaner, and top half of the distributor to stick out the top.

Some net.experts exclaimed in horror, but the engine still sat over four inches lower than it did in the Mustang, and the roadster was almost the same width.

Like most people who've started something like this have mentioned, the major part of time is in the brackets and details. It took longer to make the A- arms than it did to make the chassis! Just about everything has gone that way.

Several rolls of 35mm film were lost by the developer, or there'd be a lot more pictures...



Now we're finishing up all the main structure welding, so we're flipping the chassis into convenient positions. It's still light enough for one man to handle.



Ron grinding some welds off the tubing joints.



Ron grinding down the seam welds for the floor panels. Since there were three panels, there was a *lot* of weld bead!

One panel would have been better, but these were leftovers after having the side panels sheared, so it was a lot cheaper than buying another sheet of steel.



These are the shock absorber brackets that go on the lower A-arm. I ganged them up for cutting and sanding.



One side of the lower A-arm has already been welded, and it has just been flipped over. Fixture keeps the arm from distorting during welding.



All welded up. Major FUD here, but I'm happy with the result. I had originally intended to just tack it all together and take it to a Real Welder(tm), but I was having one of those days when pulling the trigger of the MIG left beautiful shiny welds.

Why grind the welds? I wouldn't be too aggressive about that...

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