Oh thats just pure class all the way there...........

Well first drive today inside the workshop, everything working that should be and no leaks - yet.

So of course after getting the engine running, checking fluids, have clutch and gears etc. (Please choose from the following choices ....)

a/ I patiently bolted in the proper seat and put the steering wheel on carefully torquing the nut then safely and cautiously drove the car

or

b/ I excitedly threw in a base of a bench seat laying around and threw the steering wheel on the splines with no nut and on my second WTO take off had the steering wheel come off, fell backwards off the unsecured bench seat base (no back) and just missed a workbench as I struggled to apply the brakes from my prostrated position


I love my life, I hope I never grow up!!



Oh and - I can confirm that it is now very likely that the production chassis will be in that non steel stuff called aluminium, thats that silvery aluminium stuff made from aluminium.

I think it only right to warn you that I have e-mailed the Chinese Health and Safety Ministry...

I'm sure he's terrified at that prospect!

Heh...clearly an imaginary position.

I got the email today, noted.

Now that is what I call influence! Very impressive...

On a serious note, is there any check on the safety aspect of any machinery designed and built in China? Do international standards apply? At a very basic level there seem to be infrequent re-calls of dangerous toys, but I've never heard of machines or tools being called dangerous. Generally I'm very impressed with the standard of Chinese manufacturing, mainly of electronic goods.

Tony I didn't know what beautiful clothes were until I came to this country and that started to open my eyes to a few things.

China has the best standards of anything you want in the world - it also has the worst. The worst are cheap so what does an entrepreneur do? He buys the cheapest fastest moving stuff he can get and China then gets it's reputation but it's the fault of the entrepreneur and the cheapskates who continue to buy it. Most people here wear reasonable to high quality clothes for example, not the crap, single wide stitched, 20cent T shirts that go overseas.

There is a standard called ISO 9000 that a Company must have to get an export licence, most of these are genuine though some are under the table through relationship... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000

Again the quality comes down to price, example - you see a US made lathe for say $10K and then you check out a Chinese export lathe for $7K and it's every bit as good but then you notice the same company has a $4K Chinese market lathe also and you start convincing yourself that you can get the job done with that $4K lathe. Later you discover it's a cheap lathe but you knew that but were blinded by greed at the time so suddenly in your denial to accept blame you label it a "cheap Chinese crap lathe and I should have bought the US made one" but in fact you could have saved $3K and got the $7K one you should have. So who's at fault?

The toys and similar things are just greed from both sides, why hasn't the US company got a QC man in place at the Chinese company? It's just lazy and greedy - the US company for management costs and the Chinese company for using cheaper products because they aren't being watched. (Oh, then on the TV they blamed the US designer's specifications, hey but if your willing to poison kids then your sure to tell the truth especially about using 2 very similar chemicals, the safe one costing 7000 per drum and the dangerous one 2000 .....).

I have a 4" angle grinder bought local for $24 that has been worked daily for 2 years and I would think over a 1000 discs and it still runs perfectly, I remember a $19.99 one that I bought at Supercheap (very large Auto Parts Store chain) in Oz some years back that lasted about 10 discs.

The problem isn't here so much as it seems to be that Western consumers are willing to continue to buy according to price first, take a chance on the quality (but then whine about it when bitten).

People would be shocked to learn just what is made here and, specific to our interests, just how much of China you are driving daily but its not something manufacturers are in a hurry to let consumers know. By the way, China (mainland) isn't as high in the electronic stakes as you may think, the majority comes from HK and Taiwan.

Toxic Chinese Drywall. Fun Stuff.

The race to the bottom is harldy the domain of western citizens by any stretch. Having lived in the Middle East, I can assure that such...stinginess is pervasive throughout all cultures. We used to comment, often, on how it appeared people would rather spend $1500 6 times buying something cheap and replacing it vs. spending $4500 to buy the quality version. Having said that, spending the $$$ occasionally still buys you a bucket of shit (witness MB products of the 90s).

My family and I recently moved out of a rental accomodation that was owned by individuals unwilling to part with a nickle without whinging and moaning about it and each time they did, they spent the least amount of money possible. When the 20 year old dishwasher failed, they replaced it with the cheapest box-store model they could find - and it failed 2 years later. What did they do? They replaced it with the cheapest box store model they could find. The 25 year old hot water tank failed, they replaced it with...the cheapest model they could find. When the gas valve failed on a Friday night and left the house without hot water, they ended up forking out over $700 to have it repaired - more than they'd spend on the tank and install. It went on like this until we just couldn't handle living in a house filled with cheap shit anymore. We were okay with the 20 year old appliances that worked - because they worked and worked pretty well up until the day they packed it in but they replaced everything with the cheapest shit they could find, and it showed. It was yet another great lesson to us - never, ever buy cheap. You're better off buying old and used over new and cheap.

One thing I can assure you Canuck is that those people go to jail here. I guess its a little sad that the damage is sometimes already done before they do though.

