Ok so it’s a slow day in the office, to wet and miserable to go outside(I’m a homeworker!) and I’ve run out of spares to bolt on the Locost and more importantly any cash to go and buy any more spares for the Locost. Hm so what to do, I know I’ll write a long rambling post about my build, that might give anybody else considering doing the same a few pointers and warn of the pitfalls that I have managed to fall in, or in my case sometimes throw myself into.

Before I get trolled to death this is not a definitive guide and I’m not saying it’s the best only way, it’s simply how I’ve done mine, and if it helps somebody avoid the mistakes I’ve made then I’ve met my objective, if anybody has any better suggestions please feel free to ad to the post , as from reading this you will see I’m certainly no expert !

So firstly to put things into perspective although I have rebuilt cars before I’ve never built anything from scratch before. A Mini, Triumph Herald and TR6 and a Renault 12! Have all fallen prey to my desire to tamper

My garage is a generous single 10*24 and I have the access to the normal toys such as pillar drill, bench grinder compressor Etc.

Oh one other thing I forgot to mention. In fairness I’m assembling the car rather than building it as I purchased the chassis ready assembled with a panel kit supplied by the manufacturer. I would trust my welding on something simple like a radiator bracket but not on a chassis!

So you want to build a Locost things to consider

Why do you want to build a Locost

I want a cheap sports car my Advice buy an MX5

I want to Race in the 750 MC Locost Race series My advice buy a 2nd hand Locost already prepared for the series

I want to BUILD a Locost and then use it either on the track or the road My advice Build Locost !

So you decided that you want to build A Locost, Firstly you need to realize that this is going to be a labour of love and its very unlikely that the finished product will resale for anything like the amount of cash you are going to put in, and if you factor in your labour as well then you will certainly end up out of pocket (financially) From personal experience of my build to date however I’ve found that what it does provide is a totally absorbing hobby and the support you get from such forums as this one is incredible. So for me its been a great investment and one which I plan to make again (£ permitting !)

Next think about what you want to do with the car is it going to be a track car, road car or a bit of both. There are multiple schools of thought here. Some will tell you can’t have a good track car on the road as the requirements of the track will compromise the car on the road and vice versa, other people will tell you that they have their race car MOT’d and use it on a regular basis on the road.

Since this was my first build I decided to keep things as simple as possible and go for a ‘track only ‘ car but you need to decide this early on as it may define what chassis set up you go for. If like me you are assembling rather than building speak to a number of the manufacturers get their opinion, they have built dozens possibly hundreds of cars they will be best placed to advise on a chassis that will best meet your needs.

Go to car shows /race meetings and search out cars like you are looking to build and take photo’s …..lots of photo’s and not just of the completed car get up close and personal, get photo’s of the suspension, brake pipes, exhaust mounts, take photo’s of absolutely everything , find owners that will ‘undress’ their cars for you, bonnet , nose cone boot open/off. How does that handbrake linkage work,? where do those pipes/cables route.? How is the cooling system plumbed, Look at the dash layouts, where the wings fix to the body. Currently `I have about 80 photo’s and I still don’t have all the bits covered that I need . Ask questions of the owner why did they do that like that and not like that. You will get lots of different answers the fun is sorting out the solution that best suits your application.

I picked up my chassis in Mid Feb 2013 and the one thing that became immediately obvious was that, having chosen my chassis supplier, I should have spoken to them about donor part first.

I had chosen my supplier and put my name on the waiting list and then embarked on, what I thought at the time, was a sensible buying spree of donor parts. It was only once I got the chassis home and started looking further into things that I realized that many of the parts I had bought either not needed of wrong.

I now have 2 steering columns (why I only needed 1 even if I needed one in the first place!) 9 alloy wheels, and lots of silly little things like the brackets that hold the brake pipes on M16 calipers all cleaned and ready to go and now not needed! Oh well the end of build sale should be good!

So confirm exactly what you need before you hit Ebay and the small adds, might seem a really obvious thing but certainly caught me out !

