Things are definitely
slowing down on the Locost front. The shorter days, holidays, and weather are all having an impact.
We're putting on a big track day at Thunderhill Raceway in two weeks, and that'll probably knock a
whole week off the schedule. The weather has not been cooperating either, with the garage cold and
damp and stuffed with cars that would ordinarily get pushed out into the driveway on a nice day. Okay,
one car, but it's big and it really gets in the way. Okay it's not that big, it's a Miata, but
still.
Fender supports with proper 30" radius
We've managed to get some of the last few pieces welded to the chassis, including the curved rear
fender supports and a few more tabs. We made the fender supports out of 1/8" steel strip and
16 gauge steel leftover from trimming the floor. We designed them to fit a 30-inch rear fender, which we
don't have right now but shouldn't be hard to find. Of course a smaller fender would fit, but the
edge of the fender has to match the curve of the fender support exactly, or else you're going to need
to explain why it doesn't.
We only have a couple of items left on the agenda before painting the frame. The big thing we're
waiting for is the roll bar, which hasn't arrived yet and is not looking too promising for a
pre-Christmas install. While we wait, we're extending the fuel tank mounts out 2-1/2", since we now
know the exact size of the tank. We're also welding blind nuts on to the mounts so we can bolt straps
over the tank later on. Another thing we plan to do is relocate the mounting tabs for the fiberglass nose
cone. Not critical, but as long as we have the time, might as well make it perfect. Well, not perfect
of course, but you know.
All this wire has to fit somewhere
Naturally, we still have tabs to weld. We could probably weld tabs 'til next spring and still
not have enough. To make sure the new tabs would end up in the right place, we dragged out the forward
half of the wiring harness and draped it over the car. Unlike the rear harness, the forward harness
was not too long. In fact, we had to be pretty efficient with the routing. Oddly, the one point on the
harness that had to end up in the right place, and dictated the position of the rest of the harness,
was the offside horn.
Harness has to reach all the way to the horn
We attached two leads to the horn, then ran the harness back through the engine bay, where
we were able to attach wires to the fuse box and set the fuse box on the edge of the engine bay shelf.
Unfortunately this placed the fuse box right next to where the battery goes, which would look totally
amateur. Directly behind the fuse box, and also right next to where the battery would go, was a huge
tangle of wires that attach to the rear harness where it comes out of the transmission tunnel. So the
whole thing looked like a big mess.
M.G. fuse box in the wrong location
We've had this idea since the beginning of our build that the fuse box belonged on the engine bay
shelf. Clearly we were misguided about this. It turns out the fuse box actually belongs on the
offside firewall. Yes, fuses will be difficult to access there, but come on, it's an M.G. The fuse box
only has a couple of fuses. It's not that complicated. After we found the correct location for the fuse box,
we were able to move that whole tangled mess of wires under the R and J tubes, where they're pretty
much out of sight, so long as you don't look too hard.
Properly located M.G. fuse box
The harness branch for the coil, distributor, and alternator has just enough slack to reach those
components, and the branches for the starter, reverse switch, and brake light switch are all sufficiently
long. So the forward harness fits, and it turned out we only needed two additional tabs, although
we were tempted to add tabs to the S and T tubes up front, where the harness crosses from the offside
horn to the nearside horn. But those tubes don't have anything welded to them, which means you can run
tie-wraps all the way around them, which makes tabs just so much excess weight.
I'm not sure when we're going to have something to post next. We didn't do much work on the Locost last
December, and this year is shaping up to be pretty much the same. If we don't receive the roll bar in
the next week or so, we won't have much to do anyway except grinding and cleaning. Which will be
kind of boring. Which is unfortunate, since it's really starting to feel like there's not a lot left
to do before we have a running car. We need to find something else to keep us busy. Maybe we'll paint
the wheels or something.
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