KOZMO - Cool, Small Sportscar
by tomasz.ferdek in Workshop > Cars
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KOZMO - Cool, Small Sportscar
Hello, I’m presenting you the history of kit-car’s construction performed entirely according to my own project. More photos, information and the continuously updated construction journal are available on my website www.kozmo.pl/en.The project is being executed in Poland. It was created thanks to the passion, which often helped to cope with my personal severe health problems (but this is described more extensively in the movie material linked at the end).The first idea to construct my own car appeared on 9th of December 2005. Since beginning it was planned to be a kit-car with a closed bodywork, with weight not exceeding 550 kg (it was connected with binding regulations in Poland at that time which allowed to drive such vehicles from age 16) on component parts of Fiat Seicento. I applied a 1100ccm engine in the prototype but ultimately I am planning to apply a 1400 ccm T-Jet engine with power increased to 200-230 KM ;-). Apart from low weight, the second assumption was so that all used parts from manufactured vehicles come from Fiat/Alfa Romeo catalogue and were easily accessible.
Kozmo is financed by my own money which run out. I'm still looking for funds. So, I decided to try crowdfunding:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/kozmo-cool-sportscar-for-everyone/x/10615601
Everything started with the sketches on the A4 sheet of paper.
Then I prepared first digital projects of the frame.
After that, I placed the model of the bodywork on to the frame.
Because of the fact that I couldn’t make better visualizations at that time I asked my friend to improve my project. Unfortunately he was busy and finally I had to accept these visualizations.
On their basis I managed to create next sketches of the bodywork.
Some months later I decided to make this project from the beginning to the end in Solid Works (I was advised to use such program at my University), which resulted in the following visualizations.
The next step was travelling from Wroclaw to Lublin (Polish cities distant by ca. 500 km) for tubes and plates, which were acquired in Lublin at half price. And my project stuck at that stage. I had to gain funds for rest of my construction.After a year and a half, in spring 2008, finally a decision was made to build prototype. By that time, the materials were lying in my friend’s garage. Thanks to my brothers’ and many friends’ help, the works on Kozmo were started with transportation of tubes and plates to one of their’s workshop.
Together with my friend we started with welding of the assembly table...
... onto which, the frame was welded.
And there came the long-awaited day of first engine starting.
And five days later, on 28th of December, 2008 first ride.
In April, we had several testing rides on a race-track in Wroclaw. The main testing driver was my youngest brother, who is a rally driver and was able to adjust the suspension and gets the most from the prototype.
Afterwards, in May after adding the exhaust system, next tests took place:
Having at that time, the checked and verified frame, I started to construct the model of the bodywork. I came up with the idea that I will make it out of profiles glued together, cut digitally from 5 cm-thick styrofoam with increased density and then I will reconsider which materials to use in order to complete the model.
Because I found out that I would not be able to model the cavities for glasses and gaskets, I came up with the idea of using original frames of glasses from Fiat Seicento and Alfa Romeo GTV, which would be glued into the model.
By the middle of 2008, I was moved to work in Warsaw and recurrent traveling to my family home in Wroclaw in order to perform the model of the bodywork, which could be made by me, was senseless. Thus, I rented a garage in Warsaw and my brother with a friend transported Kozmo to Warsaw.
At that time, I was also preparing the sketch of the dashboard.
In Warsaw, I continued with gluing the profiles cut out of styrofoam.
I prepared also the tools to cut the styrofoam out. These were the frames with resistance wire and adjustable power supply.
Having the convenient tool I was able to cut the holes in styrofoam out and make places for windows frames which came from an Alfa GTV.
I also purchased the orbital sander for styrofoam sanding...
... and first piece of styrofoam was made.
The one of the first and best purchases to Kozmo were five modeling combs which could be joined together. The photo shows three joined combs.
Having the necessary tools, I sanded the whole bodywork in places which were suitable for that purpose...
..I cut the frames of windows and I painted them in white...
...obtaining the following effect.
During one of my weekend stays in family home Wroclaw I cut the consecutive elements which were needed for gluing into the bodywork.
Unfortunately, I had to suspend the works at that stage. I restarted them in spring, 2010.
Having the sanded styrofoam, I decided to put the mesh of lines every 10 cm in order to measure precisely by means of modelling comb if the bodywork is symmetrical.
