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Author: Subject: CBR1000F Locost Improvements
Edwardo

posted on 26/8/20 at 07:49 PM Reply With Quote
CBR1000F Locost Improvements

Evening all - Thought I'd do myself a little project diary that I can add to as changes go along.

Bought a tatty Locost late Feb with an old (93'ish) CBR1000F engine fitted. Got it reasonably cheap as it needs work and the conversion to bike engine was not really done properly with a cradle etc.

Plan was to run it 'as-was' warts and all during the summer and then totally strip/rebuild over the winter.



First job was to repair the manifold that had sheared away in some places and was blowing like mad :-




Also had to totally free off the rear brakes that seized on every time you applied the handbrake and replace the corroded handbrake cables.

Once those jobs were done - took it out for the first drive and ran out of gears really quickly so convinced myself that it had a knackered gearbox and 6th was missing as it only had 5. Weather was terrible for weeks so didn't get to drive it again anyway.

Bought a spare engine off Ebay from an older model and changed the required parts to make it work. Took existing engine out late April :-



Then life/work/lockdown blues got in the way and it wasn't until July the replacement engine was in and ready to fire :-



Whilst cranking it without Ht leads connected to build up oil pressure - noticed a lovely pool of fresh oil appearing on the floor. Crank seals were toast on the replacement engine So out it came :-



During the 3 months it inexplicably took me to put the replacement engine in - I did get a few other jobs done. First I replaced the RS 7 spoke alloys it came with some new JBW's wrapped in fresh R888's (oh and added a side decal cos I like them lol):-




There was also an alarming plume of smoke from the Ignition switch so I traced and recorded every single wire of the awful/horrible wiring job on the car. The terrible wiring for all the switches is on the other whiteboard, so below is just the main supply wiring. It's all equally awful though:-



Just knowing its still currently wired like this still makes me shudder. I sorted out the short that caused the smoke plume and burnt out the Ig switch. Took the chance to replace the ignition/engine start/fuel pump switches.

So back to the engine - started looking at the original engine again properly. I found a previous builder had put the 130hp CBR top end onto a CB bottom end (hence only the 5 gears). It ran well - just seemed to run out of gears fast. Did some research and found the ratio of the CB 5th gear was almost identical to the CBR's 6th. So I wouldn't have gained anything if the other engine had been ok - just more gears to crash through. Ah well - live and learn.

The original motor needed a new sump - so that was replaced and general clean/tidy up of the motor revealed a split coolant coolant hose too. So sorted out the issues and popped it back in last week. Greased the prop shaft UJ before it went in and loctite'd the prop adaptor bolts in as I've heard awful stories about those coming out.

Fired her back up the other night and finally after nearly 4 wasted months it was lovely to rev her up on the drive and annoy the neighbours

Took the opportunity to also replace the old silencer - which rattles quite a bit internally - with the new Wunoff repackable silencer and also cover up some of the horrible stainless steel with 4D carbon wrap. Original silencer :-



New (with protective wrapping still on of course) :-



So hopefully I'm just about ready to have a few more sessions in it now before the weather turns. I've decided to put up with the short gearing for now in order to try and get some use out of it finally! I've got a 3.54 ratio crown wheel/pinion to swap in when the diff is rebuilt over the winter. But for now just took some pics of it sitting on the driveway in the sun :-





Just before lockdown I won a almost full set of bodywork for a Luego Velocity (which seems to be identical to Locost bodywork) in yellow. Not bad for £80 for the lot! :-



I wasn't keen on the yellow at first (I quite like the blue it is now) so was planning to have it sprayed during the winter stripdown. But after a quick trail fit of the bonnet/nose, I've also decided that the car is going to turn yellow/black :-



Thanks for reading thus far and will post updates as/when things happen.

Cheers
Tony

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Deckman001

posted on 26/8/20 at 08:01 PM Reply With Quote
Well done and it looks great too

Jason

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MikeR
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posted on 26/8/20 at 08:05 PM Reply With Quote
80 !!!

You lucky sod



Ps cars great but I'm grumpy at 80 so can't be nice to you

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Edwardo

posted on 26/8/20 at 08:06 PM Reply With Quote
Thanks Jason - It's starting to come along!

Good luck with your upcoming IVA by the way.

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Edwardo

posted on 26/8/20 at 08:11 PM Reply With Quote
quote:
Originally posted by MikeR
80 !!!

You lucky sod



Ps cars great but I'm grumpy at 80 so can't be nice to you


Thanks Mike - yeah it was a bit of a great find. Had to drive down to Reading to get it - but was worth the £20 fuel.

