LocostUSA.com

JD, Glad all is well with Team Slotus (so far, anyway.) Been thinking about you folks while watching Irma's storm track.

Meanwhile, my brother in Oregon is under level 1 evacuation from a massive wildfire and Seattle's been living under a pall of smoke and ash. Then Mexico gets hit with a magnitude 8.1 earthquake. Things seem a bit more out of whack than usual.

Just stay safe, keep your head down and your boots on. And with all those aero enhancements, don't let the Slotus fly away with Irma, Jose or the next one.

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Cheers, Tom

My Car9 build: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=14613
"It's the construction of the car-the sheer lunacy and joy of making diverse parts come together and work as one-that counts."
Ultima Spyder, Northstar 4.0, Porsche G50/52

I ditto Tom.
Stay safe.

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Larry in Seattle

Yo, Tom & Larry-
Maybe we could find a way to send y'all some of the 10 inches of rain we might be getting on Monday. Those fires look scary... I think I'll take my chances with Irma. Y'all stay safe too!

Tom, the aero bits on the Slotus are designed to produce downforce. High winds should push the car down towards the ground.
Oh... Wait... Do ya think... Maybe... I might have put 'em on upside down??? That would explain a lot...

Peace, Love and L = ½ ρ S V 2 CL

JDK

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JD, father of Quinn, Son of a... Build Log
Quinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special
"Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom

True, but that only works when she's right side up

Keep on hunkerin' down!

_________________
Cheers, Tom

My Car9 build: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=14613
"It's the construction of the car-the sheer lunacy and joy of making diverse parts come together and work as one-that counts."
Ultima Spyder, Northstar 4.0, Porsche G50/52

I think this quote was attributed to Paul Newman:

'The brakes don't work when you're sliding on your top'.

The same can be applied to aerodynamics.

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Larry in Seattle

Latest forecast I saw said it's going to come a lot closer to you than anticipated. Have you pitched a tent on the roof just in case?

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mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

JD has been holding out on us, I see right there that he has a Greek keyboard. More literate than he lets on me thinks...

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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 dunno... It's all Greek to me!

6:25PM, windy and raining, nothing yet. Latest weather forecasts from NOAA and Weather Channel have it down-grading to Tropical Storm by the time it gets here.

I, for one, will not object to that.

Catch y'all on the other side-
JDK

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JD, father of Quinn, Son of a... Build Log
Quinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special
"Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom

Hope things go ok for you guys down there, and send some of that rain up here too.
Kristian

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V6 in a book frame build. Now registered.
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7587
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=18172

"Cut-and-Paste" Job from an email... So I'm being redundant. What's new about that???

Good morning all-

It's a dry Thursday, the A/C is running, lights are on and I just made a pot of coffee. (Two pots actually, because TWWTFM won't drink the stuff I like. She refers to mine as "Mud"...)

The hurricane had dissipated to tropical storm strength by the time it got here around 2pm Monday. That's later than predicted earlier, and also a good bit weaker. We'd already had some bad winds and lots of rain. We lost power in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Our big ol' generator was at HamDip House with HamDip and her sister Hand Grenade along with their two babies, husbands, friends, aunt Lora and three dogs. (See why we chose to stay here?)

But we went there for a visit, had steak and shrimp cooked on the grill. And peach cobbler for dessert, also cooked on the grill. Earl is a clever fellow some times!

Power came back on here some time Tuesday night. We came home from Hand Grenade's house (her real name is Allyne, but she has this temper...) and found the porch light shinin' like a huuu-uuuge golden opal. (Buffett song lyric. Who gets it?) Had a few anxious moments while I tried to remember the proper procedure to re-prime our well pump, but I got it going and then all is right with the world. TWWTFM asked me how you primed a pump like that "since it's all sealed up"... My response: "Nothing is sealed if you own a pipe wrench."

So, other than a power outage, no big deal here. There are folks in Tallahassee with trees down and even some with damaged homes. We got off light.

Perry, thank you for the FB message that reminded me I'd forgotten to check back in with y'all. I plead Alzheimers and being three days behind at work...

Lonnie, did you get in touch with that lost brother-in-law in Florida? Are all the rest of them OK as well? Any homes/cars damaged? I hope all is back to normal with those folks. They got hit a lot harder than we did here in TLH.

Peace, Love and Strong Coffee-
JDK

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JD, father of Quinn, Son of a... Build Log
Quinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special
"Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom

Well, lemme see... I think I posted this once, before all the hurricane stuff... I re-positioned the fan to pull air through the rad, and built and enclosure out of this heavy plastic sheet I've had lying around. It makes a huge difference in the amount of air that moves thru the rad. That fan works 100% better as a puller!

That new shroud lead me to look at the bodywork that goes over the radiator. (That piece was named "Art"... It's a long story.) I've never been happy with Art, it was just kinda funny lookin'... (I know, I know, the whole car AND the owner are funny lookin'... ) But still...

So, I whipped out the construction paper and did some 3-D doodling... I had a go at some new bodywork ideas for the passenger side of things too. I'm thinking this will be an easily removed piece, but separate from the hood. It needs some more work, I kinda stopped on this side and moved back to the hood...

