Well a year has gone by.... and not a lot of progress for the first
few months of this year
February 1999
My son Alexander John was born on Tuesday 9 February, ten days early,
but very healthy. Locost production has now taken a back seat. Making babies
is easier than making cars (well from the 'male perspective!).
Rang Guru Welding - they are still on holidays, so decided to
start acquiring parts, getting ready to bolt-on when the chassis returns.
Also buy the tools I need, so bought a Rivnut Gun from Caddy's Tools -
looks the same as Brett Oates' one but only cost $41. It can apparently
shoot a big 'rivet' with an M8 thread, i.e. to take a 10 mm headed bolt,
into sheet steel or ali. Also managed to find a cheap ($9.95) Spring Balance at "ToolMart" - Master Butchers Limited wanted $95! I checked the preload on the 4 inch Escort diff flange, and then changed it for the 3 3/8" Cortina diff flange. I fitted the big flange onto the 4.444 ratio diff according to the manual, as I may use this infuture - the whole process sounds complicated in the Workshop Manual, but once you get into it it makes sense.
Received a phone call from Les Butcher in Albany (400 km South of Perth),
also building a Lotus Seven replica - he actually saw these pages! Give
me another call Les, and tell me your address - I'll pay you a visit some
time.
A guy down the road had a garage sale, and I found a radiator header pressure tank. It is like a translucent white plastic version of the old Mini header tank, that is, perfect, and he only wanted $1 for it! I was wondering how I was going to negotiate with a wrecker for a header tank - they would normally be part of a whole system.
Started conversion of FWD exhaust manifold (curved down and under) into something suitable for RWD, and keeping O2 Sensor. It is possible to cut about 40 mm out of the cast iron pipes and still have the twinned pipes meet. I did this and then some filing to flatten the faces that will be 'cut and shut', made alignment marks with "Liquid Paper" - now to find someone who'll weld it as a favour...
12 February - Attended an abandoned vehicles auction at the City of Wanneroo, what an entertaining afternoon! There were about 40 cars up for auction, you could have bought several Toyota Corollas or Coronas for $2 each! I bought a rusty 4' by 6' box trailer for $40 - I thought it would be useful for carting the engine and drive train, to the welder, and bringing the chassis home, or to the powder coater.... oh! and picking up garden soil, hay for my wife's horse etc. I knew it had a flat tyre, but that turned out to be due to seized wheel bearings, and I ended up buying a new tyre, wheel hub and bearings before I got it home, since then I have also replaced the tail-lights, wiring, and stripped the gears on my angle grinder (replaced with a bigger one under warranty) cutting out the rusty metal floor.
Started cutting disks to make up spring seats for shock absorbers, very fiddly and time consuming trying to accurately cut twelve 75 mm circles out of 3 mm plate with an angle grinder - doing it outside in the summer sun doesn't help!
March 1999
Gave up on cutting circles! Made little progress, in between being called in to help look after the baby, so motivation died - justification is don't need shock absorbers and springs for ages yet, even chassis test is done with steel rods in place of shock absorbers - see, anything can be justified.
9 March got to scrounge parts off uncollected abandoned cars
before they went to Simsmetal. - Found a SAAS sports steering wheel and
three 'Rostyle' Alloy Wheels of a Hillman Hunter 'GT.' - not a real GT.,
didn't have the wood dash with Smith's Gauges - worst luck. Now I have
to find one more of these rare alloy wheels. Also got hold of several LH
and RH door mirrors, number plate frames.
Started to seriously look for headlamps, I already had the Hella
Catalogue part number for ADR approved headlamps P/N 1015, but had never
seen them on the shelf anywhere. Why ADR approved? See my FAQs
! Went to Repco, they said Hella P/N would cost $200 for each headlamp!
Is there a cheaper alternative I asked - maybe Narva - no luck... put the
headlamps on hold for a while, Repco also didn't have ADR approved reversing
lights in stock either.
Bought some Nolothane bushes for the Escort Steering Rack from Marlows- they are bright red!
14 March - "Marlows Classic Car show" at Whiteman Park, seemed to be biggest show of it's type in Western Australia.
Saw 1 Lotus Seven,
1 PRB Clubman,
2 Westfields on display,including Richard Woodward's white Mitsubishi powered one
and a purple one I took a suspension shot of:
AND there was an even nicer RED (therefore faster) Westy in the car
park. 
A few people building Seven replicas were present, including a 'gang
of four' building 5 cars (1 each and 1 to sell to cover costs... good idea!),
they were using Holden Geminis as donors, with imported EFI Isuzu engines,
sounds like the narrow rear axle means they will have small seats.
One guy was going to build a Locost according to the book.
