2006 Happy new year readers....

So christmas is over & I've not achieved an awful lot. However THIS IS GOING TO BE THE YEAR - I must aim to be SVA'd & on the road early summer (or late summer....) What's to do?

1) remake front upper wishbones - no big deal - still got the jig

2) wire up

3) get engine running

4) fit wheel arches (front and rear)

5) make & fit petrol tank

6) fit seats, mirrors, trim, headlights etc

The last 2 are going to be real time soakers!

Progress to date: prior to propshaft fitting - everything that goes down the transmission tunnel has to be in place, finalised and fixed - that means all wiring to the rear, brake lines and fuel line. The wiring to the rear has been laid in, wrapped in self amalgamating tape & p-clipped to bottom chassis rail with nylon p-clips. The wiring's mostly using 1mm auto grade black wire & I'm putting coloured id number rings at each end. So my wiring diagram will be a list of wires - number, from, to.

Ah yes - I FINALLY got the reverse cog made! £60 notes to a gearbox specialist in Stoke: 94 teeth (10 more than I expected) but he swears it's right. Hope he is - I've not whacked a battery on it yet! So the cog was bolted on to the centre bearing thing, spot caliper attatched, starter motor bolted on, sierra doughnut attatched & bolted into the transmission tunnel. It all fits!! (hurray for solidworks!) (OK except that the donut bolts clout the rear support - a bit of grinding needed there!). A 14 toothed trigger wheel was fashioned from 0.6mm steel for the speedo and this was sandwiched between the rear prop UJ and the diff input flange. All turns nicely. Here are a couple of snaps of the centre-bearing/handbrake/reverse.

centre bearing in and handbrake finished

Ah yes - it all turns nicely, but not when the motor does it. . . . When I wired a battery to the starter motor I got a whirry motor noise and a clack from the solenoid as it shot into engagement, but no rotation. So I took it apart to see what was up. It turns out there's a wee epicyclic gearbox between the motor and the pinion, & when I dismantled it, all the gear teeth fell out. Never had that before! So it was in a scrapyard for a very good reason. . .  Anyway I bought a new one, part AES2223 cost £80 & slotted it in tonight. My goodness it makes a racket when I crank it backwards - should be a bit quieter when it's a) covered up b) under load and c) running at reduced speed. But it looks like the gearbox man was better at measuring cogs than me, cheers to him!

What else - well I went to the forge at the weekend and constructed a handbrake pushrod out of 3/4 ERW RHS which connects straight to the bottom of the handbrake lever, and made the lever for the caliper end. I need to source some pivots for this - I see a trip to congleton bearings coming on. I might use rose joints - I've used them for everything else on the handbrake! I even turned a phosphor bronze pivot bush for the handbrake lever/pushrod joint - my goodness I'm going OTT on this! But I can actually put the engine in now - the transmission is complete!  I'm in danger of tightening all the bolts up & taking that metal band off the donut!

OK another week gone by & the handbrake is now done and dusted & seems to work very effectively: a 16mm RHS bar pushes forwards from the handbrake lever to a pivot arm that rotates & pulls up the lever on the handbrake spot caliper. So now the "battery tray aluminium can go on. But I've decided only to cover over the top of the footwells, I'll leave the centre section open for access to the handbrake for adjustment and pad replacement. I guess I'll have to fit a lot of the electrics to the  scuttle front panel.

Next job: engine in & wiring up - lets hope I can get it started in February

February 2006

1st pic - I drilled the end of the oil cooler bolt on the R1 mill; 9mm hole - tapped it M10x1.0 for the intermotor oil pressure gauge sender & whacked it all back together (35Nm). I bought some M8x1.0 set screws to bolt the prop to the prop adapter. ENGINE IN in the next couple of days.

2nd & 3rd pic - it's a couple of days later & weyhey - the engine's in, bolted up etc. I need to get some exhaust gaskets & 17cm long M10s tomorrow & START WIRING the engine so I can fire it up. That's motivation for you - once the engine starts, the car's alive!!!!

Measured up the front top wishbones - I'll remake them 14mm longer. I guess I'd better put some drawings on here of the final design (just in case anyone retraces my steps). I'm slightly tempted to increase the caster angle while I'm at it but maybe not (can always do the toe out thing to get through SVA if necessary) These bones are presently made as per book (Ron Champion) but 2.5" longer - now we're saying over 3" longer!

