The same highschool friend that clued me in to Locost USA shares a tidbit of news he got when he purchased a bike engine and transmission for his project: there are some pretty strict branding laws regarding crashed motorcycles in Ontario that mandate damaged motorcycle frames never see road use ever again. Digging around, I find a FAQ at the Ministry of Transportation Ontario regarding vehicle branding that has a pretty damning footnote:

Vehicles branded as “Irreparable” can never be driven on Ontario’s roads and can only be used for parts or scrap. Motorcycles are included under the “Irreparable” category where there is frame damage requiring replacement.

What does that mean to me? Well, that means that if I want to build a Shrike, or any other reverse trike, it means I’d have to do one of two things:

1) Buy a bike that has not been branded, which would mean either a working bike, or a damaged-but-repairable bike.
2) Buy a branded bike, remove everything I need, and build a full frame for the vehicle, replacing the damaged motorcycle frame.

If I went with #1, I’d be looking at a very expensive donor vehicle. Motorcycles are not cheap to begin with, and only become relatively cheap once they’re written off. If they can be driven or repaired, a donor motorcycle is going to cost multiples of what a donor car would cost, especially if going with a plain-Jane FF econobox donor like a Corolla or Civic. If I went with option #2, I’ve negated the entire point of going with a motorcycle-based reverse trike, in that I’m back to building the whole frame, stripping a donor, and remounting everything. With that realization, and not being able to find good information on the exact cost of non-branded motorcycles, I had to retreat back to my previous plan of building a mid-engined Locost from a FF donor. That may decrease my chances of completion, but as it will be more affordable it vastly increases the chances that I’ll even be able to start.

What have I learned thus far? FR layout cars with manual transmissions are a lot less common in 21st-century North America than they were in mid-20th century Europe. While that doesn’t entirely preclude the possibility of building a traditional FR Locost, doing so would be entirely dependant on finding a suitable donor at a suitable price. Possible, yes, but the probability might be on the low side. I’ve also learned that building a motorcycle-based build is a good idea, but will either be more expensive than using a car donor, or about the same amount work as a typical Locost build. So that leads me back to where I was previously, in considering building a mid-engined Locost, using a FF donor and simply swapping the location of the axles.

As luck would have it, the all-knowing, ever-present Locost USA forums can help me with this too. A few of the members have built such vehicles, and one of them has even written a book on the subject. What’s more, since that book has been published, he’s built another such vehicle, and its book will be coming out… well, it’ll be out well before I have the space, time, and permission to fill half of our garage with a stripped donor vehicle and large welding and assembly table. The point is, there is help out there for building non-traditionally. Of course, being a designer doesn’t hurt, either. Once I’m familiar with my donor vehicle, designing a space frame around the drive train will be entirely feasible.

At this point, I now start the thought process of finding a donor. Previously, when considering a Miata donor, I found an online calculator for determining acceleration of your vehicle. Using baseline numbers from the original 1990 Miata (120 hp, 100 lb-ft) and an approximate dry weight of 1200 lbs for the Locost, it gave me a figure of 0-100 km/h of just under 5 seconds. Woo! That’s some zip! Obviously, I don’t need a monster 200+ hp engine to have fun here, so aiming for the 120 hp range seems to be a good target.

Such a target gives me plenty of possible donors to choose from. Obvious candidates are the Honda Civic, which would be an awesome choice, what with their high-revving engine. I had a Honda del Sol for a couple of years, and it was a fun vehicle. I’d go the Honda route again no problem. The Toyota Corolla, while quite a bit more pedestrian than the Civic, is another contender. Toyota reliability would be fabulous, plus the fact that the Corolla is one of the best selling vehicles in Canada year after year means I’m going to have lots to choose from. I also have a soft spot for Hyundai, as we’ve had a few vehicles from them that have been stellar (no pun intended). The 2003 Elantra we had was fun and gutsy – finding one of those 2L engines would put me at closer to 140 hp, which would be fun. Hyundais still suffer from low resale value too, which will only help me in my quest. Nissan has a bunch of engines I’d take, excluding the troubled QR25DE. I’ll stick to their smaller engines, or the older and proven KA24DE.

Vehicles I won’t look at? Volkswagen, thanks to my recent experience with VW quality in a 2000 Beetle TDI. I’d love a Subaru, but as every last one of them is AWD, I’d have to modify the transaxle to make it work in a 2WD capacity. That’s extra work I don’t need, thanks. Domestics don’t make my list, but that’s a personal preference.