I decided to finish the hood design, such as it is... More like finish the hole in the hood. I want this piece to be easy-on-and-off, so I figured I'd lay it out before I do the other pieces and try not to get in my own way. Let's see... How about this?It's not really visible in the picture, but I made a new hoop that the front of the hood will sit on/be pinned to. The old one was an integral part of Art and was thin aluminum bonded and riveted to PVC conduit. The new one is 1/8 aluminum, bent to shape. It's currently attached to the frame with the same 1/4 X 20 bolts thru the frame that held Art down. I'm gonna upgrade those a bit, maybe go with 3/8 bolts.

Final step is to figure out the opening for the radiator fan. Now that it's movin' lotsa air, I don't want to impede the flow, ya know?

That's the news from this side of the planet. What y'all been up to?

Piece, Love and "Art"-
JDK

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JD, father of Quinn, Son of a... Build Log
Quinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special
"Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom

That's funny I was just thinking of you and was going to post this a.m. to see if you'd had the car out to have any fun in it lately.

So you're having fun, just not at the autocross type of fun.

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mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

Glary Be! Annuther Miracle! I've been allowed back into the forum!!!

While I was in exile, I was sittin' in the shop looking at the Slotus and thinking it looked kinda un-finished without a hood. I had started one, a while back, before all the engine troubles distracted me. Back in March, it looked like this:

So, I set that aluminum part back in place and found some new construction paper and the scissors I stole... Uhhh... Rescued, that's the word, I "rescued" them from TWWTFM... anyway... A little bit later it looked like this:And not too many measurements, saw cuts and swear words later, it looked like this:Still needs trimming and final fitting in that pic. It got that later, I promise.

I should describe my metal bending rig. There aren't any pictures, I'll maybe snap a few this weekend. I have an old piece of 6-inch PVC well casing. Sch 40, heavy-duty stuff. I can clamp it to one of my work benches and lay the victim... I mean... Lay the piece of aluminum I'm working on over it and clamp the ally to the pipe and then wrap two or three old trailer tie-down ratchets around the whole business and start tightening the straps. I usually put a piece of 2X4 under the straps where they come off the edge of the aluminum to spread the load. Looks like hell, but it works.

Oh, and I had some nifty little hood pins that have been lyin' around in the "Hardware Section" of Team Slotus World HQ that needed homes. Seemed like the perfect opportunity to put them to work. The first two go here:

Then, with it all pinned down I put some vents on it, just for lookin' at... What do y'all think? I may delete the one directly in front of the driver. I may paint 'em GREEN, too...

About then it was time for dinner, so I stopped all this sheet metal foolishness and went inside. Aidan- We had pot roast in the crock pot. Small white potatoes, baby carrots, onion, celery, green peppers all in a big ol' soupy goodness. Pumpkin pie for dessert! HamDip and Earl came down for dinner, brought the Veloci-Monkey with them. It was a good evening.

Peace, Love and Sheet Metal-
JD Kemp

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JD, father of Quinn, Son of a... Build Log
Quinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special
"Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom

And I sneaked in again. I haven't been able to log on since that last post, but I put a pic up on the LocostUSA Facebook page. It's the hood, completed and the first piece of the bodywork that will eventually go around the rad and fan. Looks like this:This morning I've been out there templating (is that a word?) and tracing and cutting and fitting... And all that other stuff. Perry calls it fabricating, but I don't think I do it good enough to use the fancy word.

When I get a couple of bends in the piece I been rasslin' with, I'll post them up... If the forum will let me.

In the meantime, stay tuned, there might be sheet metal... Or it may turn out to be sh!t metal... Could go either way...


JDK

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JD, father of Quinn, Son of a... Build Log
Quinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special
"Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom

Yo, Team Slotus!
Well, we been out in the shop bending, cutting and hammering metal again. Progress occurred, in spite of my best efforts to prevent it... But first, the first public showing of the high-tech Slotus sheet metal bending rig. Prepare to be amazed... As you can tell, we went to almost no expense to create this machinery. That's a piece of 6-inch Sch 40 (or maybe 80?) PVC well casing and two trailer tie-downs along with various clamps, bits of wood and vice-grips. Whot th' 'ell, it works...

And so, having bent the sheet metal into some kind of shape vaguely like the car, I set about fitting it to the chassis and riveting the pieces together. All attached it looked like this: The rearmost "hoop" is a piece of 1.8 aluminum, through-bolted to the frame. The sheet aluminum side pieces are attached to the hoop with 1/4 X 20 flat machine screws. The front of the side pieces are riveted to the solid piece that goes over the front of the frame. That front bit is also attached to the frame by through bolts, 1/4 X 20 again.

Putting the whole business together, ya gets this raht chere:I'm counting on the higher, open-ended front piece (with the little spoiler I bent up my-own-self!) to help pull air out of the radiator area, although the fan seems to move lotsa air. There is going to be some kind of wire mesh over that opening, but I'm still working on how to do it and still be able to remove the bodywork without disconnecting the radiator hose.

Once I clean it up and trim/grind the edges and paint it an appropriate shade of black, then we'll be somebody!

Stay tuned, we're gonna do something else foolish real soon!


JDK

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JD, father of Quinn, Son of a... Build Log
Quinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special
"Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom