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.

Blog Posts

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Sunday, October 5, 2008

Roller, sort of...

The new right front caliper arrived and it fit over the new pads without any issues. I had tires installed last week, and now that the brakes are done I decided to mount the wheels and take the car off the stands. I bought a motorcycle/ATV jack to help with this and lowered the car one end at a time onto dollies.





Now the fun part, testing the suspension...

Ride height is currently 5.5" rear and 4.5" front. I'll adjust to 5" front and rear to start.

Wheel rates:
Standing on the rear lowered the car by 0.5". So 165lbs/2/0.5" = 165 lbs/in wheel rate...
The front compressed a little more: 165lbs/2/0.55 = 150 lbs/in
Pretty close to my target rates.

One unfortunate discovery, I have a clearance issue with the front rocker (hits the frame at about 1" of bump). I can improve this by adjusting the springs (pre-compress), this will also raise the ride height which I need to do anyway. If this doesn't give me enough travel, I'll have to think about shaving some metal off the rockers or modify the frame rails...minor setback though, overall a good weekend.

Slideshow of Build Progress