It's one thing when it's toxic drywall and your home has to be reno'd. A whole other thing entirely when melamine goes into food and kills babies, or that incident with the tainted Chinese filler in pet food killing people's pets (another reason to feed them - and yourselves - real food). I suppose this is the end result when everyone on every side is only concerned about the %$#$% money.

We made a concious effort to alter our buying habits and to avoid price shopping - so much more is involved than just that initial price. We (try) to spend at home first and if it can't be had there, then the circle gets larger and so on. We evaluate whether we need it or just want it and what it's truly worth to us and try to base our spending on that. It's absolutely stunning to see how few items on store shelves are made in Canada or made in the US...lemme re-phrase that. It's remarkable how much stuff on store shelves is made in China. It's almost, if not entirely, impossible to buy the items you buy every day without buying something made in China. No wonder North American economies are in the shit - we only buy, we don't make.

You're not alone - not that it's any consolation.

When we lived in the UK we had to furnish a flat so off to Ikea we went. It's a fun game to take a running total of where everything is manufactured. China got off to a poor start but finished strong for a convincing win.

I am old enough to remember when almost all the of the stuff in IKEA was actually Scandinavian

Having worked in purchasing in a past lifetime, I can tell you that this doesn't amount to much.

One iteration is that they have processes that say "we make cheap crap" and the ISO guy agrees and certifies them as such.

Another iteration I have experienced a multitude of times is that the company has a pile of documentation and simply does not follow it.

Carry on.

Well it will make you laugh then that IKEA is hugely popular in China (4 stores in the 4 biggest cities) and a lot of the stuff is marked made in Sweden as well as made in China. The Made In China stuff in IKEA stores is about what most Chinese people tolerate as a minimum quality level rather than the nasty export crap many of you tolerate (and complain about later when it breaks ). I shop there a lot, around lunchtime - has something to do with 20 cent hotdogs ....

dosco, as I said there is certainly an under the table culture here if you want to find it - you don't have to look very far either.

I have a few questions sopmewhat related to the thread.

What are the costs involved in getting a chassis and engine certified in areas such as the U.S., EU, UK, Japan etc.? When a limited edition car such as Ferrari's CS and Suderia, does the engine have to be re-homologated because of it's minor tune up?

Thanks.

Depends on the volume and the market. What are you specifically interested in?

In the case of the young woman who was paralyzed by E Coli, she had eaten a ground beef patty which, as it turns out, was made in Wisconsin from a mixture of beef from Nebraska, Texas, South Dakota, and Uruguay, and never tested for E Coli in the manufacturing process. My takeaway from this: when you buy prepackaged meat products, they can come from anywhere and everywhere on the globe, in which case they are not really subject to any jurisdiction's standards. It's a worldwide process in which no one is actually in control.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html


...I live in the I-75 corridor, which runs roughly from Saginaw to Chattanooga and is oh, about 700 miles long and perhaps 140 miles wide , and the zone in which much of North America's auto manufacturing is based. Every day in my travels along the corridor I see sights like this: a semi trailer hauling six medium-duty truck frames from Flint to Muncie. Now, this must make sense economically or they wouldn't be doing it. This tells me a couple of things: evidently, hydrocarbons are not too expensive, they're too cheap. And a good portion of the cost of a manufactured vehicle is not in materials or labor, it's in energy, the pumping of carbon into the atmosphere.

So then I think about a $100, snap-together desk. When we look at the materials and construction, their actual value appears to be around ten dollars. So what portion of its retail price is the cost of shipping it around the globe to arrive in your local box store? How much carbon dioxide are you paying for when you purchase that desk?

So I'm with you. Think globally, act locally -- buy locally.

Something like the Elise. If one was to build a competitor and use the Honda K20, re-map the ECU, perhaps replace the entire exhaust system, things aftermarket tuners would do.

I tried to do this a few years ago. We used new Ford engines together with some other parts from them and they came with their own paperwork for emmisions etc. They were very helpful and easy to deal with. Easiest option and I would suggest that doing your own thing with Honda engines would cost a fortune. Car passed the the UK SVA test for limited production (under £500 I seem to remember) Biggest problem was Product liability insurance. I wrote earlier on the thread

"Many years ago I went through the same process and produced for my seventh design a mid engined minimalistic sports car. It did all that was asked of it on road and track but the project floundered because of the legal implications of selling such a product. I found out the hard way that the car was unlikely ever to go into serious production because I could not get proper product liability insurance. Those insurance companies that did offer me cover wanted over £650 per car/kit sold for little in the way of return if someone was to be injured as a result of my design, its build or its use. I was told that most of the car makers of the world are dead in the water if they were to settle their litigation claims."

I am thinking about having another try but this time will start by trying to find a way to get liability cover at a reasonable cost before starting the design or build. I sometimes wonder if the "names" in the industry bother or just chance their arm and hope that their legal team are good enough to fend off any litigation claims.

