peter_m7uk

Can't you get one from Lolocost? Pete

Yeah, used the nibbler at the weekend. Works a treat, nice straight cuts, no distortion. Exactly what it says on the tin. Pete

I see you have a small gap at the bottom corner as well. How annoying :gdit: I didn't fancy trying to straighten out and re-bend, as the ali is bound to weaken by being bent at 90 degrees and back again... I was thinking to tap the sides in a bit with a rubber hammer instead, but need to check if the nosecone will cover this "modification" Pete

Colin, I have no power in the garage so I'm not using a pneumatic riveter. Instead, I got a Lazy Tong from Toolstation. I got a hand riveter for confined spaces and drilled out the nose to take 6mm rivets. I've got a couple of metal tubes to put over the hand riveter's arms for a bit more leverage where space allows. Had no problems so far and don't see why there's a fuss about doing it by hand, except for 7st weaklings! Pete

I see from the Robin Hood website that they're taking two Lightweights to the Exeter show and will be selling one of them. As I'm building one, I'd be VERY interested to see who buys it and to finally discover what it's like to drive, whether it squeaks and rattles, how quickly it breaks etc! I'm not going, but any Hoodies there, could you encourage the buyer to come on here and tell us about it?! Pete

Thanks for the advice, guys I went for a Hand Nibbler in the end. Should do the job for cutting out all the little brackets I need. Pete

Construction of the Lightweight requires a lot of ali offcuts to be used as strengtheners, so I was just wondering what experiences people have had with metal cutting tools. I have some good tin snips, but they're only useful for short cuts. I've used jig saws in the past, but they're a bit "wandery" when you want a nice straight edge. My thought was to get a cheap table saw, maybe something of this ilk: Tablesaw . It comes with a TCT blade, which would presumably be ok with ali, but what if I needed to cut some mild steel, say? I'd appreciate any advice or anecdotes on this. Pete

I've got a few panels riveted and bonded together, if you have a look at my photo webpage. I did find that the body sides I was given had a thin straight cut in the top cockpit rail where they are supposed to angle inwards, so ended up cutting a triangle of ali out of the rail, to bring the nose together. Also, the tunnel sides appear to be too tall fit under that same rail! Richchat and Diyer are going well. Diyer apparently has wheels on his machine!! Pete

Without appearing too flippant, the safety cell is not one of my concerns, just the mechanical integrity! I know that if I'm driving around in any sort of kit car, that I'm taking a chance with my life in the event of a smash, but that's just a risk I'm willing to take, as with a lot of Seven drivers, I expect. As for the suggestion that the Lightweight weaves over bumps, no one could know that except the people at Robin Hood! No customer has yet finished a car and the RH demonstrator was only recently SVA'd. I haven't heard of 1 person having a test drive yet.... I think the chassis will be very stiff at the back and around the engine bay, but as Tim says, the cockpit edge is not a closed box and will be required to cycle through tension and compression a lot, also at a riveted joint where the chassis tapers toward the nose. Having said that, Richard Stewart told me he was "amazed" at how stiff the chassis was under testing (no one has seen the results!), so the jury is out.... Pete

Can we just bring a bit of science to the debate? In the attached picture, you can see that the fatigue strength of aluminium decreases as it is stress-cycled eg vibration, absorption of road shocks etc. I think the problem is not so much the ultimate strength of aluminium, but that it will always fatigue before steel. In fact, the lightweight chassis is *guaranteed* to fail eventually, whereas a steel one will not, unless rust attacks it. The number of cycles that we are looking at could be in the order of billions, however, so I'd like to know how that translates into years-of-road-use... As for the diff, I would say my Pinto will generate something like 150Nm peak torque and the diff mounting holes are around 20cm from the propshaft axis. So, a quick calc suggests that each of the 6 holes will have a force of (150/0.2)/6= 125Newtons acting on it, which is like a weight of 12.75kg. I can't see any reason why each hole can't cope with less than 13kg? Thinking about that though, the torque is multiplied by the gearbox in the lower gears, isn't it?! What is the ratio in 1st gear for a Type9? I suppose the other exception to that is if you stall the engine by putting it straight into gear with the car stationary, so grinding the engine inertia to a halt in a fraction of a second - That would send quite a forceful shock through the diff! No one would drive that badly, though, would they?!! Anyone care to argue or point out a mistake? Pete

Not sure that you need to go as far as Nik, but he's certainly doing it thoroughly! There aren't many holes to drill in my opinion, as most holes are prepunched, but you do get flakes of ali round a freshly drilled hole that you can remove as you go along. I have been deburring the edges of panels before assembly, though, as there are numerous tags and rough edges. As for bonding, I've been using Evostik Nail&Seal, which bonds nonporous (ie metal) surfaces well and has a quoted tensile strength of 1.5 to 1.8MPa (in layman's terms, you'd have to pull 150-180kg to separate a 10sqcm area). Only £4.79 for a 300ml cartridge as well! Pete PS I did look at this temporary rivet system, Cleko, but not sure what diameter. I wonder if you only get 10 for your £25!

