build diary

November 28, 2005:
The new hood underway compared to the original.
The black mess is some protective plastic that was intended to keep me from scratching the aluminum. I had to peel it back in order to anneal the metal.
entry 1079

November 30, 2005:
No work on the car recently because I've been preparing for another trip to California.
This is a short one though, just a long weekend. I'm going to be part of the pit crew for a couple of 2006 MX5 race cars in a 25-hour race. This should be interesting stuff. Caterham did very well in this race a couple of years ago but unfortunately they won't be there this year. I'll see if I pick up any good tips looking at this car.

It's time to set some goals for the Seven, though. Let's see, I'll get the suspension modelled by the end of the year and decide what path to take there. I'll also have the hood finished along with a new exhaust. There, a target! I'm not working at the feverish pace I was when I was coming to the finish of the initial build, am I?
entry 1080

December 6, 2005:
Back from the races!
Very little Seven-related activity although being that close to that many race cars managed to get me all itchy for more track time myself. The cars were, for the most part, nicely prepared by AWR. The biggest problem was that we had in setup was a lack of shock damping. The cars were running on stock shocks because they were so new and nothing else was available. We also had two cars with identical setups that worked differently - one oversteered enthusiastically, the other would not do anything but push. We worked away at finding solutions and it was very interesting watching the experienced racers do what they could to get the cars to work. They did get better but were never exceptional. Drivers from other teams were commenting on how the little guys bounced around. Unfortunately, we had a few problems over the course of the race (fulfilling our role as a development race) and were not in the hunt for a win by the time dawn rolled around. Shortly after, one of our cars also rolled around on the track a bit and became a good candidate for a Locost. The other droned across the line stuck in either 5th or 6th gear.

December 7, 2005:
Oooh, look at the pretty little Miata race car.
25 hours later, it was a Locost donor due to a small argument with another car.
entry 1082
Racing started at 11 am.
This is dawn the next morning.
entry 1083
A peek at the differential for the new MX5.
It looks like it should be a good option for a Seven. I didn't weigh it but it seemed quite light. And yes, it's smoking.
entry 1084

December 9, 2005:
For those who want a few more pictures from the races, there are some on the Flyin' Miata site.
This is a diary about the Seven, so I'm not going to digress too far.

The exhaust system is not going to be finished before the end of the year. I haven't sent the huge muffler back to Summit Racing yet and I have only about 12 days before I leave for the holidays. I will attempt to finish the hood though. I'm also learning SolidWorks (an extremely cool 3D prototyping program) to play with suspension bits.

Also on the suspension - this photo was referenced on the LocostUSA builder's forum. Those rockers are apparently stock motorcycle parts. I hadn't considered that approach - motorcycles tend to show up in junkyards with regularity so if I can identify a good part, I should be able to buy it fairly cheap. The design of the rocker is the difficult part of the inboard suspension, I'll let the highly-paid motorcycle engineers sort that out for me!
entry 1085

December 14, 2005:
At some point I'm going to have to wander back out to the garage and at least finish the hood.
Sigh.

I've written to the Fraser car company in NZ about that nice rocker they use. Hopefully they'll share the information. Their cars have some nice touches. Here's a shot of their front suspension. Nice clean design. The lower front control arm looks like the one I'd like to build. The headlights can be removed by loosening a couple of bolts, great for track days. And check out that brake rotor!
entry 1086

December 19, 2005:
With the best of intentions, I cleaned the dead birds out of the woodstove and fired it up to make the garage habitable.
Then I tackled the hood. First off, the cheap clamps you get at Harbour Freight aren't worth buying. I persevered in my hammering of the flange along the bottom edge of the hood. When I tried it on the car, it looks as if I was slightly off in my location. I was paranoid about making the hood a bit too big. Turns out I had the opposite problem and ended up a bit too small. I was not happy when I saw the gap (1/8" to 1/4" estimated) between the hood and the top of the body. can I still use this hood or will I have to start over? I don't know. I'll take another look tonight and see what I think. I'll take pictures too.One other option for the hood would simply be to cut the louvres out of my original and rivet the panel back in the other way around. It wouldn't be the most attractive setup though.