I think it is reasonable to state that much of the developed world has shipped its manufacturing base off to China to take advantage of the poor regulation and low wages, whilst turning a blind eye to the ecological impact of doing so ( http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/beijing-p...6394619021.html ) , not to mention the social/economic impacts in the domestic market. Meanwhile China seems to have an almost bipolar view, with the average Chinese businessman wanting to make money today and damn a longer term future, whereas the Chinese Govt has a much longer term view. China has recently agreed to purchase almost 400 tonnes of gold from the UAE. UAE is cash strapped at the moment and China finds that it's gold reserve is less than 2% of of it's total...the rest is US treasury script, which is fast losing value. So UAE is desperate and China swaps declining script for gold. Of course looking wider and there are more implications to a relationship: http://china.globaltimes.cn/diplomacy/2009-09/466592.html

OK, so that would be low volume, and at a guess you could convince them that crash and brakes was unnecessary (which goes to show what they know, tho you could argue that statistically it isn't very important), and so you've just got fuel consumption and emissions and driveby noise.

So in the UK and Oz that is pretty cheap, you've already got the lowdown on the UK. Recertifying emissions in Oz isn't cheap, we get maybe a car a month in our Emissions Lab for this. I'm /guessing/ several thousand dollars per iteration, plus any calibration time. We tend to get spiffy import cars, not retuned roadcars for this, hence my guess at the price.

Getting closer, driving and sliding it around the factory the last few days much to the amusment of the Chinese workers who have never seen such a sight - here alongside my many times mentioned Mazda 6.

Cor! Looks as if the Mazda body might - just ---- fit.

so that's how you artistic types do it then !

Yep, we squeeze it all in!

Congrats, that had to be a very rewarding moment. I wonder what an armouring company would have to do to make this thing safe for Colombian drug lords and Arabian Oil Sheiks LOL.

I will simply use an old golf saying ... "trees are 95% air" - ever tried to hit a golf ball trough trees?

Any new progress?

I hate to be practical - but cars like the Atom meant for road use with exposed frames must be a nightmare to clean after running through mud puddles etc.
I think you need some light outer panels to keep some of the dirt and weather etc. out. The exposed frames are a bit of a gimmick.

I hate to be practical - but cars like the Atom meant for road use with exposed frames must be a nightmare to clean after running through mud puddles etc.
I think you need some light outer panels to keep some of the dirt and weather etc. out. The exposed frames are a bit of a gimmick.

So cheapracer, any news or updates? Any chance we can get a look at the promotional materials and such that were supposed to be ready a few months ago?

Do I smell an investor?

More someone who was involved with the previous project that this one grew out of (reverse trike).

Well hopefully this site will soon be full of 4 wheeled goodies

http://jetlag.mybigcommerce.com/index.php

Anything yet?

For some very important reasons the "World Release" has to occur before the second week in July.

You could use the old sprint car racers trick - spray the whole thing with a fine mist of baby oil - then cover the electrics and just hose it down - all the dirt/mud just falls off!

The wife/girlfriend might even want to go o0ut in it as they could like the baby oil smell!

Anything yet?

Is baby oil made from squashed up and pressed babies like olive oil?

Never do that, it makes the car all oily and gooky forever after. Diesel is a better answer but not great either. Either makes them very hard to paint afterwards.

Yes, but done in a loving and caring way. The babies can be reconstituted with milk and kindness, given a breather then pressed again, but the first press is the best. If you press too hard or too often you get soft soap - useful but not worth as much.

Yes - "Extra Virgin" baby oil. (Cold pressed baby Jesus's)

In about a week I will try to start releasing info about my thingy and where I am going with it.

I will show some shots of them soon.

But I actually posted to whine somewhere, I changed the floorpan tube size and asked a worker last Thursday to make a new die to suit to put some small bends in each of the 2 side lower rails (the front and rear tapers). It's now Wednesday and still no die that would take me maybe 3 hours to make stuffing around (I've been running my ass off on other things). The worker decided to let the lathe guy make the die knowing well the lathe guy is very busy. I arrived yesterday morning to find the worker has decided since he's waiting for the lathe guy he will simply heat and bend the tubes - it goes without saying crinkled at the bends and twisted and destined for the bin. I also asked him to drill and tap 8 12mm holes in my build bed (3M x 2M x 50mm steel plate) to clamp down those tubes and he's welded pieces of angle iron on instead - why? So tubes that aren't bent to the correct angles can be clamped/forced into alignment and then welded into place. Just awesome and people keep asking me whats taking so long ...

They just don't get it and just have no pride in themselves or what they do and even though they will improve that's why China will never reach the heights of quality that we expect (cheap tightasses who keep buying cheap shit and then complaining about their purchase excepted).

Tough. However, even in the UK it is hard to find people who will a) work to your standards and b) do what they are asked. Probably not quite true in Motorsports and Aerospace area, but outside...

@Tony,

absolutely true in Informatics too.

So...end of the month now. Surely you at least have some cell phone pictures or something you could post.

Sure - the bodywork isn't totally displayable yet so I touched it up just a little but not much.