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Learning how to build Lotus Seven replicas...together!
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PostPosted: October 14, 2011, 1:23 pm 
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Photoman, that's hilarious....

Ted can you describe a little more what your thinking? And I'm not sure which tubes exactly are the FU ones... Perhaps we can find some more pictures for you or make some comments.

I'm not sure what the point of those cross tubes that hold the pieces of the circle track arms are for...

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PostPosted: October 14, 2011, 3:11 pm 
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Mine usually go like this:

So, I hear you're building a car? Yes.
What kind of car? It's a Lotus 7 clone.
Oh?
Do you know what a Caterham is? No. How about a Westfield? No. Arial At-om, KTM X-Bow? No.
It's similar to a Miata. Oh, cool.

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PostPosted: October 14, 2011, 6:31 pm 
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Ted,
Yes I'm down in Seattle. Drop by anytime! PM me first for directions. The Ultima is based on the "classic" Lee Noble mid-engine tube chassis design, normally powered by a SBC. I used a Northstar motor (long story there.)

I'm planning my Locost build around an LS motor with 5-speed and no donor. I have a clean C4 3.07 rearend sitting in my garage which should work nicely with a few mods (a'la Kipperman's and Starman's builds.) I stare a lot at my Ultima chassis for inspiration on improvements to the book chassis and its derivatives. I think there is a lot of room for improvement, especially in the "bookish" front chassis layout as you have already determined.
One suggestion: if using the McSorely adjustable UCA approach ( http://www.sevenesque.com ), build enough beef into the cross-shaft mounting points, a'la Jim's sketch below + added triangulation/bracing. While the cross-shaft will keep the pivot points inline, a single FU1 will be subject to rotational loads, so consider Jim's FEU1/FEU3 approach. You might also want to run Wishbone to determine vertical pivot location and pick a target castor to set the horizontal placement of the adjusters. Then use the adjustors for removing any fabrication error and fine tuning.

Keep posting!


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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


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PostPosted: October 15, 2011, 3:09 am 
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Photoman, That's priceless! Thanks for a good laugh!

horizenjob, FU1 and 2 are the second set of vertical tubes from the front of the chassis, typically the rear mount for the upper control arms would be attached to these tubes. What I've been thinking about is to mount a pair of vertical plates or to at least facilitate a vertical surface of some sort so that I can mount a pair of these little slider type beggars Image onto said vertical surface. If I can't get a vertical surface out of this without adding a whole lot of material than mounting the sliders on the same plane as LA and LB (the forward most vertical tubes) and FU1/2 (FU1/2 now to be moved to the same angle as LA/LB) will suffice. The only down fall that I can see to this arrangement being the need to shorten or lengthen the upper control arms more radically with any vertical relocation of the cross shaft as the pivot would move in or out as it was moved up or down respectively. That being said how often do I really think that I'm going to need to adjust the upper control arm pivot point??
The cross shaft just makes for a nice solid mounting point that can be moved up or down to allow for different wheel/tire/whatever combinations in the future. I think the cross shaft should also act as a nice brace between the two mounting points as well regardless of what route this ends up going. I was out in the garage for a whopping 5 mins just now while I'm writing/ thinking about this playing with a rectangular piece of cardboard just to see how it could work. I suspect that my original thoughts of minimalistic plates may not work, along with the minimalistic plates come some minimalistic welds... No big deal we'll get this yet.

Tom, You know what I'll totally take you up on that, I go to Seattle quite a lot for work so the drive is no big deal. It will have to wait a little while until my second job slows down a little, it always does in the wintertime. In the meantime you know that I'm going to demand that you post at least two or three or more pictures of that beautiful car here right?? :lol:
A friend of mine was trying to convince me to go with some Vette parts but by the time we actually had a really serious conversation about my project (yep he even knew what I was talking about!) I was well along with my parts acquisitions so running a corvette's rear suspension etc. was out of the question for me.
I sounds like you plan on building a real screamer and I look forward to seeing the start of your build log! The pick that you posted of Jim's front end design is what I wish that I had built. I will know better for next time. I need to budget for a bunch of the front end parts now, funny thing about building these cars is that you always need some other part that you don't really need yet, something that's two or three steps away from where you are now but you still need it so that you can work on whatever it is that you happen to be working on at the moment. All I really want to do right now is get my frame painted but to do that.... What's that old saying... "You can't get there from here".

