I know an MGB isn't everyone's idea of a great Locost donor, but there seems to be an encouraging resurgence lately of traditional builds and British car donors, which is excellent.
I've been planning this build for a while. I was on this forum pretty regularly five years ago, but things happen. I built a Locost frame back then, for practice. I think that'll help me with the current build. Here's a picture of my old frame. It's totally book and the new one will look just like it, except for the suspension and the transmission tunnel, which will be a little wider. In case you're wondering why I don't just start the build with this frame, I should point out that it's made of wood, not steel. It was just practice.
I started a few months ago cutting steel tubes for the new frame, but then started thinking more about the suspension, and got sidetracked building the A-arms. Turns out it wasn't as easy as it first appeared. Lots of do-overs. But the parts seemed to turn out okay. Here's a completed upper control arm. The UCA mimics the split MGB arm (actually the lever arms of the front shock), which lets you install and remove the kingpin without destroying the upper bushing each time you do it. These also provide camber adjustment, which a stock MGB doesn't.
This is a lower control arm. Pretty basic, I know, but still a challenge for me. I went through about 4 iterations of the UCAs and a couple of the LCAs before I figured things out. I have pictures of all the jigs I made plus all the gruesome details of building these things up at
mglocost.com.
Here are the A-arms assembled on the mock-up frame. The upright is a stock MGB unit with kingpins and plain bushings (a.k.a. "trunions") at either end with a stub axle that swivels around the middle for steering. M.G. never quite got around to using ball joints.
All of the tubes for the frame have been cut to size now, and I've also made all of the suspension brackets and most of the other pieces, so I'm going to start sticking things together once I get the remains of the donor out of the garage. My welding experience includes a semester at my local Junior College, where we did mostly gas and a little stick welding. We didn't do MIG at all. I have a friend who's a a real pro with a TIG welder, and he did all the welding on the A-arms. But my gf recently got me a new Miller 140 for my birthday, so I'm ready to give it a shot.