On the way out of the show, saw that the PRB has it's bonnet of, took a shot of it's RWD 4A-GE engine: 
Also at the car show was a rep for Shannon's Classic car Insurance - gave me a quote for laid up insurance $199, and limited km (8000km/year) insurance $350, not bad I thought. Insurance for my 'family car' 1990 Commodore is about the same, I remember my Isuzu Piazza cost $600+ and for a 1989 Subaru 4WD was $500+ for insurance.
May contact Richard at Westfield to buy some flared fender brackets and a spare wheel/license plate support, as getting Guru welding to make these up may just add more delays to the chassis work.
Hope to finish repairs on the trailer, and paint it over Easter.
May also try to arc weld the exhaust manifold myself. The cast iron
is about 5 mm thick, so should be possible with my limited skills, I can
paint the manifold with black VHT paint, and re-fit the ali heat shield
to cover the welds if they look as horrible as my welds normally do (I
have some orange heat proof paint, to tart up the heat shield). If the
welds crack after registration, I will just have to ditch the manifold
and cat, and get a stainless 4-into-1 long branch header made up .... it's
a risk I'm willing to take!
31 March ....major bummer, Guru Welding rang to say the guy doing my
job (the one who was always on holiday down South) has left to live down
south, and they can't finish my chassis this year! They said it
will take a while to check all my cuts, and do the engineering part of
making the chassis, and they don't have the spare time that they had when
they did my suspension. Have to think about what to do. Maybe find out
from Dave with the Westfield some local welders, maybe buy a Westfield
chassis from Chequered
Flag - unlikely! I could always do a course and buy a MIG, would be
cheaper, but do I have the time, and the cost would be more 'visible' to
the wife, compared to paying on a log book at the welders.
April 1999
2 April is Good Friday, will discuss progress over a few beers with
the boys, while barbecuing some sea life.
5 April Dave suggests trying a local welding firm who "allegedly" makes the space frames for Westfield Sports Cars, they might be able to finish off my incomplete chassis.
9 April, on the way to collect my chassis from Guru welding, I visit AliWeld in Kelmscott, and bump into none other than Steve Fox, owner of Westfield SportsCars in Australia! He recognises my well worn photocopy of "Figure 4.1" as a Locost, and is quite happy to sell me a westfield chassis or a chassis modified to the Locost layout (rear curved tubing, wheel arch flat bar), he even tries to sell me fibre glass parts and other stuff - suprising as I heard he was "anti-locost". Decide over the weekend that maybe buying a readymade Westfield chassis has a number of advantages, they will use existing jigs etc to save time (ie money), I can use Westy parts like the pedal box (I wasn't really happy with my Toyota-based arrangement, too tight a fit), the Westy chassis will have been engineer approved, and have mountings installed for seat belts and a 4A-GE engine and gearbox. Arrange to meet Steve again on Thursday to talk about a quote ... My old chassis is in the Quokka (Free classified advertising newspaper) as an "incomplete project".
Westy chassis turns out to be a bit too expensive, began discussion with a Locost builder in Queensland who has made a pretty good offer (and understands what I'm talking about - a real problem when you try talking to welders who don't normally make complete motor vehicle chassis's).
MAY-JUNE 1999
Sorry, I haven't been able to access the Net regularly last coupla' months and work has been excessively busy,
not much to report, apart from on going discussions with various people about getting a chassis built, and construction of my coilover shock absorbers out of Leyland Mini shockies, won't bore you with details
Also met up with Julian Zotti, he is going to borrow my MDF board to weld his chassis on. Also got some e-mail messages from some West Australians who saw this site and may start building soon.
figured out how to use "targets" in HTML, may have to put some in this
Have been in contact with a few locals who have ssen these pages and been on the OneList, also still trying to find someone locoal to weld up a Locost chassis, no luck. Most people seem to be making race-only space frames, that will not need any torsion-bending testing, or they don't consider themselves experienced enought to make a chassis for someone else.
Scored a cheap Abandoned Toyota Corolla from my employer. I was able to leave this heap at the Council's Depot, after scrounging parts off it. I put an ad in the Free section of the Quokka, hopefully somone will collect this heap when I've finished .
JULY 1999
1 & 2 July - Had a look at Dave Scholes Westfield undergoing a rebuild, took some photos on the way to work, will scan them when the film is processed. Very interesting, he appears to have used Toyota crossmember mounts, bolted to the space frame, rather than the Westfield-type McKay M114 mounts - the Toyota mounts can be obtained cheaper (but as usual, more work involved).
If I can use the Toyota mounts, it will be easier to fit the oil cooler sandwich plate on my engine (above).
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As Kevin Wilson is ready to start work on my chassis, I decided to start a new Diary Page!