Cheers,

Ted.

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PostPosted: October 17, 2011, 6:09 pm 
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Awesome work so far!! I've been contemplating a build with the same drive train, minus the turbo. Do you think the engine/transmission would fit into the smaller book frame? Thanks.


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PostPosted: October 18, 2011, 5:49 pm 
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I'm just on my way out the door right now but I'll send you the complete schematics for the duratec this evening, they're on my home computer, not this one. I'm pretty sure that I downloaded them off of a link from this site many moons ago but if not I'll send them to you. PM me with your e-mail. Oh and thanks for the support!

Cheers,
Ted

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PostPosted: October 18, 2011, 11:45 pm 
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OK so I learned something new today, actually I learned a couple of things, first off don't buy cheap ass welding wire, it will make your already sketchy looking welds really look like crap. The other is not to use .025 (or less in my case .023 princess auto crap) wire... I'm not exactly sure why I bought such small wire to begin with but .035 sure makes this whole business soooo much easier.


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PostPosted: October 19, 2011, 7:22 am 
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That could be the whole of it though, that you were using too small a wire for the job at hand.

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PostPosted: October 19, 2011, 6:52 pm 
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Random wrote:
OK so I learned something new today, actually I learned a couple of things, first off don't buy cheap ass welding wire, it will make your already sketchy looking welds really look like crap. The other is not to use .025 (or less in my case .023 princess auto crap) wire... I'm not exactly sure why I bought such small wire to begin with but .035 sure makes this whole business soooo much easier.


Ted


I wait until KMS has their .035 on sale and buy it from them, it is usually the best bang for the buck.

Al

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PostPosted: October 20, 2011, 1:46 am 
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Random wrote:
If I can't get a vertical surface out of this without adding a whole lot of material than mounting the sliders on the same plane as LA and LB (the forward most vertical tubes) and FU1/2 (FU1/2 now to be moved to the same angle as LA/LB) will suffice.


Ted, you might consider fabbing your own slider boxes out of 1x2 rectangular tubing instead of the (I think) 1x1 tubes it looks like the manufactured ones are made from. By running the 2" dimension on the deep side of the boxes, you'll have more options to adjust the boxes "verticality" and more attachment/welding surface to boot. By buying 4 sets of the innards and one slider box, you should be able to reverse engineer the box and fabricate what is needed pretty easily and might even save a few $$ in the process.

Thanks for the compliments on the Ultima, but I won't hijack your thread with beauty shots. Ok, maybe just one "build shot" from its first go-carting day a few years ago... Give me a holler when you can come down.


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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


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PostPosted: October 31, 2011, 3:44 pm 
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Hi guys,
Sorry, I haven't been ignoring you, I've been in Mexico for a week of holiday with my family!
Al that sounds like good advice and if you say their wire is good I'll go with it the next time it goes on sale, I've been sticking to the Lincoln L56 wire so far, even in the thinner gauge it works pretty well, the S6 wire from Princess auto, well... not so much.
Tom that sounds like a fantastic idea and not one that I had thought of, the two inch side of the slider box would certainly allow for more liberal placement on the vertical plane and more surface area to weld to. Good thinking! I think you've probably put more thought into this than I have in the past week as I've had a more or less car(e) free week! It's refreshing to go somewhere that you don't speak the language, even in a crowd people can't intrude on your thoughts so easily it's just noise to me, I can read on the beach and conversations don't distract me... That being said other things do... Mexican beach attire is somewhat more liberal shall we say :D .
LOVE the Ultima! Beautiful work Tom! Way out of my budget at the moment, perhaps down the road though it might be more feasible. No worries about thread jacking I asked for the pics! I'll definitely let you know when things slow down for me, right now I hope not too soon as my suspension budget got reallocated to trips and I have more airfare to pay for come spring so everyone out there drink your milk and eat yer veggies, it keeps me busy!

Cheers all!

Ted

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