If it makes you feel any better - the rear arches in the set were far too narrow to cover my wheels - so I sold them and the other yellow rear arches I already had are a totally different shade.

So I'm having to have some colour matched and made which will cost me a fair bit. Hopefully that cheers you up!

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MikeR
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posted on 26/8/20 at 08:36 PM Reply With Quote
You realise it's not that hard to extend and spray a set of arches?

(Bloody 80 quid)

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perksy

posted on 26/8/20 at 10:00 PM Reply With Quote
Good write up and sorry but I really like the Blue and I'd have that over the Yellow

Those wheels make it look soooooo much better aswell

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Edwardo

posted on 10/12/20 at 09:24 PM Reply With Quote
Evening all - Nearly finished decorating the hallway/landing/stairs for SWMBO so nearly time to get back to the stripdown rebuild of the Locost.

The rear trailing arm brackets broke on both sides on the last drive in Oct and also found it was at least 50Kg on the lardy side so just decided to sorn it/rip it all apart back to the bare frame and rebuild it properly a bit earlier than I'd hoped.

Started the tear down late Oct but then got the orders for the decorating, so car currently still looks like this :-



I've removed all the heavy stainless steel paneling and heavy stainless boot bits/original big steel tank etc :-





On the subject of stainless steel - it really boggles my mind that people would make the side panels (or any other part which contacts the chassis for that matter) in stainless! I know a smear of silicone is used to try and keep the 2 apart - but the slightest bit of moisture connects the 2 again. Galvanic Corrosion then obviously starts and your mild steel chassis starts sacrificing itself for the sake of nice shiny side panel gggrrrr.

Thankfully the original builder used ali to do the interior panels and although there is quite a bit of rust - it is all surface and is cleaning up to nice fresh metal pretty quickly in the areas tested so far.

You can see the area where the gear lever would be - 4 off stumps left. Again, a previous builder had welded a load more box section to make another frame to lift his switches up high???? The mind boggles... That all got cut off so another 3Kgs saved there. :-





The BEC conversion always looked like a pretty quick bodge together - so few more jobs to do here trimming the thick plate properly and welding in some crush tubes into the box section (although it's a little late now) :-



Although there are many things worrying me the further I strip this - I'm after some advice re the rear suspension. I was not expecting to find this :-



Shouldn't the bottom of the coilover be sitting in the bracket on the axle? It looks like a couple of plates have been welded to the rear of the trailing arm bracket which is moving it outboard (both sides of the car have had this done)??



You can sort of see it in this pic that the coilover is tilted outboard at the bottom - it should be straight vertical down right? :-



I could understand if the they couldn't get the right length coilover and just used some plates to extend up to a shorter one - but pushing the bottom of it outwards?

The top mounting seems to be in the right place I think? :-



View from inside looking up at top mounting :-



And again, top mounting from the outside :-



It's looking like I've got a long winter of welding and correcting ahead which I hadn't bargained for. Was hoping a quick strip/ trailing arm bracket repair/rust treat/frame paint and re-assemble was in order.

The panhard rod looks to have had an angled bracket welded to it to put it in a weird position too but I don't have a pic of that just yet.

If anyone could advise re the rear suspension - I'd be most grateful - cheers

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Edwardo

posted on 15/2/21 at 08:08 PM Reply With Quote
Slow progress (as usual with me) - but everything is finally off and the car now looks like this :-



I had to cut the roll bar off as once uncovered, it was a total bodge of the highest order.

Somebody has welded (poorly) some box section horizontally across the boot and then an angled dropper down to the bottom rear chassis rail in the boot. The angled round tubes off the roll bar barely touched the sides of the horizontals and just had a great blob of weld to connect them. You might notice the gap at the bottom of the angled box section where they hadn't even been bothered to weld it at all (you can move this up and down easily by hand and it's supposed to be a brace!) :-





I just can't leave it like this so the roll bar came off and this support structure will be cut away and re-done properly before I re-weld the roll bar back on :-



I've welded up some proper 20mm box section supports for the steering column too (the column was previously only supported with a scraggy bit of angle with a clamp in the engine bay and was attached to the rear of the wooden dash in the passenger area for the other support :-



Slight surprise/shock when I got the diff out - turns out it already had a 3.54 in there! I had already bought a replacement 3.54 as I was convinced it was a 3.89 or higher in there. So now have two 3.54 diffs and also a 3.54 CW and Pinion! Not a good sign for cruising rpm that it was already that ratio.