One interesting donor idea occurred to me not too long ago: use a donor that is the same as my daily driver. Currently I’m driving a 3rd generation Hyundai Accent. It has a 1.6L engine that is rated at 110 hp and just over 100 ft-lb of torque. Not quite where I want to be, but I think it would be worthwhile giving up some power to go this way. Why? For the obvious reason – I’d have a working vehicle with identical mechanical and electrical components to reference during my build! Instead of wondering what height the engine was at in the chassis, I could just measure it. Can’t figure out an electrical connection? Look in my car. What’s more, if my donor vehicle has features I won’t need on a Locost but would like in my car (better stereo, cruise control, fog lights, etc.) my daily driver can benefit from it. Of course, that all depends on being able to find such a vehicle in the right price range… I’m not going to hold my breath for it to happen, but it would certainly be nice if it did.

That’s where I stand today.

In building a Locost, you pretty much have to build everything that you can’t use off of your donor vehicle. In general, the most complex area that falls into that category is the suspension, both front and rear. Even with a good how-to, or using someone else’s design, you still have to build it. Ditto with the frame – you need to build the skeleton on which you’ll re-assemble your donor vehicle. However, the idea of building off of a motorcycle gets around a lot of that, because you already have half of the frame, the entire drive train is already mounted, half of the suspension is already in place, and you’ve even got an entire working electrical system that you only need to tap in to. That leaves only designing the front suspension and the frame from where it mates to the motorcycle frame forward. For that much work, you get a vehicle that would be equally fun as a Locost, for roughly half the work. Do we have a winner? Yeah!!

Suddenly amped (again) by this new realization, I start more poking around and rediscover a very cool vehicle I’d seen before but forgotten about, the IndyCycle. Looking at it again, I’m looking at exactly what I’d want to do, minus the second seat I’d put in behind the driver. (A single seat vehicle would maximize performance, but I still want it to be somewhat useful. And taking someone for a ride is half the fun, is it not?)

The Locost USA forums yield further information on building a trike, as a few members have done so themselves. I find mention of a vehicle that the builder has named the Raptor, which is essentially a tandem two-seat IndyCycle. With a fairly detailed walk-around video, I’m confident that I could easily duplicate (and improve on) what’s been done there. Case closed, start designing, right? Hah! My mind doesn’t work that way. I keep researching.

My research brings up yet another vehicle I think I’d read about long, long ago, called the Norton Shrike. It’s a bit jarring to look at initially, but reading deeper I start really liking what I see. The builder designed the Shrike to deliver maximum safety (after having a motorcycle buddy lose his leg, and nearly his life, in an accident), without compromising on the exhilaration or performance of driving a motorcycle. This is proven by his autocross participation, the 125,000 miles he puts on his vehicle, and the fact that he and his vehicle survived undamaged after hitting a deer. Try THAT on a motorcycle. The Shrike is also a reverse trike based on a motorcycle donor. What’s even better, plans are available for $70. It took a lot of restraint not to buy them right then and there.

It was a good thing I didn’t. I kept reading the Shrike website further (a helpful, but pitifully 1990s-era website). Amongst all the stories and information I find mention that the builder/owner burns through a set of front tires every 5000 miles, and a rear (motorcycle) tire every 1500 miles. Yikes! He himself does the calculations and puts his tire costs at $0.06/mile, a third of what his fuel costs are! Having already concluded that I’m going to be building on a tight budget, now I start to wonder whether building something that will need a new set of tires somewhere between every season and every month is necessarily a good idea. Admittedly, I won’t be autocrossing or participating in track days, but I won’t exactly be pussyfooting it around all the time, either.

With the seed of doubt sown, one last bit of information put a big, final nail in the coffin of ever building a Shrike.

I had just joined the Locost USA forums and found not only a wealth of information about building a Locost, but also a bunch of information about building so-called “non-traditional” vehicles. Ooooh! Some of these were Locost-based vehicles, but used a FWD drive train from a donor vehicle placed behind the driver to make a mid-engined rear-wheel-drive vehicle (also known as an MR layout). The alluring logic of that is that, as I’ve noted previously, the number of available FR layout, manual transmission vehicles is extremely small as compared to when (and where) the Lotus Seven was first designed. Being able to chose a vehicle with front wheel drive (FF layout) provides one with infinitely more opportunities in terms of donor vehicles. What’s more, a FWD drive train combines the transmission, drive shaft, and axle into a transaxle, saving precious space and weight on your vehicle. Well, that sounds like a slam-dunk decision, doesn’t it?

It did – until I learned about BECs – Bike Engined Cars.

