Category: 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.

Background: What and why?

The Caterham 7 is the direct descendant of Colin Chapman’s original Lotus 7.  Caterham Cars was a major dealer of 7′s in the 1960′s, and when Lotus announced its intention to discontinue the 7, Caterham bought the rights to continue manufacturing the 7 from Chapman.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Caterham now produces some of the fastest machines on four wheels in the world, despite their most expensive car coming in at just over $60k.  The referenced vehicle, the Superlight R500, holds the rank of 5th fastest on top gear’s powerboard at the time of this writing (which places it ahead of the bugatti veyron, the ferrari enzo, and many other supercars).

Anyways, long story short, Caterham 7′s are *extremely *nice, in every way imaginable.  Inside and out, they are very well done, and are some of the best looking 7′s out there, in my humble opinion.  One Caterham 7 in particular has an interior that is totally kickass, the CSR.  The dashboard pictured above is from one.  The dash structure and the frame are apparently seamless and the dash structure is totally exposed, giving it a skeletal yet sexy look.  In between the spaces created by the dash frame are three panels, a cubby hole, the shifter, a few gauges and a couple of heater vents.  My goal for my locost is to emulate this look as closely as possible; I want my 7 to look factory-built.. I don’t want people who come up to me on the street to be able to guess that I built it in my garage from scratch.

The Good Stuff: How

Lets get down to business.  I’m assuming that you already know roughly how tall and wide you want your dash to be.  Mine is about 12″ tall at the tallest point, and it extends the width of my frame (42″).  Secondly, you need to decide how you want your dash attached to the frame.  My own dash frame is welded directly onto the frame of the car.  This ought to increase the torsional rigidity of the frame a decent amount, since the open passenger compartment is one of the main weaknesses in the 7′s frame.  I’m planning on making a dash cover out of aluminum with a light-weight steel frame riveted to it, which will in turn bolt to the frame of the car in order to fasten it in place.

First of all you have to have a way to bend your tubes.  Mine is less than sophisticated but surprisingly effective.  I took a 2×4 that I had laying around that’s a couple feet long, and with my band saw I rounded one of the corners to a fairly large-radius curve.  I took that one and 2 more 2×4′s and screwed them to the side of my build table in such a way that I can put a tube in between them.

One other thing that I found helpful before I actually started bending real tubes was mocking up the dashboard with tig welding rod.  If you don’t have any on hand, coat hangers will work just as well.  I started out with the top rail, then I did the tubes that go from the transmission tunnel to the top rail, then the round tubes that cross over the passenger compartments, and lastly I did the “tubes” that cross between the two vertical ones.

If you look at the caterham pictures you’ll notice that the upper dash rail is bend in multiple planes.  It arches over the car but it also arches away from the driver compartment.  I modeled my mockup and my final rail after this.

In order to begin bending the top rail, I first began with one of the corners.  I took one of my 12′ sections of round tubing and hammered it my tube bender, with as much of it hanging out on the bending end as possible.  I then grabbed the tube and pulled up, bending the tube.. I bent it to about 70 degrees or so.  I then took the tube and compared it against my mock-up (I did this a lot, another reason why a mock-up is useful).  Making sure that the bend was how I wanted it, I proceeded to start working on the bends across the top rail.  Not counting the corners, my top rail has a total of 4 very slight bends in it…  Using the picture of the caterham frame for referenced, I first placed one close-ish to the corner, then I placed one closer to the center of the rail, about where the vertical tube attaches to it.  At this point I did the other corner (measuring to approximately where I thought it should be), and after that was done I did the last two bends just like the first two.  Finally, to make sure everything was symmetrical, I drew out a 42″ x 12″ rectangle on my build table (sliding the frame back to make room) and positioned the dash rail on it.  I measured the angles of the side tubes, distances and lengths, etc, and also checked to see that the vertical tubes were in the same plane (not twisted relative to each other).  I kept making adjustments by bending slightly until everything was symmetric to my satisfaction.  Finally I chopped off the excess steel from the vertical tubes so that my dash wasn’t 20″ high, and tac welded it to my frame.