Weekend's over: done a few jobs. I put the panels in over the footwells and the bulkhead in front of the scuttle. I've bolted a few electrical things to these: wiring module, rectifier/regulator and ignition module. I left the part between the footwells clear - this gives access to adjust the handbrake and get at all the associated linkages. I have a bit more boxing in to do round the pedal box, but in the main it's sorted. Time to actually start wiring!!!

I designed and made most of the gearshift linkage, it will all be bolted onto rivnuts and pivot on rosejoints in the good old fashioned way. The gearstick and bellcrank are away being zinc&gold finished and the rod end bearings are on order - pushrod and bracket are painted (drying in the kitchen) so I should be able to assemble and photograph it on Wednesday.

Another weekend gone by. New wishbones are made, painted, on, bolts torqued up & basic alignment done. I took the opportunity to destructively test one of the old wishbones & it failed in a good way (if you know what I mean) - crack starting at the edge of a weld on the smaller tube, then continuing straight across the tube (not following the weld). The new bones have about 12mm of the drag link thread showing - looks MUCH better than the previous ones. The gear linkage is all in and working nicely, though I may do a little minor fettling before I draw a line under it. I've gone for "pull back = upshift" - this is what most home builders do, but the opposite of what most manufacturers do - tricky one this - if someone  drives it who's used to the other way, they'll blow the engine up immediately! The lever feels quite nice, about an inch movement to engage 1st/2nd. I got a starter motor solenoid and some relays from the car shop - (cheaper than the web if you count the postage)

I've got a bit of a sticking point with the wiring - I need some chassis earth connections. The only proper way to do this is to weld some M6 bolts to the chassis - I wish I'd realised this before I got it painted! Ah well - I'd better bite the bullet & do it forthwith - I need a few, one by the battery & more at front, rear & near the electrics.

So - on 4th picture you can (just) see where I've welded an M6 bolt for earth connection... there's a couple more at the front and back. You can also see the gear linkage (which works nicely). 5th pic shows the gear lever & wiring up starting on the column switches. The 6th picture shows the electric parts wired so far (not very much!)

March 2006

Plenty of time spent wiring - nothing really to show for it: I've made a nice wee bracket for the ignition coils and started making the accelerator pedal. This is a piece of U-section ally extrusion with pedal bolted on the end. Today I also bought a 'universal' motorbike clutch cable for a tenner - it's quite a laff, because they didn't know what nipple to put on - they put them all on! I guess you're supposed to cut off the ones that are no use! Anyway, during the week I'll engineer the rest of the accelerator pedal and try to decide how to do the clutch - I have a sort of plan. . . . . Anyway once throttle, clutch and ignition are go-ers it will be time for the big start-up (or big anticlimax when it refuses to start....) - I'll link a startup vid on here

13th march got petrol, got oil in the engine, got sparks, got the carbs on & accelerator pedal on - time to try and start the engine. It turned over for a while without firing so I swapped the leads on the 2 coils. Bang - straight into life in a painfully loud manner (no silencer) RESULT!!! milestone achieved. I'm afraid there's no longer a link to a video here... I'm short of web space.

All the local dogs started barking & the tacho wasn't wired right on the dash. Next jobs are clutch pedal/cable, radiator plumbing and silencer so I'll be able to drive it. . . . . .  What you couldn't see behind the camera was my friend Martyn with a petrol can in one hand and a camera in the other, trying to close his ears with his shoulders.

April 2006

Still perishing cold out - it's been a hard winter, not too enticing working on the car outside... at least it's now light 'till after 8pm. So I've bought a LOAD of lights and electrical bits plus fuel pump prefilter and filter/regulator. That lot was well over £250 (price of a full car according to Ron Champion....) biggest cost being the headlights. I got a couple of sheets of 2mm ally for the fuel tank for 20notes (the pair), one of which was big enough to do the job. The tank is designed at 9 gallons but I've had to squeeze it in a bit, not to make it fit but to make it installable/removeable. The first pic below shows the cardboard mockup tank I made to confirm it's OK with the intermotor fuel level sender (adjustable - cool thing, adjusted to suit). I must have bought that thing 2 years ago when I was working on the dash.