If you are even moderately familiar with motorcycles, you have probably heard of the Suzuki Hayabusa. If not, allow me to sum up: stupid fast. No, really – more power than a typical family sedan, with a top speed of 300 km/h. Yeah – stupid fast. Anyhow, apparently a lot of supersport bikes like the Hayabusa are wrecked by riders who get in over their head, creating a healthy supply of high-power, high-revving motorcycle engines to be had at very affordable prices (encased in broken plastic and bent metal that used to be an expensive sport bike). What’s even better, a full motorcycle engine/transmission combination can weigh just half of what a typical four-cylinder car engine/transmission weighs, all while putting out significantly more power (and with a much higher redline to boot – if you like hearing an engine scream with power is something you like, of course).

As much as my enthusiasm could really run away on me at this point, I do manage to moderate myself. Seeing as I’ve never in my life undertaken such a large project, I know that there are going to be barriers to not only starting, but finishing it as well. In order to maximize my chance of success, I decide that the path forward is the one that is well-traveled, with lots of people having gone before me, leaving me lots of documentation, pictures, and feedback I can use. To that end, I decide that using a Mazda Miata donor is the way forward. There are 20 years’ worth of Miatas out there, and are the hands-down favourite donor vehicle for North American Locost builds. Miatas even have a rear subframe that can be unbolted from the donor vehicle and into a Locost frame, further simplifying the build. Great! How much simpler could it get? How about twice as simple?

One of my co-workers is a motorcycle guy. (Actually, there’s a bunch of them at work, but only one is within my immediate work group.) He’s generally an all-around car guy, what with his parents having built a street rod, so he’s a good resource to chat with about such things. I’d been keeping him abreast on my thoughts on building a Locost. One day he puts forward a suggestion I’d read about before, and had put aside; build a cockpit on the front of a motorcycle frame to build a reverse trike (a.k.a. delta trike). Instead of selecting a high-powered, -revving, and -maintenance sport bike, I could choose a sport touring bike instead, which would give me slightly lower power and revs, in exchange for something designed for long-distance cruising, comfort, and reliability.

Yeah, OK… so I don’t have to live with a caffeinated hyperactive teenager. That’s one plus… and soon I realize there is another huge one; halving the amount of work I’d have to do to build a vehicle!

Where the HELL is this banana???

1) I’ve always admired the Lotus Seven, a.k.a. Caterham Super Seven.
2) I’ve always wanted to build a kit car.

More recently, say in the past 10 years or so, I’ve also wanted to build an electric car. When I recently realized that there are plans available – for free, no less – on how to build your own Lotus Seven (know as a Locost – combination of “Lotus” and “low-cost”), I thought, “Eureka! I can kill three birds with one stone! I can build an electric Lotus Seven!” And thus some voracious reading and searching began.

At first my only point of worry was whether I’d use a transmission or not. With DC motors, a transmission is retained, and two gears (one for around-town, one for highway, generally 2nd and 3rd) are used. Of course, part of the allure of a Seven/Caterham/Locost is its extreme light weight (a typical weight is around 1200 lbs, or about HALF of a typical small sedan), so I started trying to figure out how to ditch the transmission and, by extension, drive shaft. In my reading on electric vehicles, it seems that the vehicles that use direct drive – that is, the motor hooked up directly to the wheels with no
intermediate gearing – use AC drive motors. Ouch. A good DC motor can be had for $3k new, but the same thing in an AC motor? Triple that.

This lead me to start thinking about the cost of building an electric Locost. Not only would I be looking at either an expensive (DC) motor, or a REALLY expensive (AC) motor, I’d still have to buy the batteries for it as well. I’m still holding out hope for EEstor and their EESU, which promises an order of magnitude of improvement on the weight and cost over a comparable lithium-based battery. My feverent wishes notwithstanding, the EESU is still vapourware right now, so there’s no point in planning a car around it. Thus, I’d be looking at either lead-acid batteries (heavy, and still not cheap), or lithium ion batteries (lighter, but still very, very expensive). Suddenly my electric Locost didn’t seem like the inexpensive way to get into an electric vehicle anymore. (Further realization: NO electric vehicle is cheap to get into right now, if you want highway capability and decent range.)

I started pondering about building the vehicle anyways, just with a gas engine in it that I could later swap out when electric drive trains and batteries are more affordable. This gave new life to my fledgling idea, but presented new issues.

As the Lotus Seven was designed in the 1960′s as a minimalist sports car, it is inevitably a front engine, rear wheel drive vehicle (also known as FR layout). Thus, to make one yourself, you need to find another vehicle of the same configuration to be the donor – you strip everything off the vehicle, and lay it out in the frame of your Locost. (Alternatively, you can get all the pieces you need piecemeal, but that is much more expensive that simply using a donor vehicle.)