With regards to suspension, John Grimberg contacted me and is willing to help out with machining a custom rocker. Time to fire up the computer and figure out what that rocker should look like then!
entry 1087

December 20, 2005:
I was hoping that after a bit of time, the hood fitment would either look fine or some easy solution would pop to mind.
Nope. It looks like I'll have to start over. I'm going to start from scratch and make a new pattern at the same time.

I'm heading back to Canada for a couple of weeks. Not much will happen on the Seven during that time obviously. Hopefully I'll come back all full of plans and motivated to at least get the hood, exhaust and fender repair done.
entry 1088

A shot of the hood fitment.
Or the lack thereof. Sigh. I think my slipping clamps are partially to blame. The crease would look far nicer if I had access to a metal brake that was large enough.
entry 1089

January 5, 2006:
Happy New Year!
Okay, it's time to get serious about the Seven again.

Mark Rivera has offered to cut the hood, punch louvres and bend the two lips for me. It would have to be shipped to me but it's a tempting offer. Mark's building a car of his own. I've also been considering moving to the 0.040" aluminum instead of the 0.050" I used last time. It saves a bit of weight and the louvres will stiffen things up. I'm not sure about that but it will make the bending easier. Time to play with the existing hood and see.

I started trying to model the front suspension in SolidWorks last night, only to discover I have a lot of learning to do with the program. I'm still not sure if I should write my own analysis program (I like building things), use an existing Excel spreadsheet, write my own spreadsheet or use SolidWorks. The latter is tempting because it's such a cool program. Time to do something, though. I want to have the car up and running again by spring. I guess that means it's time to fix the rear fender that was ripped off too. So many plans!
entry 1090

January 6, 2006:
I figured out enough SolidWorks to put together a line drawing of the suspension that lets me bounce things up and down.
Whee, this is fun! I need to double-check the dimensions of the various parts though. While the suspension movement looks familiar, my control arms ended up more parallel than they do in pictures.
entry 1091

January 9, 2006:
You know, I really should choose one thing and focus on it.
I seem to be suffering from vehicular ADD again. A fresh load of Mini magazines has me thinking of cool, fun things to do with the Mini. I've started to get the itch to run my Land Rover, Basil again. I want to start working on my house again. And of course there's the Seven. I have a long list of things I'd like to do. And one I don't - the hood.

I'll measure the car up again tonight to see if I can figure out how the front suspension works. I really hope my Solidworks model isn't correct. It shows a camber curve that isn't enough to compensate for body roll, putting the tires into positive camber immediately. Well, if anyone wants a set of dimensions for a suspension that has a whole bunch of bad habits, I'd be pleased to oblige.

Meanwhile, I've been considering the other laundry list of modifications. One is to move the battery up to the front of the car. Space is a little tight, so I'm considering a little Odyssey PC680 or the Hawker G16. I can get one for around $80 and it has the same long-lived construction that I'm used to seeing in Miata batteries. It's also only 15 lbs. Granted, I've had to jump the Seven a couple of times with my current Miata battery but that's because it wouldn't start for other reasons - fouled plugs. I figure a set of jumper cables are now standard issue for going to the track. There's also the matter of the fender. A tempting solution would be Coveland's aluminum fenders. There's also a good rear view mirror that would come in handy at Mirrors for Sevens. I saw one on the RMSC car at Aspen. Argh. Concentrate! Concentrate!
entry 1092

The first model of my current front suspension, with a few degrees of roll.
I need to recheck the dimensions, but check out what's happened to the camber! Nothing good.
entry 1093

January 10, 2006:
Lots of SolidWorks fun last night.
I spent some time learning how to animate the model properly and discovered some interesting things - then realised I was using some measurements from the rear. Argh. With my new knowledge it only took a moment to change the dimensions (this is so cool!) and the car immediately picked up enough positive camber to look like a VW Beetle jacked up in the air. Obviously something isn't right. I'll need more measurements. I have a front upright on my desk right now and the car suspension is easy to check once I get home. Playing with my incorrect model did teach me a few things about the interaction of the various parts, though. Of course, I also spent some time trying to figure out how to put 10" wheels over my 8.4" brakes on the Mini...
entry 1094

A better model of the front suspension with fewer errors, but not yet error-free.
entry 1095

January 11, 2006:
A friend pointed out that there's a CMC car like mine on eBay.
I had a brief email exchange with the owner about diff mount design last summer but that's all I know. It'll be interesting to see if this car fetches more than it would cost to build. It's fun to look at the pictures - looks as if his fender stays were always crooked like my original ones were. There's a lot of static camber in the front wheels which implies he discovered some of the difficulties with the suspension although there's not much roll in the pictures online. I have an idea of what the final price will be, let's see how close I am.