I also bought an air filter off the locostbuilders forum as a group buy for £77 if memory serves. It seems a lot for a bit of plastic & foam but that's actually cheap compared to other sources (e.g. TTS) - seems like pukka kit, washable/re-oilable etc and you can see how nicely it fits on the carbs (note the intakes have been nicely radiused for flow - did that job over 2 years ago too)

All the bits of fuel tank are at my bro's shop for tigging up - he's getting an AC tig over the next few weeks - excellent! I have a swirlpot baffle and small catch tank underneath - the combination should suck every last drop of petrol from the tank.

OK - the TIG is there & was used to stick my tank together - result. OK it was a bit more work than that - I explained how my swirly baffle was supposed to operate but it clearly didn't mean much to Alan, who welded it up back to front. After a short while peering into the gauge hole & pacing about I decided it had to be fixed so out with the angle grinder & I cut a big hole in the top of the tank & removed the offending baffle parts - or one of them - dear me tigged aluminium stays stuck!!! Anyway a replacement piece was cut out & stuck in & I sloshed about a gallon of water in to see if it did what I wanted. Happily it did exactly what I wanted - sloshing produced a water level in the swirly middle tank bit 1 to 2 inches deep, and staying there! So there's a hole in the middle of the bottom of the swirly middle tank and a small catch tank under with the outlet to the fuel pump. And the tank fits and is "put in and out - able". I even put a drain plug hole, tapped M10x1 in the wee catch tank. Trouble is I can't seem to find a suitable brass bolt.....

May

mayday mayday - Once again done lots with nothing seemingly to show for it: at the weekend I got my headlight brackets made and front cycle wing brackets made. The headlight brackets look good - they support the headlights, route the wires, and put nicely radiused covers on all my SVA-unfriendly suspension mounts. Rock solid too. The cycle wing brackets bolt onto the top balljoint and the caliper brackets - the paint's drying on these as I type. I'll have to get some sikaflex to stick these buggers on. I've also taken delivery of £40 worth of nice blue samco hose bends - I would have piped up the engine completely except that I ran out of jubilee clips - I'll get some tomorrow. I couldn't find the clutch cable end bracket I made - also need to fabricate another cable end bracket thing to mate with one of the R/H engine mount bolts. I was hoping I could make the car driveable today but in the end there were just too many missing bits - maybe next weekend....

While the TIG welder was switched on I had a go myself, on a battery box.   Oh dear.  Bizarrely there's no photo of this - discussion was whether would be better described as chicken or pigeon poo.... Anyway that will hold the lovely little odessey battery I got (for 70notes from MNR) with a strap round it.

Notice on one of the pictures above:- a rear wing in place. There's more to this than meets the eye, it turned out (when I finally unwrapped one and held it up to compare) that GTS had made me 11" rear wings instead of 9" (plus sent me a bonnet instead of a dash - hey hum...) So I basically had to slice a couple of inches off (this is after laughing at Chris Fiaccone ( http://www.fiaccone.com/ ) for having to do the same...). Turned out to be not too bad a job - I hacksawed off the required amount, then glued the sawn off flange back into the shorter wing - result looks fine - I just hope it stays on when I'm driving...... should do,- I got plenty of resin in there!

I've started plumbing but am struggling to get some hoses. I've got some TV arial mast from B&Q (it's 1mm wall aluminium tubing) to do the straight runs: got Al to TIG some smaller pipes to the top hose plus a big Al block for the temp gauge - I'll get a pic when it's on. I've started making the clutch cable guide thing for the bulkhead and I've started wiring up the dash. Phew - busy Easter!

