Building an R1 Powered Seven: Rear Suspension, Brakes

Building an R1 Powered Seven

A few years ago I got it in my head to build a kit car. After months of searching I came across the Locost concept. In short, quite a few amateur hobbiests around the world have built their own Lotus 7 inspired cars from scratch, following plans available on a variety of Internet sites and published in a book by Ron Champion.

I started gathering parts and finally began building the chassis in July '05. In August '10 the car was titled, licensed and is now street legal. The following blog captures the progress of the build and driving experiences after completion.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Rear Suspension, Brakes

It's been tough finding time to work on the car recently, but I have made bits of progress.
The rear suspension is bolted together and roughly aligned. The ride height I'm shooting for is 5" to the bottom of the chassis. Right now the push rods are adjusted to the shortest length. I may need to shorten them a bit depending on how much the shocks compress with the weight of the car.

I was hoping to finish up the brakes today, but ran into a snag. When installing the right front brake pads, I couldn't get the caliper over the new pads. I tried compressing the piston some more, but nothing budged. At first I thought the pads might be too thick, but moved on to the left side and everything went together fine...

After comparing the calipers, I could see that the piston was sticking out farther on the right caliper than on the left. I tried pressing it back with a vice, no luck, then decided to pull the piston out and check for debris/damage. Everything looked fine. It went back in until it clearly bottomed out, but still stuck out more than the left...rather than waste any more time, I ordered another caliper on-line, and moved on to the brake lines.

I was able to finish the brake lines, so all that remains for the brakes is to paint/install the new caliper when it arrives, and finish routing the e-brake cable.