Pics as described in the previous post.
March 1, 2010
Quick update on suspension
As another locost builder once said, my favorite color is UPS brown. I got a bunch of parts last week and more coming this week.. Shocks/springs are in, as well as the radiator. Also on order are the steering wheel/hub, passenger seat/cover, heater, fuel system fittings/lines, brake lines, wheel spacers, and some other things I might be forgetting. I’m also getting tires installed today at Gran Turismo East.
I ran into a snag with the rear suspension; the shock body hits the rear upper control arms when its installed. I’ll upload pictures of this issue but I’ve already come up with a fix, and have one of the two RUCAs re-done already. Also, tapping tubes is a huge PITA! I spent a whole evening just tapping two tubes for M16 threads.. I didn’t have a 14.5mm drill bit, just a 9/16″, so the hole was a bit too small but only by a tiny bit.. I guess it makes a huge difference because I had to work up quite a sweat to tap those things! At any rate they’re done so the front upper control arms ought to be done in the next couple days. I think I’ve said this a couple times lately, but I ought to have a roller soon 
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February 22, 2010
Rear control arms done, front soon to follow
I haven’t posted for a few days but I’ve been busy working in the garage nonetheless. I managed to finish the rear control arms and shock mounts this weekend, and set about finishing the front control arms. I started with the lower ones since they’re harder than the tops. I was a little dismayed to realize that the lower ball joint that the miata uses has an M12 (12 mm) bolt, and the closest drill size I have is 1/2″.. I could order a 12mm bolt, and also a metric step bit (what I use instead of a reamer), but I ended up deciding to go with the 1/2″ bit, as 12mm is 0.472″, so less than 0.015″ space on either side of the bolt. The hole in the stock control arms is roughly 0.485″ anyways, and also the ball joint is statically mounted, i.e. the bolts don’t move at all (as with a shock mount, for example), and I believe the main if not only force applied to the bolts will be tension, not shear stress. If I change my mind about it I could always drill out the ball joint to 1/2″ and use SAE bolts.. we’ll see.
Oh, and on a side note, I ordered a bunch of parts last night. I had to restrain myself from ordering more, but I need to pace myself in that regard.
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February 18, 2010
Picture update on suspension and garage
I’ve been a bit behind on my pictures, so here is the latest progress. Both rear lower control arms are done, the rear uppers are coming along (just have a pic of the jig, but the steel is cut and they’re ready for welding), and also I’ve got pictures of the completed garage upgrades.. cabinets, drawers, sliding doors, etc.
I also want to mention that lately I’ve been receiving good help from my dad and my cousin Shane, they’ve both helped with working on the control arms in the past few days or so and its made things go a lot faster.
February 11, 2010
First control arm is done!
I know I just posted yesterday, and no I still don’t have any pictures, but I just wanted to post that I completed one of the eight control arms last night. I’ve been building this car off and on, mostly off, for a little over two years now, and its been a while since I’ve made decent progress on it, so working on the car 4 days in a row, and no break in that trend in sight, is extremely exciting to me. In the past I’ve usually managed to get a couple weeks of solid work in and then go for a couple months without touching it, but that’s usually because something comes up, like my on the side jobs get really hectic, or school gets crazy, etc. Right now I’m just working this semester until May, and have no other obligations, so in theory I ought to be able to get 12 or so more solid weeks of work in on the car. Fingers crossed, anyways. Okay I’m going to really try to get some pics this weekend, I promise. And I need to update my “Garage” page too, now that my shop is finally done! So much to do, so little time..
-Jeff “Making good progress again” Tougas
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February 10, 2010
Suspension coming along
Quick update sans pics (sorry!). This weekend I finished the garage, meaning I now have cabinet doors under the workbench, on the shelving on the side of the workbench, and sliding doors covering the shelves on the side of the garage. I also have more drawers installed in the drilling station. This is a fantastic development because it means I can start spending all my garage time on the car!
Sunday I managed to re-visit my rear suspension geometry, finalize it, and design the upper and lower control arms. Then Monday and last night I worked on building jigs and started actually constructing the control arms. With any luck, I’ll have all of the rear control arms built and installed on the car by end of Saturday, and with another week I’ll have the front suspension done as well. I’m so excited at the thought of actually bolting a wheel onto the car, and making such good progress.. Hopefully I can keep up this pace for the next several weeks.
Pics to follow in the coming days.
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January 12, 2010
Moved, new garage setup, brake and clutch pedals mounted
Well its been a little while, that’s mostly because I moved in December to a new townhouse (across the street). Went from a 2-bedroom, 2-car garage (and sharing with one other person) to a 1-bedroom, 1-car garage, but the garage situation is definitely a step up space-wize, since I’m not sharing half of it and yet the garage is a bit larger than just half the old one. Anyways, I’ve been going all out on the setup of my workshop, partly since its 100% my space now and also partly because I really need to make as efficient use of the area as possible.
The pictures mostly speak for themselves, and I’ll do a more complete write-up on my Garage page once everything is complete. But basically I have a pretty similar setup to the last shop, + the following upgrades:
- Folding workbench/welding table
- Tire rack
- TONS more shelving
- TONS more sockets wired up to a 20 amp circuit
- Harbor freight band saw is now on casters (should have done this a looong time ago)
- Added a platform on my welding cart for the plasma cutter
- Lots of pegboard
- Todo still: drawers, more shelving, and cabinet doors on all open shelving
And hey, I even managed to fit a ping pong table in there with no problem!
As far as the pedals go, it was pretty simple.. just had to drill the holes for mounting, create a jig for cutting larger holes with the plasma cutter, cut larger holes, screw together and voila! I have to say I think this plasma cutter is my favorite tool by far.. Its so useful and it makes cutting any sheet metal far easier and far quicker (with lots less noise and mess too!) than with a cutting wheel. Anywho, here are the pics.
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November 12, 2009
HOWTO: Caterham CSR style dashboard
I had a number of responses on my locostusa.com build thread about my dashboard, mostly praise and inquiries as to how specifically I’ve created what I’ve got so far. To answer those questions and provide a resource for those in the future who may be interested in doing a similar dashboard, I’ll try to document my dash fabrication here. I will update this post accordingly as my dashboard progresses to completion.
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November 5, 2009
Seat mounted, dashboard started, pedals coming along
I seem to be subconsciously avoiding working on the suspension. I have my rear suspension geometry finalized, I just need to go ahead and mount the brackets on to the frame and start making the control arms.. I guess I still have a couple of things left to figure out before I can build the control arms though, like where exactly I want to have the shock mount. That’s one of the beautiful things about building a car from scratch though, there’s no specific order you have to do it in, only a set of tasks that must be finished at some point, with a relative few number of interdependencies.
I started working on the dashboard, which I’ve decided to model after the Caterham CSR’s tubular exo-skeleton dashboard. Read More
Suspension is done!
The control arms and shock mounts are all fabricated finally! They’re just tac-welded at the moment but I like to leave final-welding for days when I don’t feel like doing anything that requires design/engineering. I also got in some more parts, including the passenger seat, steering wheel, nose cone, and others that are less picture-worthy.
Tonight I started on the parking brake and discovered that the cable is wanting to go into my frame at the moment due to my rear wheels being so far forward. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to fix this, but I have a feeling it will involve disassembling the rear brakes and fabricating a new set of e-brake brackets for the rear calipers.