Just getting to look at sorting out the broken trailing arm brackets now tho :-



I've bought some 50x50x3 box section to replace the spindly little brackets with. Just wondering the best way to get these existing ones removed without damaging the sheet or box section too much? I'm thinking about buying one of those cheap 400W electric Die Grinders off Ebay - and get a decent set of Carbide burrs to get the weld off. Any other ideas before I go buying more equipment?

Cheers
Tony

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Memphis

posted on 16/2/21 at 07:43 PM Reply With Quote
I wouldn't bother with a cheap die grinder. Spend a bit more and get a long nosed 750W grinder such as a Makita. It will last a lifetime.
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Edwardo

posted on 16/2/21 at 08:00 PM Reply With Quote
Ahhhh - cheers for the advice, just placed the order this morning for a cheap Amazon jobbie and some carbide bits though unfortunately.

Amazon Die Grinder Link

Amazon Carbide Bits Link


Hopefully it will last until all the welds are ground off!

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Memphis

posted on 16/2/21 at 08:08 PM Reply With Quote
Oh dear....
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Edwardo

posted on 16/2/21 at 08:15 PM Reply With Quote
They are being delivered tomorrow so hopefully tomorrow night I'll be posting to say it whipped all the welds off with ease and it's a great bit of kit
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James

posted on 17/2/21 at 02:23 AM Reply With Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Edwardo


I just can't leave it like this so the roll bar came off and this support structure will be cut away and re-done properly before I re-weld the roll bar back on :-




Unless you particularly want all that box section to square off your boot lid or something I would be tempted to remove it entirely. Then remove the roll-hoop rear stays and replace the stays with longer ones that extend all the way to the bottom rail. The cuts weight, removes excess joints and tidies things up.


quote:


I've bought some 50x50x3 box section to replace the spindly little brackets with. Just wondering the best way to get these existing ones removed without damaging the sheet or box section too much? I'm thinking about buying one of those cheap 400W electric Die Grinders off Ebay - and get a decent set of Carbide burrs to get the weld off. Any other ideas before I go buying more equipment?

Cheers
Tony


Cut out that steel panel and replace with a piece of ali. More weight saving and it's not as if the panel adds structurally if I remember back to the Cymtrics chassis mods days.



Whilst you're into weight saving... you definitely don't need that 10mm plate for the prop bearing! My engine mounts for a heavy weight Pinto are only 3mm!

I have to ask, is the car registered and SVA/IVA'd properly? I can't see those unfixed chassis rails passing the test if so!


All the best with the re-build.

Cheers,
James





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Edwardo

posted on 17/2/21 at 11:47 PM Reply With Quote
Thanks James - Interesting thought about removing the steel panels. I just saw them as an extra bit of bracing to help stop the suspension brackets flexing. Never occurred to me to remove them and replace with ali. Will def have a think on that one.

I'm pretty confident the car did go through (SVA I'd imagine in 2002?) with the original owner/builder who built it as a book Locost with the Escort 1100cc engine. It's just that it's had several owners since - a lot of which have done horrendous Frankenstein modifications to it very badly unfortunately. I'm thinking that the car was originally built without a roll bar as per Rons book and that this roll bar was from a different car and added later by one of the bodgers

On the plus side - the Electric Die Grinder and Carbide bits arrived tonight. Didn't have long in the garage - but in less than an hour, both brackets were off one side! Still need to grind off and smooth some of the left over weld on the panel :-





Difficult to see in the second pic - but the garage floor is totally covered in metal shavings along with my jacket and what little hair I have left these days!

Not sure if it was purely down to the the reasonable quality of the Carbide bits - but metal shards were just flying everywhere! The electric grinder (although only 380W) didn't seem to struggle at all. The hand grip section up by the head does get very-very warm as a lot of the reviews said so not sure how long it will last in the long run - but it's certainly doing it's job for £30 at the mo

Going to do the other side tomorrow night.

Cheers
Tony

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Edwardo

posted on 23/2/21 at 08:10 PM Reply With Quote
After a few hours last weekend with the grinder and the flap disc - I managed to make very little progress trying to 'manually' grind off the rust/paint from the now bare chassis

You can barely even see the bit I did manage to do on the pics :-



Decided to have a look around on google and was pleasantly surprised to find we now have a proper shot blasting service here in Rugby. So contacted them and they are calling me back early next week to get the chassis in and done properly!

Whatever it costs (within reason) will be worth it for the months of pain saved from doing it manually and will give a proper base for me to do the welding/treatment and top coating properly.

Whilst the chassis is parked - I decided to weigh it just to see if it's in the right ball park.