May 6th (yesterday) I finished the plumbing & filled up with coolant. I have a big pressurised peugeot recuperator bottle piped to the top of the thermostat housing - this seems to have successfully blown all the air out (the car's so damn loud I've not run it for long...). I made the clutch bulkhead thing and a cable adjuster bolted onto one of the engine mounting bolts, and I used the innards of a terminal strip at the pedal end. Mart came & helped me re-bleed the brakes so all the pedals worked. And I drove it down the drive. Felt good actually, there's clearly plenty of poke, everything is smooth & easy (OK clutch is a bit stiff) Brilliant - big milestone! Here is a video

http://freespace.virgin.net/shiela.carter/1stmovement.wmv

That really was its 1st movement under its own power (hence the noteworthy look of concentration). Nothing broke or fell off - I couldn't find neutral when I stopped - must wire up the neutral switch! I've now got both rear wings on, I need to get some vinyl to trim some wood blocks to fill the side/arch near the occupants' outside shoulder. And a load of electrical/lighting bits. I also need to make a better cable clamp than that terminal block for the clutch cable.

The pictures show the clutch cable and adjuster at the engine end, the bulkhead cable end and the improved cable clamp I made out of bits of scrap (goes on the pedal).

Still not halfway through the month & I've just made a set of seat brackets. I'll rivnut these in, maybe tomorrow - though I'll have to sort out a harness before bolting them in finally. I must also decide how I'm going to fix the silencer so I can run the engine up to temperature.

And I must make an "exup simulator" circuit to cancel the error code: I developed one of these with help from locostbuilder "smart51" after reading about one on "biketransplantcentral" which seemed rather over-complex. However, my prototype went to Jimgiblett (also off locostbuilders) who is (still successfully) long term testing the original! Anyway the circuit diagram is shown above. If anyone wants to make one on a bit of veroboard, go right ahead - it should cost a few pence. If anyone wants to market a commercial product based on this, they should cut me in...

Now it's the end of the month & I've been wiring & fitting lights. I got some plastic plinths for the back lights but the tyre still touches the wires under the arch when I let it down on its wheels, so I've made some plinth extenders - out of exterior grade ply painted with smoothrite. They look OKish. The headlights are in & wired, I managed to firtle the wires up the hole in the bracket tube - not a job I'd care to repeat! Alignment done with a set square - hope it's right! Front indicators are just wide enough for the SVA 400mm rule - I'll make some plastic spacers to give me an extra 2cm on each side - the thread is long enough for this. Quite a lot of the bundles of wire are now encased in self amalgamating tape - amazing how much tidier this makes the engine bay look!

Seat mountings are made and fitted on the driver's side: I'll do the passenger side when it's all up on the trestles again - I have to bolt up the seats from underneath - should be a 'challenge'. I tried to make progress with the exhaust/silencer, but without success. I do have a plan though now: 1) the 4-2-1 will be shortened at the 2-1 joint and a piece of 60mm diam stainless welded on as the "1". The titanium inlet pipe to the silencer is 60mm - I'll shorten this as much as is feasible and slot it so a clamp can squeeze it. Between these two will be either a straight 60mm s/s pipe or (for SVA and MOT days) a catalytic converter. So I need some bits of 60mm s/s pipe: I'll be round at my favourite exhaust manufacturer's tomorrow looking for offcuts..... ANd ordering a cat from MK.....

So now, the dash is fully wired, the switchgear is fully wired & it all works! Only downer is that there's no hazards telback when the ignition is off due to the way I used the sierra stalk switches (they expect to switch the power routing to a single flasher relay - instead I have 2 flasher relays so I'm using the same switch to select between the 2 outputs. This works fine except that the little light in the hazards switch don't come on any more. I got a good suggestion from Locostbuilders, to use a cheap buzzer. I like this 'cos I can wire it in as a 'lights left on' warning too (continuous beep = lights; beep - beep - beep = hazards) by just using a couple of diodes.

June

Taping up the loom has made SUCH a difference to the way the engine bay looks - I'll finish that job this weekend. The photo below shows the EXUP replacer circuit in place. I'll pot it in hotmelt glue when I'm satisfied it's working right. I did get hold of some 60mm pipe - it just needs a couple of small kinks to keep the can off the deck and close to the body. The car is a million times quieter with the silencer on - I ran it up to hot last weekend - the new resistor on the dash worked perfectly, though I may have to back off the gauge a bit - the bar was most of the way across on the dash & the rad fan hadn't started.

