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Previous Build Diaries

October 2003
November 2003
December2003
January 2004
Febuary 2004
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004

Handy Links

MK Engineering
These guys make high quality chassis and bodys.

Locost Builders
This forum is fantastic for anyone building a kit car, someone, somewhere has already answered all your questions!

MK Owners Club
One day I hope I will be eligible for membership....

Which Kit Car
Good kit car reading, they even have an MK Build ongoing at the moment. 

NISe7ens
Northern Ireland Sevens car club (Caterhams, Westfields, Locosts etc)

The picture in the logo was taken by Richard Crowe on a wet day at Nutts Corner on the 24th of Febuary 2004.

29 June 2004

Arrrgghhh  me and my big mouth!!  Had the first 'incident' today!  Coming back from a stainless steel fabricators in Coalisland one of the bonnet catches gave way as I hit the loud pedal!  The bonnet caught the wind and disappeared up and backwards landing painted side down on the road.  It is very badly scratched.  I'm going to get some paint and some fine sandpaper tomorrow and I'll re-spray it myself.  I'm also getting some better catches, fitting some louvres to allow the under-bonnet air to escape and fitting a catch to the front of the bonnet.
Mind you it's a bit like shutting the door after the horse has bolted..... if only I'd fitted the catch a week ago...

On the upside I did get the piece of stainless steel pipe to finish the exhaust.  Looks nice and it's not blowing out.  Pity I've got no bonnet!
  
28 June 2004

Had a good weekend, managed to fit in about 150 miles in Lucy without any major breakdowns or incidents.  I did manage to leave my sidelights on at Sean McGoldrick's and wound up with a flat battery, but otherwise no issues.
I have tried to remove the silicon from the dash, but it's not an easy job, and frankly looks like a mess at the moment.

I'm hoping it'll clear up with time, and a cartridge of some silicon eater I got from Glenn.
I think I'll also pop up a pic of the car in her new road legal form.

I still have a few things to do.  First I must get a piece of stainless steel pipe to connect the manifold to the exhaust - currently I use 2 pieces of rusty pipe and this looks pretty poor.  I need to get the damaged alloy wheel repaired, but I suspect I'd have to hand over the wheel for a few days, and I don't want to do this until I get a bit more driving done!  I must do more polishing  and washing as well!
I'm also working on a sump guard to protect the bottom of the blade engine from ramps and stones.  I'm hoping to get this fitted tomorrow.  Hopefully I'll post pics when it's on.
 

25 June 2004

More good news!  I got the certificate in the post today and managed to persuade Armagh Tax centre to register and tax the car.  Yep.  I'm STREET LEGAL!  I rushed round to Europarts and had a set of number plates made up then legged it home to fit them and the new tax disk holder I bought.  Got the whole lot fitted about 5pm, and I've been out on a couple of short trips around the roads of Tullyroan since.   I have to say that car is an unbelievable drive.  Only down side is you really have to watch when you do plant her that there are no big potholes around or you could find yourself bouncing off the road!  This is a fault of the crappy roads round here rather than the car!  If you're careful though you can really get some adrenaline going!!

This should be a great weekend!!

21 June 2004

She's PASSED  The SVA!!!  They managed to fit me in this afternoon at Cookstown test centre and she passed both emmisions and the lap belt positioning.
Very very happy.  Only down side is that they have to post me out the MAC certiuficate as it has to come from Newtownards.
I though I was going to cry when he told me she was a pass!

19 June 2004

Well, still waiting.  After sending off my SVA retest app 2 weeks ago I had no response so I contacted Newtonards Test centre.  They don't answer the phones when they're on strike down there so I had to drive down.  The manager was helpful though and told me he'd try to find out what we could do.  He has told me to contact a tester in Cookstown this Monday to arrange a test with him - Newtonards have forwarded all my test info on to him, so hopefully I can be fitted in sooner rather than later.  I bet the weather takes a turn for the worse once I do get the car through the test!!

7 June 2004

Saturday I went to the Thoroughbred Car Club organised hillclimb at Croft.  It was a great day out - good weather and some amazing cars going up the hill at all sorts of speeds!

These photos are were taken by Ricky Crowe again and show a good selection of the cars taking part.  I would be very tempted to give it a go myself next year assuming I haven't put Lucy through a hedge by then!

To give you an idea of times the quickest I saw was a Pilbeam which did the hill in 32 seconds.  Jimmy Dougan did it in 36 - his is the orange 'Hilltop' car in the pics above.  It's a Hyabusa powered Locost - very quick.  Kenny Smyth has a Blade engined locost - a well sorted car and he did the hill in 42 seconds.
  
2 June 2004

Breakthrough!!  Today we managed to get the emissions within the SVA guidlines!!  What did we do I hear you ask?  Well We're not entirely sure!  We used a tip we got on locostbuilders.co.uk about using seperate valves on each cylinder to control the extra breather pipes (thanks snoopy).  We had tried that yesterday but the car didn't run too well.  Last night we re-re-jetted the car back to use the air-socks and the 132 sized jets.  After that was done the engine ran really really well, but today we took her out to Brian Quinns and she failed the same as before.  Myself and Dad played with the breather air valves for a bit but noting seemed to have any effect.  Then for no apparent reason she started to pass.  We checked the sensor was in correctly (it was), we switched off the car anbd re-started her.  She passed again.  We checked the calibration on the machine - it was OK.  We tried again - and it kept passing.
The only thing we can think off is that just before she started passing we were revving her up.  Perhaps this cleaned out the system, or soot had built up on the plugs preventing them from working fully.  We had checked the plugs beforehand and they seemed fine though.
It's all a mystery, but I am thankful she seems OK now.
That should be all the SVA fail points taken care off, I'm going to send in the application.  I'll re-check her a day or two before the test again just to make sure.

Oh yes, May's build diary is moved here.  You can also get from it from the menu on the left.

To go to my music page that used to be here, click HERE

Alister Jackson  |  No Rights Reserved