Now, if you’ll think about it for a second, you’ll realize there aren’t a lot of FR vehicles out there today, especially with manual transmissions. (I am unabashed in my love of manual transmissions, and even moreso if I’m going to be making a sportscar. Automatics NEED NOT APPLY.) The vehicles that the original Locost was based on were out of Europe, and not available over here. That leaves us North Americans looking for suitable donors, such as old Corollas, Miatas, some of the rarer FR sedans, and of course small pickup trucks and SUVs. Not a lot of choice, and finding a suitable donor at a decent price is a matter of persistence, patience, and luck.

During all this research and donor deliberation, a friend of mine from highschool pointed me in the direction of the LocostUSA forums, where Locost builders of all sorts from across North America (and beyond) gather to share information. Boy, what a wealth of information there!! Not only do they share information about their finished and ongoing projects, but they also encourage “non-traditional” build logs as well. A few such builds caught my attention… and sent me off in yet another direction.

To be continued…

Only a couple of minutes later did I realize that I had just unleashed a toddler with a banana on the house, and went to check his progress on his mission. I found him on the same level of the house, but without the banana. Uh oh.

While I bathed the boys Isabelle took it on herself to launch a comprehensive search for the AWOL banana. She spent at least 20 minutes searching everywhere – drawers, hampers, under beds, in closets, garbage pails – all to no avail. The search was expanded to the attic and the main floor, but everyone came up empty.

Last night Jannette and I formed another search party and again scoured the second floor. Cupboards, toilets, washer and dryer, piles of clothes and toys, everything was checked. Nothing. The banana has joined Jimmy Hoffa.

So, thanks to my brain fade, we’ve got a fruit bomb somewhere in the house, unless Carter somehow flushed it down a toilet without anyone noticing. I think it’s still around somewhere. I can only hope that it dessicates before it becomes a fruit fly buffet/orgy.

I’m scared!

Allow me to start by offering my sincere congratulations for the highly successful release of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Once again you’ve hit it out of the park, much to the great delight of fans like myself. I hope that you are ultimately able to both pay the crew and reward yourself handsomely for such an excellent product.

While the method of releasing Dr. Horrible is obviously successful, it still relies on “push” production: you develop, create, and package entertainment, and then push it out into the market, where it is hopefully eagerly consumed. The risk must be borne by yourself, and the market has little opportunity to provide you (and any intermediate parties) with direct feedback, other than after the fact through grassroots fan movements.

I would like to propose a new paradigm of entertainment delivery that could provide more benefit to both yourself, the people you work with, and your fans. It is a model based on agriculture, of all things; specifically, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA). A typical farm operates on “push” production: a crop is grown, and pushed into the market to be sold. A CSA farm, on the other hand, operates on a “pull” production method, in that it has a membership that is allotted a share of the yields of the farm on a weekly basis. Instead of trying to find the best method of pushing the farm’s yields into the market, the market is already there, waiting for the yields to come to them.

Applying this sort of paradigm isn’t unheard of in entertainment. I personally know a musician, Bryan Moyer Suderman, that has successfully adopted the CSA model to music; he produces music on a regular basis and distributes it to his membership. You can read more about how he, and others, are using this model at CommunitySupportedArts.com.

By now it’s probably no surprise that I propose that Mutant Enemy Productions embrace a Community-Supported Entertainment model. We, your loyal Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Dr.Horrible fans, will pay UP FRONT for entertainment you produce. This summer, it was Dr. Horrible via iTunes. Perhaps in the winter you’ll send us a comic book via PDF. Later you could send us some songs you wrote. Maybe Firefly could live on again as monthly episodes. That’s the beauty of it – we get our Whedon fix direct and undiluted, and you have the freedom to create, balancing distribution between traditional marketing and Community-Supported Entertainment.

Please, Mr. Whedon. Allow your fans to support you. Thank you for your consideration.

Regards,
Andrew

P.S. If anyone has the means to forward this on to Joss or his agent, please do so with my blessing.

Seriously, folks. He’s put up a 3-part Internet musical that is free for viewing until Sunday the 20th. Acts 1 and 2 are up now, with Act 3 (oh GOD I can’t wait!) coming on Saturday. Later you’ll be able to get it off iTunes or buy the DVD, but this is FREE right now, and it’s GOOD.

Go watch it. Seriously, don’t make me whip out my hammer.