The bad news is that my rack is knackered. the nearside flaps up & down - turns out the plastic bush it slides in had totally disintegrated. This seems to be because I'd shortened the inner by 3.5" and the outer by only 3" to limit the lock. Whatever - there was still WAY too much lock. So I've bought another new rack from rally design (49 + VAT + P&P). Tonight I shortened the inner by 3.5" and made a sleeve for the body - I'll weld that up tomorrow. I must have forgotten to order the cat (I was expecting that to be waiting when I got back from Germany) I've started to look at the registration process, I think my first task is form 627/1 and chassis number then SVA application form. 

The catalytic converter is now here & the in/out tubes have been modified to look just like the 'straight through' alternative pipe (same diam tube) so inserting the cat for MOTs should be a piece of cake. The cat (from custom chrome racing) looks very nice - no dodgy radii for SVA - hope it works!!!!

July

Once again, I've done lots but not a lot to report. I mailed forms V55/4 and V627/1 to DVLA; they sent everything back saying include the receipts so that's all got to go back again. I sorted the rack out, taped up the loom & begun the installation of scuttle and dash. I decided to go for the 'hard' 19mm radius bottom edge approach. I found some 40mm diam 1.5mm wall ally tube & have had this tigged to the under-dash shape. I stuck a 1mm ally sheet dash to this & have covered it all in black vinyl leathercloth. Looks OK. I might not have mentioned that I cut out some wood 'crescents' to fill in inside the wheel arches (by your shoulder) & covered these in the same vinyl. The aerosol adhesive appears to do the job nicely! These shoulder pieces are just held onto the arches using wood screws.

I think I'll take out the reverse starter motor for SVA purposes - easy enough to do and prevents any contentious issues about whether or not a reverse exists & consequent need for reverse lights etc. I also need to include a loom fixing on one of the handbrake caliper bolts.

Not a lot done this weekend, lovely hot weather too: did family things ("go ape" at delamere forest - good fun, barbecue, bit of shopping) Anyway I started thinking about how on earth I was going to mount the hall effect speedo sensor on the diff, and I did a bit of upholstery, covered 3 layer of camping mat with vinyl to fit on the outside skin between the frame rails - looks pretty good!

August

Crikey - where did summer go??? my paperwork seems to have mysteriously disappeared en route to DVLA so I've re- filled in the forms & posted them to Manchester DVLA again - I must assume that a lot of my receipts have been lost however. Since my last report, I've fitted the speed sensor on the diff (I still need to fabricate a little clamp fpr this) and adjusted the gear thresholds in the FPGA firmware so the gear feedback is right. I fitted the bonnet, but this just does not fit the scuttle by about1/2 to 3/4 inch - there's a flange on both & they're both from one supplier (GTS) so I'm going to have to refit all the scuttle with spacers under to make up some of the gap. For my part I've managed to fit the scuttle too far back on the driver's side anyway so I'll try to fix that at the same time. At least the RS components (Southco) rubber bonnet clamps seem to fit nicely & engage very positively.

I've made plywood covers for the transmission tunnel and the boot. The boot lid I will remake in marine ply now I have the shape right (it's quite difficult to get the cover 'on' sensibly with the roll bar braces in the way. I can do it, but only with a very small opening. I'm thinking I will hide the fuel filler cap under here, rather than having it on the exterior for SVA - move it into final position later. I'm still waiting till I have enough friends round at the same time to lift it back onto the trestles - then I can finally fit the seats and exhaust brackets.

It's actually quite close to finished now - but lots of other stuff is getting in the way of progress. If DVLA have my forms now I could be SVAing this year still. . .  watch this space

October

Big jump there: - I've had some shenanigans with DVLA (par for the course I expect) with documents going missing then mysteriously reappearing(!) but finally got the car inspected and a chassis number assigned. Armed with  that I applied for the SVA test and after a false start earlier in the month had the test today (23rd). It failed, giving me a short list of points to fix - I'll go through them.

emissions:- I need documentary proof of engine age so that '98 rules apply. The car failed on lambda (should be 0.97 to 1.03 - was 0.6!!) I'd had the car 'tuned' by mikeanics in Congleton & they did a good job but warned me they'd set it up a bit lean. BIT???? anyway I was not armed with the necessary information about how to richen things at 2400 revs so I was a bit stuck. HC and CO were well in spec though.