On a similar note, there's a new CMC Miata kit that's still for sale. Rod Lingren has been trying to move this one for a while and is now asking $4000 for it. He can be reached at 619 787 2412. It's the basic kit - frame, suspension, aluminum panels, 'glass body panels (no hood) and the MSO documentation from CMC. Some modification will be required to the diff mount!
entry 1096

January 13, 2006:
I measured up the front suspension upright again and came up with slightly different numbers, but not different enough to make the suspension look like the one on my car.
I need to check the measurements of the car for the third time then I think I'll have it. So far, it's looking as if I lose 2 degrees of camber with 4 degrees of roll. Not so good.

To ensure further distraction, I bought a number of painting supplies today. It's time to learn how to paint my own cars. Maybe I'll start with the spare nose cone.
entry 1097

January 17, 2006:
I took a battery from a power supply home.
It's pretty close in size to the Odyssey I've been considering. Wow, the packaging options are good. I can tuck it up against the passenger's feet, right near the starter, alternator and my main power distribution block and a grounding point. That alone will probably make the price worthwhile, allowing me to move some weight up front while shedding 10 pounds plus cabling. I'll have to open up the transmission tunnel again to remove the old cable but I think it will be worth the effort. It's nice to see something make the car lighter for a change. I'll add in a battery cutoff switch for security, safety and ease of working on the car.

I've been learning about hood manufacturing. Those who are in the business of making metal change shape have been sitting back and laughing at my floundering around. It appears that I could make a hood in a few minutes with access to the right tools. It would also help if I started with the right alloy of aluminum.

And now, the suspension. I've given up on SolidWorks for the time being (cool stuff, I'll come back to that) and I'm using an Excel spreadsheet that someone worked out to determine my suspension behaviour. It's not telling me any good stories - camber loss of 1.8 degrees with 2 degrees of roll. Ouch! The rear looks a bit better, losing about 1 degree. That explains why the car turns in nicely but then understeers in sweepers. I'm still guessing at ride heights from the way my control arms looked at rest. Interestingly, the front roll center appears to be right at ground level and the rear is pretty close as well. No indication from the spreadsheet about how it moves around. I might try entering the numbers for the stock Miata rear suspension to see how it behaves. I'm tempted to stick that in the back without modification and build a front setup that has similar behaviour to the stock Miata front. Ah, who knows. I'll probably hear about a track day and scramble to just reassemble everything.

One note about the aluminum fenders from Coveland. They weigh 1.7 lbs for a 9.75" wide front and 2.8 lbs for a 11.75 lbs rear. I'll have to pull mine off to compare, but right now I'm thinking I'd rather put the aluminum rears on instead of trying to repair my battered unit. Or maybe I'm just scared of a bit of work.
entry 1098

January 18, 2006:
Okay, I've managed to confuse myself.
I modelled the front suspension of the Miata in the spreadsheet and came up with camber curves even worse than my own. I double-checked that against some measured curves and while it's not 100% accurate (that front upright is a bugger to measure) it's close enough to confirm that maybe I don't want the suspension to keep the wheels from changing camber in roll. After all, the Miata setup works pretty well. Argh. I know that too much camber change wreaks havoc with the braking and acceleration behaviour. Maybe the key is just to keep the thing from flopping all over the place - the same tack that Heikki has been taking. So I decided to play with my pushrod design instead. Ahh, that's a lot more interesting to do. I think I've worked out how the math is meant to function. I need to spend some time in the garage with the real pieces to see if what I'm working out onscreen makes sense at all, but I'm getting somewhere.

I've seen comments that I'm really dissatisfied with the handling of this car. Those who don't believe in IRS suspensions (or indoor plumbing I guess) seem to take my car as an example of how it shouldn't be done. I don't know about that - I already know the car's competitive on the track with a Caterham and I do still hold the track record here in town as far as I know. So it's not all that bad. I just know it could be better.

Oh, some news. My new muffler has finally shipped.
entry 1099

Size comparison of an Odyssey-sized vs stock Miata battery.
It's not as if the Miata part is huge, it's that the Odyssey is tiny!
entry 1100
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