So a few of my thoughts on the build

Build stands I used 2 builders band stands fitted with large casters 2 sets have brakes I found this set up a Godsend as my garage is quite narrow I can move the car about as required.

Air drill great for pre drilling the alloy panels and getting into tight spaces but when it comes to drilling the chassis I found a mains powered drill much easier

Never underestimate the number of drill bits you will go through I think I used 30 4mm drill bits (possibly because I’m ham fisted, possibly because I got them cheap on Ebay ) but on my car I drilled 15-1800 rivet holes (double that if you include the fact I pre drilled all the ali panels) so If you drill bit needs that extra bit of effort to go through the material you are drilling time that by 1800 and the cost of a few drill bits is negligible. And before any of the proper engineers out there say well sharpen the Bl**dy thing I can sharpen a drill in about 15 minutes and can guarantee is less use than when I started. Sad really for a time served engineering apprentice ….but it was Telecom engineering.

Rivet fan this device allows you to evenly space rivets and really ingenious piece of kit and well worth the investment.

Automatic center punch again great time saver

Air pop riveter ,unless you want to end up with hands like Arnold Schwarzenegger another great bit of kit, but if you have one which has a collector on it for the rivet stems don’t forget to empty it regularly as it surprising how quickly it fills up and adds extra weight to the tool.

Carpenters Butt marker ..yes that’s correct this is ideal for marking panels edges for lines of rivets will get to this in more detail latter

Clecko’s and pliers are a really useful and I also used the ‘qwick grip’ type G clamps I found the Sandvick blue and yellow ones with the semi soft grip faces were best as they didn’t mark the panels.

Chassis finish when I was talking with the supplier it was agreed my chassis would be done in an etch primer finish, I did consider powder coating but was told that as this was going to be a track car damage on powder coating is difficult to repair. On reflection I wish now that I had asked for POR15 etch primer followed by POR15 Chassis black. This provides a very similar satin black finish to powder coat but is far easier to repaint if required. I did subsequently re spray my chassis with POR chassis black, in my garage. It was quite easy to get a fairly good finish, especially when you consider the only thing I had used a spray gun on previously was a fence! But it would have been so much simpler to ask for what I wanted in the first place. NOTE IF YOU ARE GOING TO SPRAY POR YOU NEED THE PROPER RESPERATOR AND PRORECTIVE KIT !

Before delivery TIDY THE BUILD AREA and clear some space to store all of the panels and bits, its amazing how much space an un assembled kit car takes up and you really don’t want to be fighting with fiberglass nose cones and wings whilst trying to work on the car. I made a mezzanine in the garage roof with some old plywood and put all of the fiberglass panels up there until I actually needed them

OK so the big day arrives and your chassis is ready, is your supplier going to deliver or do you have to collect, in my case it was the latter so a collection of packing will be required and a couple of old tires can be useful to rest the chassis on and don’t forget the all important ratchet straps to tie the chassis down well.

Right your home all the panels are suitably stored the chassis is up on its build stands. That was easy wasn’t it ! well in our case we got horribly lost on the way home and ended up trying to navigate a rental van the size of a bus through rush hour traffic in central Birmingham but hopefully your sense of direction will be better than mine

So where to start, again if you’re assembling rather than building speak to your supplier

For me I went for paneling the chassis first the temptation was to install the bigger more impressive panel first DON”T my advice would be foot wells first, then tunnel, then rear side panels, scuttle support panel, rear panel and finally floor. Its all about getting access and I found doing in roughly this order gave best access for longest.

Before I permanently fixed the panels I trial fitted each on first using G clamps and ‘fettled’ as required. My supplier had put ‘pilot’ holes in some of the larger panels so I could use clecko’s for the same purpose. Whilst the panels were trial fitted I drew around the supporting chassis rails with a marker pen on to the back of the aly panel to give alignment for the predrilling of the rivet holes.

