im sure this has been asked a million times but what is the average build time for a locost??

after i have moved end of april i will be starting mine again, im not happy with the state of the chassis paint wise and i need to add the roll bar and do mods for a bike engine.....

how long should it take at a leisurely pace??

am thinking a year??

cheers

barry

I have seen them built in 3weeks and take up to 5+years
IT took me about 7 months
Jacko

depends on your hours per week but i'd say 300 - 500hrs to do a nice job for the average 1st time builder

im starting next week and want it done by christmas!

I've got this far in 5 months, started with a 'Starter Kit'. This picture was taken today.

i think my biggest pitfull will be funds....

i want the best of everything but cant afford it!!

3 years, 2 months and counting

Although the last year or so has been limited quite badly by funds

I don't know the average time and you've not really said how far you've got but mine took me 4 years and this was about average I thought.

Cheers,
James

hi, mine took, around 11 months from start to finish, then i done booked the sva when i was a 100% sure

i only done 2-3 hours 3-4 nights a week, with 3 weeks total not touching the car.

i think mk say aveagre build time off 300-400 hours.

stuart

I'm in simillar situation in that I'm waiting to move. I'm Looking at the MK Indy and I've been told 300hours so I'm currently guessin 18-24 months because Its going to be a learning experience, and because I work funny hours and quite often can't be arsed to do any thing on my days off if they fall in certain ways (on many occaisions I've had 'days' off shorter than 23 hours. I'm planning to have a weeks holiday in the begining and then about 8 hours a week.
Mines going to be fairly tight financially and I need something slightly unusual so I'm not really bothered about how long it will take.
I've seen things online about building from scratch in a week but I doubt many people could even with a free week and no distractions.

I did about 10 hrs per week and took 14 months start to finish for my Indy

mine took 2 1/2 years but i wasnt flat out on it took a year off it started final assembly in jan09 as i booked sva mid march that was a bit of a rush needed the kick up the arse to finish lol

try 4 years,and only then cause of the sva changing and i had to finnish it!set yourself a target date or when you loose motivation its easy to find excuses not to do it...

9 month's from start to sva but i was off work for 3 of those month's.

Andy

13 weeks from kit to SVA. But that was from a kit and I think BEC is easier than CEC.

Part built took me nearly twice as long undoing and redoing.

- Jim

quote:

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Originally posted by boggle
im sure this has been asked a million times but what is the average build time for a locost??

after i have moved end of april i will be starting mine again, im not happy with the state of the chassis paint wise and i need to add the roll bar and do mods for a bike engine.....

how long should it take at a leisurely pace??

am thinking a year??

cheers

barry

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Mine took just over 2 years.... Would have been quicker if it weren't for my oddball engine!

2.5 years for a book-ish chassis'd car. Made pretty much everything inc. a fair number of the GRP bits. Albeit it with a couple of us at it at times.

3 years for the first one, 9 months for the second. The second was a lot closer to home.

ATB Dan.

Been going in earnest on mine for about 3 1/2 years so far, but then I do tend to travel a lot through work. Hopefully not too many more months left

A guy on another forum I frequent said her was in his 11th year!

Im on my 18months now. But didnt touch the car for 10months, so about 8 months of weekend building time i guess....

year 7 for me, but its not a locost or any kit, so its not very straight forward plus i didn't live here for the first couple of years, and last year lost 2 jobs, so there#s a few reasons

five and a bit years for my scratch built lol

problem is I keep upgrading before its finished

Without taking any time off work, and just fitting building in when I could, it took me 11 weeks to passing SVA on a kit, and I think it would probably take me around 6 months to build a Locost from start to finish. (Depending on spec of Locost - the one I'm building at the moment, is a relatively labour intensive one as absolutely everything will be fitted to the chassis on specially made brackets, and this adds to the time and effort involved immensely!)

I've built quite a few other kits in less than a few months too (also whilst working fll time...)

quote:

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Originally posted by Daddylonglegs
A guy on another forum I frequent said her was in his 11th year!

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7.5 years from start to SVA - but mine's a book Locost built from scratch. About 5 years of that was pottering along achieving very little until I decided that I had to either finish it or give up...

I'll just add this:

Depends how standard you want things. Every deviation will cost time and money. Pick an easy engine for example - one that hundreds have already done. Otherwise, you're adding to things exponentially.

And yes, making parts is satisfying, but in reality (not the one many people live in) is that the little bits you need to buy to do it properly, will usually exceed purchase price of something done many many times before. Don't forget to add fuel costs and time when you run all over the place looking for the small bits. Example: sure you can make your own buck and fabricate your own nosecone, but 80 pounds new for a locost spec one made by a reputable supplier, is impossible to beat.

My biggest cause for delay was me being too fussy - I'd do something, or fit something, and decide that I didn't like it. I'd then take it all off and do something different...
...goodness only knows how much that added to the total cost too!

In the end, I just decided to get it finished - do the best job I could manage, and leave things alone once done. Amazing how everything progressed once I'd made that decision!

4yrs & 4mths to SVA and on the road

First kit took 9 months

Current one took 1.5 years to sva, 3 seconds to destroy then 4 weeks to rebuild.

8 years for a scratch built

14 months , Scratch build

3 years for a scratch built +442

5 years so far for a locost build no kits all built from bare metal no cheating. Finally getting to stripping the loom and bodywork.