Locost: Baffled and Gated Sump

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This is the first part in a series I like to call “What’s wrong with the Locost?” or WWWTL for short. I promised myself I would do a Trackday this year and as things are starting to slow down for the summer I now have time to prepare the car.

Firstly, the Locost is not perfect; I can easily stand and point my finger at a million things “wrong” with it and there are a few things I can’t really live with that I feel I need to amend before it starts turning laps.

You see, as you fix the fundamental setup issues on your home built race car, and attach a set of half decent sticky tyres, you’ll start to go around corners much faster.… Read More

Fabrication: That time I made an Exhaust Manifold

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I’m going to try to document a few of my older projects that fell through the cracks and didn’t make it on to here. Hopefully you’ll find these little articles both interesting and informative… and there are pictures!

A couple of years ago I made an exhaust manifold for a friends Seven. Having seen the stainless manifold on my Locost he wanted one in the same “over the chassis” style. The manifold on my Seven was/is OK, it does the job, but its not my best piece of work; I was learning along the way. The Locost itself is a testament to my abilities at each stage of its build; some parts are better than others due to improving my fabrication skills as I went along.… Read More

3D Printer: Upgrades 2/3

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It’s taken me almost two months to get around to writing part 2 of this series, opps! However this is because I have actually been using the printer, and working on a project for a friends rally car (watch this space).

Now where were we… ah yes, the heated bed. In the previous article I explained why a heated bed is a good upgrade for a 3D Printer, especially one that uses high temperature plastics such as ABS. Installing one is easy straightforward, however my little machine required a few modifications along the way.

To convert your printer to use a heated bed first you’re going to need, you guessed it, a heater to heat the bed.… Read More

Aluminium Printer Chassis 2

3D Printer: Upgrades 1/3

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The current trend towards cheap and accessible home CNC machines is fantastic. I wouldn’t have a 3D printer if it wasn’t for the slow and steady reduction in component prices due to the high demand of an expanding hobbyist market. Also, China has made manufacturing a tenth the price it used to be.

While this has lead to the component parts, and ultimately the overall machine costs, becoming more affordable to the home-maker there are some short comings to this: 99% of hobbyists do not demand or need industrial level quality. If you want to print a bobble head of yourself to show your friends then usually you can live with middling quality, poor tolerancing and materials that only stay in shape at room temperature, and so 99% of the machines you can buy are built to that standard.… Read More

Analysis: A good case for Cold Air Intakes

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I have been writing a series for the website covering street tuning of ignition maps. I believe I have come up with a dyno-free method that may or may not work; you’ll have to wait to find out.

The process requires a series of 3rd gear pulls at Wide Open Throttle (WOT) with varying offsets of ignition advance. I was expecting to see a strong correlation between power and ignition angle, with more advance giving more power; as the map that is currently in there is highly conservative.

The baseline was repeated to check consistency, but ultimately the consistency was poor.… Read More