Advance apologies to those still reading, the next bit (possibly that previous!) may seem like a really ‘suck eggs’ moment, but for me until I worked it out it had me scratching my head for a while

Then with the panels on the bench, from the marker pen outlines, I simply divided the indicated rail thickness by 2 (to get the rivet holes centered on the chassis rails) and then scribed center lines for all of the chassis rails, (I used the carpenters butt marker to do the edges of the panels obviously the inner struts You have mark with a ruler. Using the rivet fan I then marked all of the individual rivets. Great thing about the fan is that you can easily get the different lines or rivets to intersect and optically they all look as though the spacing is equal. I know you can actually work out the spacing mathematically but the fan is SO much easier.

I predrilled all my ali panels debured them and the took them to the car, fitted them using Clecko’s and used the panel as a template to drill the chassis, when doing this just check where you have overlapping panels, and if you do don’t pre dill the under panel use the top panel as a template to drill through the panel and the chassis.

2 points further to make if you are use ‘Goo’ to stick the panels on as well as riveting put the ‘goo’ on the chassis not the panel, yes obvious now but the first couple I did, I did the other way round ……Oh what a mess !

2nd just think when riveting do I need a countersunk rivets anywhere, not the end of the world if you get a ‘proud’ rivet head somewhere you can always drill it out and replace it latter but a bit of pre planning can save a bit of re work latter. IE top of transmission tunnel if you are having a ‘fold’ over type top on it, area where bottom of ‘J’ bar for roll cage attaches to body Note to self area under rear wheel arches need C’sunk rivets !

My build currently is fully paneled, with front and rear suspension in, brake and fuel lines installed just working on the wiring loom at the moments.

On the subject of wiring loom I used trailer cable cheap easy to get hold of and you even have the color code ready sorted, well for the rear of the car anyway and since I don’t have front headlights or indicators to worry about it makes life reasonably easy. I was surprised how much I needed though in all about 8M.

So I only need an engine, wheels, a dashboard a seat and the dozen or so other things I’ve forgotten and we’ll be almost ready to go racing !

Finally a couple of things that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else

If your working in an unheated garage take your tools indoors overnight at least they wont suck the heat out of your hands when you use them for the first 30 minutes of the day, and by then you’ll be totally numb anyway

Get into the habit of moving slowly when working on your car, this may seem a bit ‘Jedi mind trick’ but its so easy to drop something and make a quick grab for it only to smash your very cold ear on the very hard roll cage. Normally that spanner, nut or whatever will come to no harm hitting the floor. I always come off second best when arguing with my roll cage and I’ve found by slowing down a bit A I tend to collide with solid object less and B when I do it hurts less !

When every thing is going wrong and everything you touch breaks/falls of the shelf or drops into some unreachable area of the chassis time to step back, have a tidy up in the garage, put all the tools back where they should be and then go and have a cup of tea. There was a program on a few years ago, much discussed on this forum called kit car crisis, and one line from the much maligned(rightly or wrongly) builder that has stuck in my mind is ‘problem is I hate this car now’ you really don’t want to get to that point as the whole point of building the thing is its supposed to be fun !

Finally I leave you with this thought. If I had a pound for everything I bought on line I thought was a bargain and which subsequently turned out to be a complete pile of P** I wouldn’t be building a Locost, ………….I’d be building a Gardner Douglas !

[Edited on 11/4/13 by Disgruntled karter]

[Edited on 11/4/13 by Disgruntled karter]

[Edited on 11/4/13 by Disgruntled karter]

[Edited on 11/4/13 by Disgruntled karter]

[Edited on 11/4/13 by Disgruntled karter]

What's a "butt maker" ?

Not only do I struggle building kit cars I struggle to spell as well ! and whilst we're on the subject don't think my punctuation is much better either

Thank you for all that! I agree with everything. The reference to the donor is interesting, and although people told me so, earlier, it is often cheaper in the long run, to buy as much as possible from the chassis supplier, to ensure a good fit. Otherwise, you end up a star Fleabay seller, and that's not what it's about. Well, I think it is for one person I know on here, but I digress...

And, I struggle to read all that!