North Canterbury Locost

[emmex7]

Hi All,
I've been watching these forums for a while now and been hugely impressed with the overall standard of the posts here and the outstanding workmanship shown on some of the build diaries. I'm well underway with my own project so I thought that now would be a good time to launch myself here..
I'm building a pretty standard type locost based on the Chris Gibbs book frame but using almost of the running gear from an MX5, so kind of an amalgam of the Chris Gibbs frame with the Keith Tanner runner gear(and an overlay of Hobby Car Technical Manual for good measure). At the moment I have the frame basically together and have started into the final welding. I've done my LVV weld test and am okay to mig my chassis so all's good there. I was fortunate to source an excellent donor MX5 which I've finished stripping so now have the engine (B6 1600) gearbox and viscous LSD diff along with all bits and pieces to go into it. I have a megasquirt running on my road car at the moment which is destined for this car to let me add a wee huffer. I've taken a few photos along the way so I will start on a build diary soon and bring everyone up to date.

[Gollum]

Welcome aboard. It's like an addiction support group except we're all enablers....

[ibreadmore]

Gollum, excellent description, 'addicts' certainly sums us up.

Welcome to the forums, this is truly an excellent source of information, help and support.

Cheers Iain.

[7ish]

I have just read that Haynes and Chris Gibbs are bringing out a version of the book based on an MX5 donor... That should help a bit..

Feel free to call in on your way past if you want to look over my car.. I'm in Loburn... PM for address.
Cheers

[TheMagnificentSeven]

Welcome
Fantastic that your going the way of a one car donor, and will be posting on the forum. I want to do it that way as well.

[nisseven]

Hi and welcome to another Canterbury builder. Is there something in the water in the Loburn area
I will be interested to see your build log as I am using MX5 suspension and am in the process of designing the front now. The front is a little tricky due to the lowness of the rack and I am sure there is just enough clearance but will need to do a mock up to be sure.
And I agree the one car donor is the way to go, makes things much easier.
Bruce

[bzrse7en]

Bruce, there's got to be something in the water in Canterbury - we must over represent seven builds in NZ by a large margin.
Great to hear of another build.

patrick

[KiwiBirkin]

Hi Emmex welcome to the forums its all ways nice to have another Canterbury member on the forums looking forward to seeing your build when you get pictures up. All we need now is to get some of these builds on the road as we could have one hell of a Clubmans meeting/BBQ sometime in the future. Mind you im sort of thinking about doing something like that later this year in summer when it gets warmer, looks like it needs to be in the Rangiora/Loburn area on a nice day.

[emmex7]

Thanks everyone for your replies. It's certainly nice to have so much enthusiasm around. As for getting the car up and out on the road, I had initially planned for a three year build time but I expected the chassis and donor stripping phases to be much longer than they have taken ( I started the week after Easter) so now I hope to be on the road around Summer, December 2011 (finances permitting!!!) - Mind you, those could be famous last words, I really haven't launched into any of the problem-solving stuff yet so I can't be sure how I'll react when the going gets a bit tougher.

[Bigred]

Hi

At least with all the guys building in your "neck of the woods" you should have help at hand when the going gets tough!
I'm sure there's a heap of builds going on up here but we'll never know as they tend to keep quiet.

Welcome to the forum.

Cheers
Cliff