The next order of business is the tubes that go from the transmission tunnel to the top rail.  Mine are actually 3 separate bends each..  They were pretty simple to make with my bender, the main thing was to make sure that I made the bends in the exact same place on the second tube so that they would be symmetric.  Note that you have to make sure the tubes extend down past where your shifter is, and also that the inclination of the tubes along the shifter has to be such that you can actually shift into 1st/3rd/5th as well as 2nd/4th/reverse.  Here are some more pictures to show what I mean:

To Be Continued…

That’s about all I’ve done so far on my dash.  As I said before, I’ll update this post as I make more progress, and of course I’ll include up-to-date pictures as well.  The next orders of business are the tubes that go over the passenger compartments, the tubes that go in between the two center tubes, and the actual cover/removable section (this will probably come much later).

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.

I’m using .84″ round tubing, bending it with a super fancy (2×4′s screwed into the side of my build table) setup, and welding the tubes directly to the frame.  The hope is to increase the torsional rigidity of the frame since a lot of rigidity is lost due to the large open box area that is the passenger compartment.  Additionally, I began working on the steering column mount.  The mount closer to the steering wheel is done, but I need to still make the mount for the bracket closer to the firewall.  Note that in these pictures the dash tubing is not yet complete.

I also began working on the pedals.  The first order of business was to cut out the top and rear sides of the tube going across the bottom of the driver footwell, since my bottom-mount pedals need to occupy that space.  Previously I had been planning on cutting out the tube altogether and replacing it with angle iron but thanks to my plasma cutter, cutting out what I didn’t need was a piece of cake.  I also cut out a panel for the bottom mount, and for the vertical wall of the driver footwell (which was super easy/quick thanks to the plasma cutter), tac welded them on, and drilled the mounting holes for the clutch pedal.  Brake pedal and finally the gas pedal will be next, then I’ll cut out the holes for the master cylinders to go through.

A couple of other notes.  I finally got the seat mounted, it ended up being really easy.  I’m using the summit racing universal sliders.  I also finished the diff mount 100%, as in I drilled the holes and welded the nuts onto the backside so that I can actually bolt the diff in.

Maybe one of these days I’ll actually hunker down and get past whatever is blocking me from fabricating the suspension.  Until then, I’ll just continue to work on other stuff.

A couple of quick updates.. Haven’t worked on the car much lately but hope to this weekend. Finally got my new fuel tank in and man am I happy with it.. its so beautiful, super super light weight, and very nice construction. I ended up getting a 10″ diameter 33″ wide spun fuel tank that is often used by dune-buggy people, but I found a guy who modifies them (tons of options available)..

Had a sump, internal baffels, an extra outlet, and larger bung sizes added to mine. The seller is a guy named Bill Hower, his website is here: http://www.coyote-gear.com/ I’m very pleased with his responsiveness and customer service overall, and as I said, with the craftsmanship on the tank. Best of all, it fits perfectly in my car. I’ll have plenty of room to remove the diff from the top of the car and room for a trunk even if I decide to make one.

Secondly, I ended up ordering a longevity plasma cutter after my “potential group buy” thread sorta died. I have to say I’m pretty pleased/excited with it. Ended up costing me $375, and I also got a bunch of consumables that ought to last me a good while for another $135, with free shipping. I’ve heard several people say that easily 30% of the time they spent building their locost was on making brackets.. My hope is that this thing oughta make fabrication a bit quicker and easier. Time will tell, of course.

I’m going to write a more thorough review after I’ve had some more time with it, but when I got it I hooked it all up and tried it out on some 1/4″ thick angle iron (way thicker than I’ll probably ever cut for the locost mind you!).. WOW! I mean, I’ve watched videos of plasma cutters but it is bizarre to slice through that thick of steel like its butter.. As I said, more pics and details will come later but for now here you go: