Car in winter storage

Some pictures of when Mika drove the car to winter storage, it was quite slippery.

We had to get some room in the garage when we started to build a bigger car, you can follow its progres at http://www.ratataksi.com or in its blogi http://racetaxi.blogspot.com.

Historic Grand Race 2007

This was our second race with the car, and the first time for Henrik to drive the car.

Picture from the pits, all locosts in the same row.

Coming in from practice.

Second practice.

And a picture after the qualifying, got a truck ride from the track. I drove off in a corner called "Tarun mutka". The impact was quite hard, breaking both of the righthand front a-arms. The welds of the lower front suspension mounting point were also broken. Also, both righthand side carbon fenders were broken.

Mika went back to our garage to manufacture new a-arms and the rest of us stayed behind to fix the mounting point and trying to find 10mm rod-ends. Having an accident this close to the Saturdays race, meant that there was no way we could get our car repaired to participate.

Ready for Sundays race, all cars lined up in the pits for the race. I had to start from the last place because the grid order is determined by the fastest lap in the Saturdays race.

The race has started. You can see me passing the blue/red Fiat. It was a quite tight pass, and the car oversteered a bit driving over a patch of oil, so I touched the Fiat's side with my left rear fender (my apologies).

Park fermé after the race, I had to retire in middle of the race. Reasons for retirement were that the oil pressure light was set too high, so when it started to light up constantly, I thought it best to stop the race. I probably couldn't have driven for long either, the breather tank was too small so water was coming out of it. It wouldn't have been a problem if the breather tank wouldn't have been just the right size and mounted to the engine, at one point in the rev range the water would start to vibrate and it sprayed out of the breather hole. When testing it after wards in our garage, it had quite a force, and you could get the water spray raise to the ceiling.

After the race I had broken three of our nice looking carbon fenders...

American Car Show 2007

The show stand still needed some final adjustments on Friday morning.

The Camera automatically focuses on the girls... Hmmm.

Had to take multiple shots to get the flash in the right position.

The sides look nice!

Friday's girls + a girl from the GTI stand in the middle.

The day of building the car show stand...

The day when we had to take the Locost to the car show. Luckily we had time until 22:00. There was still loads to do, like the sheet metal covering the propshaft tunnel was made 5 minutes before we left, and the parts were put inside the van to let them dry.

Carbon fibre tape. It looks just like the real deal, even when looked at close. Its made of metallic foil where the carbon look has been pressed in, so it has a 3d effect that makes it look really good.

Carbonbogey.

We painted the exhaust black. The part before the muffler is stainless, so we left a bogeyracing sticker to cover a bit of that part, and when the paint dried we took the sticker off.

Looking good, picture taken at 20:17 at the garage. Takes about 1 hour to drive to the car show.

Finally there. Speed was limited by the front fenders moving a bit, so we had to tape them to the wheels.

When we got the cars inside began the work of applying vinyls on the cars. The beetle also needed a windshield.

"Disassembling" of the vinyls in progress. On the background you can see the air balloons that will be on our stand.

Painted car, engine cover ready, panhard bar

Even after painting it twice, there is still a big flaw in the dashboard. Have to paint it again...

Painted car.

The spacers for the rear suspension. Here's enough for two cars.

Assembling the rear suspension.

Finnish cell phone culture, all the time on the phone.

Fitting the hump on the engine cover.

"Take a picture from here."

A picture taken. The sides turned out great, from the right angle it looks like an ice breaker.

Camber adjustment in the front.

Making of the panhard tube was a quite last minute deal.

Painting the front sides

The left side got a hole so we can fit the exhaust tubing. The hole is just the right size so it is easy to install and remove the exhaust.

We moved the other frame outside so we would get more room in the garage.

Me and Mika lifted the car on the jigtable, so it's quite lightweight at this point.

The fixture to paint the nosecone and the dashboard. We had to repaint the nose because we managed to get a pretty bad scratch on it when fitting the engine cover.

Masked car, ready to be painted.

Testing how the tires fit

Putting a tire on the wheel. According to rules we can only use Yokohama A048 tires in Medium or Soft compound. Tire sizes are restricted to 185 or 205 in 13" and 195 or 205 in 15".

Testing how a tire fits the car.

The fender fits surprisingly well, even though we have 205mm wide tires instead of 185mm which the fenders are made for.

Reverse gear arrived, front end assembled, exhaust continued and fitting the fuel tank

Revers gear, weight approx. 300g.

Front end assembled.

Making the exhaust...

Welding the last tube of the header.

Fitting the fuel tank. The car will be a twoseater so we can take passengers along for a ride. The fuel tank will be under the passengers knees. The fuel fill we be on the side of the dash.

The stuff from england finally arrived, putting shocks on, 2nd version of race numbers

I moved to live at the garage. We have quite a bit to catch up before the car show.

Finally the stuff fron rallydesign arrived, it took 3 months. First time with shocks under the car.

Second layer of clear coat on the carbon fenders.

Second version of the race numbers.

Continuing to make the Exhaust headers.

Locost battery. Panasonic 38Ah regenerating dry battery.