Can someone tell me what 1/4 skin pins are?! If you're not going to rivet as you go, what is your plan, Nik? Don't really follow Pete

Have you noticed the blue plastic sheet under the jig at the back, Snapper? I sealed the floor with concrete sealer, then painted it red, as you can see. But that end of the garage still seems to suck up a bit of water, hence the sheet. Everywhere else is bone dry, though, so no probs so far

Nearly beat me to it Yeah, those!

And here it is, in all it's badly-lit glory!!

What were you expecting, Docter? Surely not a wood-working masterclass from Robin Hood? ScotMac, they do give detailed dimensions, but to be honest, the only important thing is getting the middle plank nice and straight, and getting the width of the slim side strips at 42". Even then, the chassis is almost self-jigging, so it's not *that* critical! No idea about the ally grade I'm afraid and no indications either. All I can say is that most of the panels are 1mm, with 2mm used for some of the more load-bearing parts, like the tunnel bottom. I'll be posting more pics as I go along, so keep an eye out. Piddy, yeah you can use those pics, but I'd rather re-take them in better lighting, as they were done at night. I'll snap them again tomorrow in daylight. Salty, it appears that the files have shrunk on webshots.com, so I can now post below!! Pete

Hmm, sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth to save a few kilos, if at all Thanks for the tips, fellas. Pete (Les, your cheque is in the post )

Someone at work is selling an MT75 box and I wondered if it was worth having? My current plan is to use the Type9 with my Pinto in a Lightweight, but the MT75 is supposed to be lighter (how much?) and is a more modern design, so it could be worth the trouble? Would it bolt straight on, or would I need to muck about with bellhousings, flywheels etc? Cheers, Pete

Yep, it's a *very* basic single garage. The jig is 4' wide and 10' long, whereas the garage is 8 1/2' wide and 16' long, so I only have a couple of feet either side, with 6' to store some crap in. Still enough to work on the car, if you're determined!! Pete

After promising photos for a while, finally here they are: Chassis Jig (The pics were too big to attach to this post, so they're hosted by a web pics site) Basically, the jig is made from an 8x4 sheet of chipboard attached to a 2x4 sheet to make the 10x4 base. The plank in the middle locates the tunnel bottom (see Jig3 pic) and the planks at the sides raise the body sides up to the level of the tunnel bottom. The small strips on top secure the body sides at 42" apart and the angled planks at the front raise the nose up to the height of the rest of the chassis and support the tapered engine bay section. That is it!! Simple really Feel free to ask questions Pete

It says on the letstorque site that "average aerodynamics are assumed" and that "traction difficulties are taken into consideration", so they have considered that, Bob. Also, if you look in the Car Stats section, you can see that they've collected a lot of data from a lot of different cars and averaged it. I still think they're optimistic, mind

Hi Harry, Not sure if you want an actual Cortina part or something knocked up by RH to fit the Cortina subframe? If it is the first one, then you could try your local scrappy, although I suspect Cortinas are rather scarce so perhaps speak to Kit Fit or Retroford. I visited Retroford and he has old Fords galore piled high. Hope that is of some help... Pete

Oh yeah, I built the jig yesterday and meant to take a photo of it today, but forgot to take my camera down to the garage (it's rented and 5 miles away), so still no piccie, sorry Will get you all a pic ASAP Oh, I can't resist it! 3-2, 3-2, 3-2!! Bye bye, Makems, the Geordies are your masters

I wasn't joking, Colin, you DEFINITELY need more board than they supply!! If you add up the area of all the pieces and work out the area of the board (64 sq ft), there simply isn't enough. You need at least another 4' x 4' board if you want some offcuts to support the underside as well. Pete

Thanks for that, Mark. I've spent hours searching for a one-handed riveter for 6mm rivets and concluded that no such thing exists. :gdit: The cheapest Long Arm Riveter I could find for 6mm rivets is over £50, so I was thinking of going for this Lazy Tong Riveter, which is cheap, and seeing how I got on. That link you sent me is £65, but it would solve a lot of the space problems, so I'm not too sure now . I'm interested by what you say about RH's claim on the 4.8mm air riveter. The mandrel of the 6mm rivets is 3.4mm wide, so does that mean that 4.8mm rivets have a 3.4mm mandrel as well? Seems unlikely Can anyone confirm or deny that? Pete