Lights positions - The car's springs had 'settled' leaving the foglight and front indicators too low

Front mudguards - have to be over the edges of the front rims - the radius at the edge of the cycle wings caught me out here.

radii - 3 counts, exhaust clamps need rotating out of sight, steering wheel is NOT compliant (needs a rubber pad) and (ludicrously) the seatbelt clips behind the seatbacks need edge trim! (the VOSA man apologised for that one!!)

dashboard - should specify "mph" - in illuminated characters!!! (I'll have to check that out in the SVA book, sounds wrong to me....)

nylocs - I should fit some on the rear lower wishbone rose joints and I'd forgotten to remove some washers on the track rod ends.

steering self- centring - in spite of doubling the book caster angle and mx5's centrepoint steering, the steering showed no inclination to self centre at all! 30psi in the wheels and bags of toe- out for the retest I think.

wiring - just 1 wire needs sticking to something - it's the one to the oil pressure gauge sender.

The good news, with a cat and a standard R1 can it passed audio noise test. The brakes pass the brake test with the prop valve fully "unscrewed". Lights were fine and the all the radii at the front were fine. It was nice to actually drive it - a whole 100yds or more! Speedo was absolutely perfect.

All in all, a good day - some work to do but nothing extreme. I'll get some "fishtank valves" to get it through the emissions tests & borrow a mk1 mx5 steering wheel pad & wind the springs up & the job should be a good 'un! BTW the car weighs 440kg "wet" - not bad at all. The tester said he was impressed with the car & everyone came to have a butchers at it. Who knows - next time I add to this I might have a MAC certificate in my hot sweaty little hand...

November

So I've had a little breather and fixed some of the items on the SVA list. Now I've decided that I need a trailer for my various automotive projects so I've bought all the kit tonight. The car was weighed at 440kg at SVA so that gives me 300kg for the trailer without going over the 750kg limit for un-braked trailers. I should be able to make it 120kg or so. Borrowing trailer/towcar was always such a huge logistical exercise, I should have done this to begin with - it would nearly have paid for it already! I suspect I'll always need a trailer - trackdays, for example - you're going way out on a limb to drive the car to one of them - wreckage (or otherwise non-functioning hardware) can always be dragged home without any worries. Then I can take the car to an MOT station to play with the carb setup & hopefully pass emissions.

I found I already had a LOT of toe in so I've wound that all off & will see at the weekend whether the self centring has improved. Tried it - still no self centring; toe out & 30psi next.

A chap at work has a mk1 mx5 with the rubber steering wheel boss still in place - I'll borrow that for the test... which is looking like christmas...

Near end of the month now - still no trailer. The artic with the material on the way to where I'd ordered it was hijacked (!) - there was 60grands worth of non- ferrous on the trailer, all disappeared. Metal should arrive anew next week. (again)

I did some FEA modelling on the 2 main wheel channels & determined that a 8" triangle underneath of 4mm wall 30mm ally box would have a safety factor of 2 in strength - so I'll do that then. My all-up weight looks like under 100kg - cool! The aluminium is £300. All the other bits I bought cost me £230 (wheels, suspension, hitch, lights & a winch....). They sure ain't cheap.

So - trailer scheduled for next weekend - get the car down the MOT garage to fettle emissions the week after & SVA retest ASAP after that: December should be the month.

December

Trailer is complete & has successfully completed its first mission,- to pick up a reliant kitten for the electric car project. The locost is now on board it ready to be taken to the MOT shop for emissions adjustment, though I think this weekend I'll dismantle the trailer again to paint it. At least I'll have to prime the steel parts or they'll rot away very quickly. Actually sod that, there's only one steel part -  I'll get it galvanised.

Actually getting the kitten turned into a bit of an epic - the extra brakelights blew a fuse which stopped the alternator working - so eventually after over 100 miles (much in darkness & heavy rain) my battery went flat just 10 miles from home. The trailer itself is a great success (except for the mudguards which have fallen off - plastic tat, I've ordered some more & will reinforce them with ally) And it really is astonishingly light!

Today (13th) I took the car to an MOT station to try to sort out the emissions. I found the relevant mixture screws at last & determined that undoing them reduced lambda - so I'm ready to roll at the SVA test (got lambda down from 1.26 to 1.1ish - will adjust it right on the day and on the machine. I'll book the retest tomorrow. The rubber steering wheel cover is looking a bit tricky to source - I'll try someone else tomorrow.

