26th November 2007

When I last published my Diary in Feb of this year I never suspected that the wheels would completely come off my project shortly after that. I had barely completed the diary when a phone call came asking me to do some consulting work and since then I have been working in Caledon for two months and then Barkly East for the rest of the time.

Anyway the Consulting work is finished and it’s now time to get back to the Locost.

Have ordered the rear Roll Hoop and started on the cladding of the scuttle. See picture.

As soon as the roll hoop is installed and the safety harness brackets made up I will take the chassis for painting and then it’s all about installing the engine, fuel system, EFI controller and wiring.

Unfortunately circumstances dictate that in the next 3 months I must find a way of fitting 3 cars in a two car garage as I will lose the garaging of my Cobra so am currently busy designing a car stacker that can also be used as a build table. After some thought came up with the design below using a 30 ton bottle jack I have lying around, if proper design shows that the jacking system is not feasible (as is likely) I will use a Gantry with two chain blocks. Of course the building of this will delay progress on the Locost for a little while.

As a reward to myself after all the consulting work I have bought the use of a CAV GT40 for 6 track days on Killarney thanks to Chris Walker and his new business GT40 Racing (gt40@59.co.za).

He took me around Killarney and the grip and performance is impressive given the claimed 450hp and 0-100 time of 3.9 secs, so am really looking forward to the drives. It’s the red one that I will be driving.

Hope to have a lot more to report on in the next few months.

Regards

Ivan