My Diary 01

Ivan’s Locost Build Diary No 1

20 July 2005

Hi All

This won’t be the typical day to day build diary but rather a summary of my experiences in building a Locost chassis from scratch and some of the methods I am using to ease my way through the process – I will name the firms in Cape Town where I found what I was looking for and got good service and provide photos of jigs etc that I made.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE JIGS ETC WORKED FOR ME BUT I CAN’T BE HELD LIABLE FOR ERRORS, WASTE OF TIME & MATERIALS OR INJURIES THAT MIGHT ARISE FROM COPYING ME OR PROBLEMS WITH DEALING WITH FIRMS THAT I MENTION.. – IT’S UP TO YOU TO THINK OF ALL THE PITFALLS OF MY IDEAS BEFORE COPYING THEM

My Chassis:-

I cut the steel using an abrasive cut off saw and took the bits to a professional to weld into the basic chassis on my mark-out board (a sheet of 22 mm shutter board) – Cost of welding – R1750 – I deliberately left out some of the bracing to make straightening easy. It turned out only minor straightening was needed!

No – I’m not working in the lounge – I just like a comfortable workshop! – Actually I temporarily needed my garage for something else and it was raining for 2 days.

For the top & bottom rails I used 38 X 25 X 1.6 rect tubing just for some extra tortional rigidity – my chassis is 100mm wider and 50mm longer in cockpit.

I get my steel from Baldwins Metal Land of Tokai – reasonable prices – free next day delivery for reasonable orders – friendly staff.

Regards

Ivan