I managed to borrow a complete mk1 mx5 steering wheel from Pete Jones in the mx5 owners club (thanks Peter). That's on the same PCD as my halfords bargain one so it was plonked on in place. At the MOT testing place I'd found the mixture screws (!) and determined than unscrewing them reduces lambda. Adjusted it to 1.1 ish there then brought it home to a more suitable screwdriver and counted the turns to seating on each carb. They went 3.5 5 2 2.5 so I set them all to 3 turns. So on the 18th I was back at Chadderton for my 10:30 SVA appointment. And the man started ticking off my failed items... Then the dreaded emissions - once again the machine wouldn't pick up the rpm so he did a "manual test". Again CO and HC were well in but lambda was drifting about  rather - went from 1.09 down to 0.93 then started going back up again.. this seemed to satisfy the man though so he checked my nylocs on the rear wishbone rose joints then on to the brake test. With the prop valve now locked, he measured all the numbers again and it passed again. FInally it was outside to check self centring - I drove the car out myself, after the left hander let go the steering wheel & it sluggishly moved back towards straight       RESULT!! Bingo - I got the MAC certificate. It's dated 18/12/06 - that's 2.5 years work. So now over the next few days I have to get registered, insured & taxed then I'm on the road & in the frame to try 2nd gear !

Just into January 2007

2nd Jan, armed with insurance (Adrian Flux - seemed pretty reasonable) I got registered & taxed at DVLA in Manchester (took about an hour). Then got some plates made. I bent some ally sheet to make a front numberplate holder & bolted it to the nosecone, screwed the plates on & bingo - a road legal car! So I drove round to Martyn's house in the freezing dark, wearing sunglasses so I could see in the wind. And the car feels good! There's masses of poke - it will just spin the wheels in 1st and 2nd at quite low revs - which is a bit weird 'cos its so undramatic - the engine note rises and there's a slight drop in acceleration so it feels more like a transmission failure. Suspension - wise it feels overdamped & there's still the toe- out from SVA so there is a bit of tweaking to do, plus I need to check the corner weights. I must get a windscreen and start work on the reverse converter - ahhh - they're jobs for 2007

 I guess the build is done. I enjoyed that, learned loads, met some new friends on "locostbuilders" - helped some, was helped by others. If you've followed the saga, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it & maybe you should have a go! We are so much luckier in UK (I guess due to the rich tradition in "specials" and kitcar building) than my colleagues on the continent, Germany in particular; to be able to indulge this fascinating and creative hobby. Special thanks go to "cymtriks" (how to make a locost chassis strong), Pete Bura (introduction & tools for suspension design & analysis), Chris Fiaccione (support, sounding board & encouragement), Jim Mcsorley (superb quality free drawings), Al Beardmore (materials, advice), Martyn Williamson (no end of help, advice and several rescues!), brother Bill and Alan at the Forge (who's artistry with MIG and TIG is passing into legend). And the Locostbuilders forum on the web for thousands of second opinions! Sure there are some numpties and psychos on there, but mostly it's unending free advice, knowledge and entertainment for the car building 'global village'.

The distinctive parts of this build are the use of mx5 uprights, the braking system,  the reverse/handbrake module in the transmission tunnel and the LED dash. I think the mx5 based suspension has been very successful. The unsprung weight is just 31kg on each corner. The front & rear geometric roll centres stay fixed relative to the chassis under bump, droop and roll, to just a few millimetres!. The braking system using lightweight wilwood calipers and separate alloy disc bells contributes to the low unsprung weight, and the proportioning valve has shown itself to be superbly effective on the SVA calculation sheet - time will tell if this really translates to improved performance, but right now I'm confident that I have a braking system that will generally out-perform "bias bar" systems under varying conditions and particularly when grip is poor. The handbrake is extremely effective but the reverse motor is still untried. The dashboard works well, but it's tough to see in the sunshine. The gear display is a bit jumpy until you get over 2000revs.

Another unusual feature is the fact that I've mounted all the running gear on rubber: engine, differential and centre bearing/reverse/handbrake. I can confirm that the high frequency buzz that's always present in these cars is noticeably absent. I'll be interested to find out what other builders (and BEC builders in particular) feel when they have a go.

