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Excellent progress!

Moti

Do you need the tilt feature because the chassis is wider on a Seven then a FF?

Excellent trailer plans and photos, Fred! My winter project is set in motion.

Mark

Starting to put on the shiny bits. Also I installed the motor after the revised front mounting crossmember was raised. Now nothing hangs down below the bottom of the frame. I will only have 2" ride height. The tradeoff is I will need to add a small 1-1/2" bulge in the front bonnet to keep the motor from sticking out. I also finised the radiator mounting, fan mounting, and painted the calipers "go-faster" red just for fun.

What kind of radiator is that? Is it going to be adequate for a rotary? Planning on using a separate oil cooler?

Radiator is a bar plate Honda Civic dual pass. I will be fabricating a shroud for the fan also. I know the unit is marginal.

The oil cooler is the original very large (and expensive) air-cooled Mazda RX-7 unit wich will also have 5" dual electric fans. The oil cooler will be mounted 12" away from the radiator. Might even try direct ducting fresh air to the oil cooler.

Also planning a Davis electric water pump unit to circulate water between solo runs with the engine off.

Lots of engine bay venting also. Thinking side venting like Jeff Underwoods car

Oil temp and water temp gauges. Other rotary solo Sevens have run a similar setup with a smaller oil cooler and been OK. Fingers crossed and we will see.

Mark

Yup both our cars are setup with the same side venting as Jeffs build.

I've been working on my car's bodywork and I'm thinking of adding additional venting on it and I'm looking at adding two additional vents on the side of the hood. I'm going to duct inside the hood further then what is shown on the picture below. What do you think ?


Cheers,

Fred

Fred,

I would think as long as air flow out is greater than or equal to the air flow in flow in, you got it. Most locosts dont have to worry about aero, but lift at speed could be an issue for some hoods. Maybe the track-day guys can chime in. My stuff will be low speed under 100 MPH for solo/autocross.

Having never done aluminum sheetmetal work myself, I'm buying plenty extra just to mess with ducting and baffles.

Looking forward to see how your idea works out.

Mark

How well that works depends on the air pressure there at the exit. I wonder if it will be a low pressure there since it's in front of the scuttle where the car is still widening. I've also seen where the sheet metal is a little wider where it joins the scuttle so there is an air gap there of about an inch. That wouldn't have the pressure problem, which I don't know exists. Some plastic tubing and colored water would give a pretty quick answer.

how's your build coming?

Not much happend since my last post due to yard/house work before winter starts. I purchased some braided oil lines off e-bay and the -10 AN to metric adaptors from MazdaTrix.

The next thing for this weekend will be to come up with mounts for the oil cooler unit. I am thinking of something flexable to isolate the cooler mount points. I know my chassis is not supposed to flex but I dont want a hard mount and crack a very expensive cooler unit. I will post pics when I figure it out.

Also need a better garage heater. Winter is on its way.

...mark

My build log has never been on page 3 before but life gets in the way sometimes. Time to get back on the Locost project.

Nice build. Racing this season?

When you get a chance, can you provide a breakdown of your front suspension setup? Really the length of the lower control arm or part # and matching length of swaged tubing. Off the shelf front bits are the way to go.

The upper swaged tubes are 6" long with 5/8" threads.

The lower main control arm is 14" from the center of the monoball housing to the female threaded end. The threaded end is 3/4". THis unit was an "off the shelf" part from a stock car supply company. The unit was called a 15-1/2" control arm for an asphalt or ASA stock car. I assume the 15-1/2" dimension is assuming a dimension from the ball joint housing to the center of the rod end when installed into the tube. I assume most manufacturers measure these this way. I works for me. Instead of a lower ball joint, I used a press fit monoball spherical bearing with a replacable pin/stud. The pin/stud has the correct taper for my Mustang II upright. I think they pretty much make studs for any ball joint taper.

I got most of the parts from UB Machine in Fort Wayne, IN. http://www.ubmachine.com/. Good stuff reasonable price. They have everything thing for the chassis/suspension fabricator. They will make custom stuff also.

...Mark

Worked on the locost for the first time in about 7 months. Family illness and really sucky economy hurting my racing funds and available time.

It felt good to do something on the car. I designed and fabricated an upper cross member bar that is mounted over the transmission to connect the upper frame rails side to side where the "Q" piece was cut. My Engine and tranny is mounted higer than most locost's due to the rotary engine crank centerline and I am also running about 1-1/2" ground clearance and wanted the entire sump above the bottom of the frame rails. This caused me to cut the upper cross member "Q" instead of the lower cross member "C" like other Locost frames.

I want my chassis to be stiff so now I have an upper and lower crossmember. The upper is designed to be able to bolt in and out to aid engine swapping. The upper piece is 3/4" x 1-1/2" 16gauge because I had it laying around. Seems pretty freaking stiff when bolted in. Should help some for not much of a weight penalty.

Took about 5 hours to get it right. This is the kind if stuff that takes the time. Think, design, jig, fab.