Locost Legality Is Complicated, or Road Legal… Sorta

The Locost is registered! I can drive it on the road legally… well, I could drive it, if it had a windshield, seatbelts, body-panels, mirrors and all that other wussy-comfort stuff.

I didn’t mean to register the Locost. I took it to DMV for a VIN inspection; I thought it would get me started down a long drawn-out path to achieve registration. But, for the first time I can remember, the man behind the counter wanted to be helpful. I left with temporary registration and plates and title on the way!

It was a weird feeling leaving DMV that day. I wanted to be ecstatic. But the car was far from being road-legal and the only thing keeping me from the open road was my ability to complete the car. Instead of ecstatic, I felt an odd sense of foreboding at the work to come.

Needless to say, I’ve practically been living in the garage since that day. Yes, the car was drivable but lacking many essentials for road-worthiness.

I did fabricate and wire my dash (and essentially the entire car) before taking it in; I’m fairly proud of my hand-bent “scuttle”, I think it has a nice classic look. But I have no idea how the professionals wire dashes so cleanly; I thought I was pretty organized but the pictures say no.

Since then I’ve fabbed up a handful of body panels and the windshield.

I think the only fab work I have left is the roll cage and fender mounts.

Obtaining fenders has been oddly hard. I ordered some smooth aluminum fenders for the front. I received diamond plate fenders. I sent them back, and they sent out smooth steel fenders. We’re trying one last time to get smooth aluminum. Third time’s the charm?

But mistakes have been made. Sometimes twice.

I was welding something near my daughter’s bike and thought I’d throw an old rag (made from a canvas curtain) over the bike for protection. I was also standing on the edge of the canvas while I welded. As I welded I realized the inside of my helmet was changing to a strange shade of orange. I pulled the welding helmet back to realize I was standing in knee-high flames because the canvas had caught fire. I threw the canvas in the yard and, thankfully, the only damage in the garage was one melted tire on my daughter’s bike.

Then, a week later, I was welding on the rear of the Locost dangerously near open fuel lines (I’d taken the fuel tank out); I decided to cover the lines with a towel and a metal plate. After welding I smelled something strange. I lifted the metal plate to find the towel on fire. I threw the towel off the car but then the fuel at the end of the fuel line lit on fire. Through some strange mixture of prayer, possible divine intervention, and effort, I managed to extinguish the fuel line by blowing and tamping on it. Man, that incident made me worried that five years of work was about to go up in flames.

Yeah, five years. I bought this car on a rainy March 1st, 2016, and then I realized I didn’t know how to get it home (thanks for the save Andrew!).

Well, I should qualify that last paragraph. I didn’t really buy “this car”; I bought some metal frame rails, a nose cone, some body panels, and a steering rack; and I’d use very little of it (without major modifications). I think only the nose and hood have survived as-was.

But it finally drives. And the kids already love going for rides around the neighborhood. We’ve likely made too many “test” runs. The other day I mentioned to a neighbor that I’d worked on the car five years. His response was, “Yeah, that motor sounds like you’ve worked on it five years.” I’ll translate – “That thing is loud”.

He’s not the only person I’ve talked car with lately; the cars and coffee gatherings have started again. Recently, I went to one in Arizona and one in Oregon and noticed a big difference. In Arizona only a few people, presumably those more fragile, wore a (countenance wrapper). In Oregon big signs around the perimeter of the property warned that everyone entering the parking lot must wear the (wrapper) and the number of allowed cars was limited to keep attendance low.

Man I liked Arizona. In extreme brief, I got to hang out with great friends, did fun stuff with the family, enjoyed the sun, and the kids even got to drive (something I’ve been looking for for awhile).

In the future, you may wonder why I wrote “(countenance wrapper)”. If I call it what it is, I’ll be censored. It happened several posts ago. I mentioned a beer, that shared the same name as their obsession, and received warning labels, preaching their doctrine, in my blog.

If you’re my descendant, reading this years in the future, know this – our family was aware things weren’t as proclaimed. But “they” controlled the narrative. And they became addicted to their narrative, because they believed it defined them. They were told their actions were virtue, and they didn’t want to give-up their new-found virtue.

Here’s a picture of me, after wearing a (countenance wrapper) in the garage environment. Notice the evidence of intrusion below my nostrils. I’ve had the same thing happen painting, but with much more intrusion. Would I wear a paper (wrapper) into a poisonous atmosphere expecting protection? Not a chance. They’re largely ineffective. Air, like most things, follows the path of least resistance, which means an unsealed (wrapper) just flows around the edges. Garage projects taught me that, not politics. I independently stress-tested the (countenance wrapper) long before 2019. Since 2019 I’ve been watching in dumb-founded disbelief at the faith and virtue people have placed in the (countenance wrapper).

Consider this, in the first weeks you all holed-up and went nowhere, when there was only a handful of examples in the state. I know you holed-up because I went out and crashed my motorcycle riding too fast because (sort of) there wasn’t a soul on the roads. The beer named thing still got passed along. Now you think a paper non-sealed (countenance wrapper) is going to pause transmission?!

But then, I also believe other extremely counter-cultural concepts, like no matter how hard you pretend you can’t change your gender; for example, he’s still Bruce Jenner and will never be “Candace” or whatever the heck he made up. I’m very surprised how many of you are accepting Candace as a political candidate! There’s legislation proposed that would make writing this paragraph a crime. If you’re unsure what that means, let me state it simpler. Telling the truth will be a crime. Will I be arrested because I refuse to recognize Bruce’s charade? Will my kids be taken away?

Does this sound like conspiracy? Then you’re not paying attention. Just this week, in Finland, the former Minister of the Interior (2011-2015), Paivi Rasanen, received criminal charges for posting a photo of Romans 1:24-27, questioning why her church was endorsing a homosexual event in 2019. This is the future of America too, it seems. My poor kids, the nation they’re inheriting is looking bleak.

Hard to transition back to cars after those paragraphs. In a way, that’s what’s nice about cars. I can talk to the guy at the car show, about his car, without learning that he’s married to his chicken and defines himself as a hamburger bun.

I just bought a large truck, with the intent of pulling a travel trailer. My family needs respite from the Portland area’s angry glares and hatred because we don’t wear (countenance wrappers) unless we have no other option. If they only knew we also appreciate the police and hate abortion. But then, they do. The reality is, the (countenance wrapper) has come to represent your willingness to bow to their party. That’s why the (wrapper)’s prevalence so closely mirrors their constituency.

Unfortunately, in the truck, Ford only put four threads in each hole for the spark plugs and the truck has already shot one of the spark plugs out; this is also the only reason I found a truck for less than a bazillion dollars because everyone else that thinks like me also wants to escape and has the same plan. Now I have a cylinder head replacement job to do, in addition to the Locost project.

Hopefully, next time I write, I’ll be regaling you with tales from the road. Either by travel trailer, or Locost. I’m tired of the “build” posts, I imagine you might be also. Cars were meant to be driven, not endlessly worked on. There are adventures to be had… without a (countenance wrapper).