Back to Work...

I bought a windscreen (£220 from luego) and have started the fitting process. I need a M4 plug tap, some short c/sunk M4 screws & a fair amount of messing about to fit it; I've taken all the rear view mirrors off again. I also need to get a suitable rubber moulding to seal underneath the screen. Luego say woolies do it but there's nothing on their website; I'll have to ring 'em up. No news really - I think I'll get some D shaped foam & wedge it under the screen (OK I'll use double sided tape). I've bent the brackets, tapped the screen & stuck the screen on temporarily: It's still windy as hell but a zillion times better than without a screen. My neighbour came bounding over at this point - dying for a go in the car. So I took him down the road and back. With his extra weight in it was grounding badly on the silencer bracket - in fact when I got back it had scraped the nut/bolt clean off! But he was blown away by the poke of the thing. It does suggest I'll need slightly stronger springs at the back (maybe 125lbs/in is taking the wee a bit....) if I'm going to carry passengers. Maybe increase the ground clearance a bit too.

I've started to think about the reverse controller module. I still can't think of a good way to throttle it. And I can't decide whether to just do an open loop voltage controlled thing or a closed loop current controlled. The latter will be a little bit harder, won't have the outright grunt, but by the same token will be more likely to survive. I have a reasonable control circuit ready from the "greenpower" battery car controller. hmmmmm - decisions. I'd quite like to publish design/instructions when I've done it because nobody knows how to make one of these - it's clearly a bit of an issue for the BEC boys.

April 2007 - I've extended the rear shockers to improve ground clearance at the back. After messing about with wrong thread taps & dies (gaz shocks - 12.00mm shaft so they put a 7/16" thread on it!!! I welded up nuts and bolts to make short extenders. This will do as a temporary fix to ensure the length is right - then I'll get some protechs. I also set up the corner weights. A bit more explanation might be in order.....

OK this is about setting the spring seat positions to give the best sharing of load between corners of the car. It's possible for all the weight to be balanced between front right and back left (for example) - you can't tell by looking at the car. Now when you try to accelerate, the back right has no weight on it so it just spins. Braking issues are potentially more dangerous. So I wrestled a big propane cylinder onto the drivers seat to pretend to be me, and used a couple of bathroom scales under the back wheels. I raised & lowered the car on and off the scales with a trolley jack. This was immediately all wrong, there was too much weight (for the bathroom scales) & variation due to different tyres (yeah I know - I'll get 'em sorted soon enough...). So the wheels came off & I sat the car on blocks of wood under the brake discs. Much better! It was surprisingly quick and easy to get the car level and balanced so the total weight FR+ RL was within 3 or 4 kgs of FL + RR with a good 5inches of ground clearance at the back (there was about 35kg difference to start with). Easy job & obviously well worth it. If you've not done yours - do it now! Ground clearance issues now seem to be solved, even with the 125lb springs. I'll start doing some longer journeys now it's summer, so we'll see how it behaves.

2008

It's August now & I take the car to work every now and then - it's not very often because if the weather is suitably promising I tend to take my bike to work... Anyway, apart from tightening the odd thing (mostly exhaust mounts and gear linkages) only one thing has gone wrong - a driveshaft broke. It broke at the weld (as the prophets of doom said it would) but the jagged ends didn't rip out my kidneys - but it did break at very low speed in a car park as a result of a bit of kangarooing. Inspection of the remains showed that the piece of tube I'd used to splice the shortened mx5 shaft was not man enough, the paint on it had crazed due to the twisting it had experienced. Anyway MK engineering put me in touch with a very nice man who made me a new pair in EN24 steel for £120 & they arrived, made to my drawings and fit straight in - Perfect.

The other thing I've done is to fit a windscreen and associated wipers and squirters. I bought the old lucas system from s-v-c, it grafts straight onto the sierra stalks & all works by the book.

The car still appears to momentarily lose drive under hard acceleration; I suspect this is due to using semi synth car oil in the engine. I'll replace it with bike specific oil & hope the problem goes away, right now I don't feel as though I should give it much stick - which sort of loses the point rather!