Posted Jan 25th, 2008:

“Today I bought a donor car, finally. Its a 1991 Miata with 250k miles on it. 100k miles on the engine. What’s really cool about it, is it has a Jackson racing supercharger on it, and full exhaust from the headers back. Of course, I don’t care about the exhaust other than its worth some coin.. I paid $2500 for the, but I think I ought to be able to recoup most of that, especially if I sell the supercharger. 

I’m waiting to start working on the chassis until I totally strip the donor, so that I can measure everything and appropriately decide on my chassis size. 

I also need to sit in eVo-x’s car (book frame) and see how my size-13 feet fit.. From the sound of it, I’ll need to go with a Mcsorely 442, or perhaps the design presented in the Gibbs book, which is a “221″, I believe. We shall see. I would like to go with as small of a frame as I can and still fit. 

Oh, and also, I bought 450 lbs of steel last week.. I know that’s a ton, but I got a good price on it and wanted to get a bunch of everything. The 4′x8′ sheet of 1/8″ (11 gauge) plate weighs 160 lbs! 

My steel list: 

1″SQR tubing, 16GA, 20′ lengths, 9 pieces - $115.56 
3/4″SQR tubing, 16GA, 20′ lengths, 2 pieces - $22.72 
1/2″Round STD (.84″ OD x .109″ Wall) 21′ lengths, 2 pieces - $35.70 
Sheet, 11GA x 4′ x 8′ – $87.62 
Sheet, 16GA x 4′ x 8′ – $52.00 
Cutting Fee – $7.50 
Subtotal – $321.10 
Taxes – $25.69 
Total – $346.79 

Now that I actually have everything I need, I will try to post a bunch of pics this weekend of the garage, the donor car, and the steel.”

What I’ve done since then…

Not much, unfortunately.  There was actually a lot more work after pulling the engine and drivetrain to fully disassemble the car.  After I pulled the engine/drivetrain/suspension, I moved the car out into the driveway on moving dollies, where it sat for about a month.  BAD IDEA!  When I went to move the thing back in, I discovered that it was completely and thoroughly infested with ants and a few other kinds of insects.  Ugh!  I spend a couple weekends spraying bug spray all over the thing after I pulled it back in the garage.  I also made sure there were constantly pools of bug killer liquid surrounding the four jackstands, sort of like a moat, so that no insects would escape the miata with their life.

Well, now the bugs are all dead, and the thing is almost entirely disassembled, except for some A/C components and the rear bumper (I didn’t have the courage to remove it at the time, for fear that there were still some ear wigs living inside, but they’re probably dead now).  I’ve yet to sell any of the parts on craigslist, including the shell itself!  Ugh.  Space is definitely one thing I don’t have right now.

In other news.. I built a.. build.. table.

I was originally planning on building it with steel, but then I realized how much cheaper wood is.  It actually took me two tries to build the thing to my satisfaction (the first one was done with mails, and imprecisely; this one is very square and held together with screws), but now I have a table that should be able to hold at least 1000 lbs (and is on wheels to boot!).

Please forgive my photos linking you to flickr right now.. I’ll try and resolve that soon so that you don’t have to keep going to an external site.

Over Christmas, I got a couple of books I was asking for. The two that mattered the most were: How to Build a Cheap Sports Car, and Build your own Sports Car: On a Budget. Also, I’ve done a lot of research and reading on the http://locostusa.com forums.

Anyways, after reading through those two books, and also buying a Lincoln Electric Pro-Mig 140, I made up my mind that I was going to get started on building a locost. My plan was to build my chassis based on the “book” frame, and to use a Mazda Miata as a donor vehicle.

I want to use a Miata for a few reasons:

• Used Miatas with over 100k miles can be procured for fairly cheap (under $3k easily)
• Miatas are very reliable and cheap to maintain. Engines frequently last over 250k miles
• Lots of locost builders have used a Miata donor before me, so I will have lots of “expert” knowledge to tap into
• Miatas come with double wishbone suspension on all four corners, and since I want to do independent rear suspension, this is perfect!
• I’ve driven Miatas before and I love the responsive feel of the engine. Its got an awesome torque curve that is very fun to play with.

Anywho, I’ll post some pictures of my garage and when I construct my “build table”.