Chassis weighs 80Kg - the roll bar (which I cut off an extra 9) so after a quick bit of research on here of proper 'measured' weights - it's not a million miles off especially as it also still has these bits of angle iron and box welded in the engine bay :-



Need to find somewhere local to press out the old knackered wishbone and trailing arm bushes now.

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motorcycle_mayhem

posted on 24/2/21 at 10:26 AM Reply With Quote
Nice to see someone working on a car here...

Try a 115mm 'preparation wheel' on the angle grinder, my go-to method for stripping everything; rust, paint, rat shit, and mill scale. Leaves the steel in a perfectly clean weldable state, without sacrificing the steel.

Good opportunity, I see, to get that ROPS tidied up (replaced) with something MSAUK compliant.

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Edwardo

posted on 2/3/21 at 07:44 PM Reply With Quote
quote:
Originally posted by motorcycle_mayhem
Nice to see someone working on a car here...

Try a 115mm 'preparation wheel' on the angle grinder, my go-to method for stripping everything; rust, paint, rat shit, and mill scale. Leaves the steel in a perfectly clean weldable state, without sacrificing the steel.

Good opportunity, I see, to get that ROPS tidied up (replaced) with something MSAUK compliant.


Cheers for the advice - I'll look into the 'preparation wheel' for the doing the wishbones etc. It's all a bit too much work for the whole chassis tbh.

Finally got in touch with the blasters and they can't do it till next Monday now which is a shame - just have to be patient.

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Edwardo

posted on 2/3/21 at 08:21 PM Reply With Quote
Cut the 50x50 box for the new rear trailing arm brackets at the weekend.

Seen lots of different threads with different ideas of how to do it and am undecided.

Do I go for the 'minimal' and just keep it over the area required :-



Or like some - do I go for the full height :-



Tempted to just do the minimal one to keep it simple and keep weight down etc.

Also discovered the weirdness going on with the rear trailing arm pickup points were actually done to move the whole rear axle back 40mm :-





I know longer trailing arms are better - but not sure if it still applies with this mod as the radius is still the same due to the original length arms?

You can see the original 'book' axle bracket in position though, so this does at least lend weight to my theory that this was built and SVA'd as a totally bog standard book Locost and all the horrific things have been done to it after the fact.

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Edwardo

posted on 23/3/21 at 09:26 AM Reply With Quote
Yay - Progress! The chassis arrived back from the blasters this morning!.

Looks a hell of a lot different to when it left. I had to ask them if they had sprayed it with a coat of silver as the difference is amazing when it's done properly lol!











Big thanks to Rugby Shot Blasting! Superb service - came and collected it and delivered when finished. Couldn't have been more helpful

£100 well spent having saved me endless weekends and heaps of mess trying to grind the old paint/rust off!

Time to start getting the new rear suspension brackets cut/drilled and welded on

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pmc_3

posted on 23/3/21 at 10:08 PM Reply With Quote
£100 sounds like a bargain for getting it done. I bet you're looking forward to start putting it back together now.
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Edwardo

posted on 23/3/21 at 11:19 PM Reply With Quote
quote:
Originally posted by pmc_3
£100 sounds like a bargain for getting it done. I bet you're looking forward to start putting it back together now.


Couldn't agree more - £100 for the blasting was a total bargain considering how long it would have taken me to try and do it with a flap disc/wire wheel. Not to mention all the mess and I still wouldn't have been able to get into the corners properly etc.

Got a lot of welding of brackets and supports etc before I can start putting it back together properly - but was a bit worried about how quickly the rust might start re-appearing now it's back to raw exposed steel.

So been out applying a coat of red oxide primer to all the areas which aren't getting welded. Only had a 750ml tin so only managed this tonight :-



Will grab another couple of tins from Screwfix tomorrow to get the rest done - then the welding can begin

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roadrunner

posted on 24/3/21 at 03:46 PM Reply With Quote
Excellent work and great dedication.

Shall be keeping a watchful eye on your progress.

Good luck.

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Edwardo

posted on 24/3/21 at 03:56 PM Reply With Quote
quote:
Originally posted by roadrunner
Excellent work and great dedication.

Shall be keeping a watchful eye on your progress.

Good luck.


Thanks very much - really appreciate it

I figure there is no point doing a half-***'d job just to try and get it back on the road a bit quicker.

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ReMan

posted on 24/3/21 at 09:37 PM Reply With Quote
Yes, good work and agreed £100 does not seem bad at all for a whole load less ball ache and a consistent finish





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