During the construction of the model itself, many components started to differ from the shape, provided in visualizations, e.g. the edges of mudguards.
I found out which materials are needed to finish the bodywork during winter break. These were styrofoam glue which was intended for supplementing of bigger amount of defects and ready gypsum mass to be spread on top.
To cope with assembling of mechanisms of windows winders, I decided to cut out the internal part of the door from Alfa Romeo and together with screwed, working mechanism I matched it into the bodywork model. Matching of glasses together with windows frames took a few days.
After finishing, the frames of windows could be glued permanently to model and I could finish pillars and roof.
Then, after the roof, I continued with front, sides and rear of the vehicle:
At the end I sanded whole of the bodywork, I measured symmetry, plastered in places which required that and sanded more precisely where necessary and over and over again for two months.
One day, when my friend visited me for a week, we took Kozmo outside and we cleaned the garage - we swept approximately 20 kg of ground plaster dust. As I counted I used 196 kg of ready gypsum mass.
On this occasion I took some up-to-date photos of Kozmo. Below are photos in comparison to the ones taken one year ago.
I continued with sanding and I laid lines of cutting flaps and doors on the model.
When I recognized that the shapes of the bodywork are ground as I wanted them to be and the lines of flaps to be laid, I cut the bodywork. First of all, I cut rear flap....
...then doors...
...and at the end front flap.
After winter 2010/2011 came nice weather and although I was suffering from shortage of funds for laminates I didn’t stop with preparation of the bodywork model. I started to work on internal sides of the doors. It lasted according to the schedule a dozen halves of a working day.At first doors looked like as below:
Then, I was cutting them:
The missing areas were supplemented by the styrofoam glue in a glue foam:
I was plastering, sanding, measuring, cutting, improving and over and over again.Underneath is the final effect.
For the time being I left thick edges of the doors. Surely when I take the form out of the external plating I will cut these edges out and I will impress the form out of the internal part of the doors. Then I started to work on cavities for these doors. First of all I placed the walls coming from thresholds for lateral reinforcements of frame.
Then I put the glue onto the styrofoam in a form of a foam, where I impressed the internal shape of doors.
The shape impressed in such a way was firstly plastered and ground:
Unfortunately due to the crisis resulting from deficiency of funds for the project and consequently lack of motivation, I ceased the works at this stage in 2011. Then came spring. It was totally dead period for me.It wasn’t until around June 2012 when I mobilized myself and even though I was still suffering from lack of funds I decided to finish at least the model of the bodywork itself.I started from finishing of cavities of the doors - I had a lot of sanding, plastering, matching with doors and so on. The cavities began to take correct shape.
I also started cutting the cavities for rear lamps:
After removing rear flap I began to model front poles and rear panel coming to the frame:
In the meantime I CNC’d the dashboard - it’s a pity that there was nobody who could digitally mill the whole bodywork in Poland when I started the project:
I cut and modelled the cavities for front lamps.
And also cavity for fuel filler cap from Fiat Coupe which finally wouldn’t be applied but about it at a later stage.
Finally probably came the last day of gypsum sanding - everything what could be finished with gypsum was done so.
Now there were works by the dashboard left. I used the casing of gauges from Fiat Seicento for it. The original clock faces would be substituted by the electronic indicators.
Underneath, one of the sketches of the dashboard, still on diodes and three displays OLED B&W 128x64 pixels. Though, electronics technician, who would make it, had recently mentioned something about LCD 5” 720p.
Finally, the long expected day came - transportation of Kozmo to the paint sprayer in order to finish the model of the bodywork with a spatula before impressing. Thanks to help of paint sprayer, crazy friends from red Fiat 126 BIS with central 1,2 and FSO Polonez VR6 we rolled Kozmo from my garage on the platform, we protected it with foil and we moved on. We had to deal with 60 km to get to Warsaw. It brought me a lot of funFirst of all we took Kozmo from garage.
Before transportation I had to draw the model of the dashboard and leave it in my garage for further treatment by my hands.
Suddenly I remembered about not finished shape of the bodywork. Of course I didn’t fail to inform the paint sprayer about it.
Then we pushed Kozmo on the platform:
And this is how my garage looks like after Kozmo left it.
And this is whole convoy:
And this is the modest garage of the paint sprayer - Oh, I would love to have such garage.
Unfortunately after a week our paint sprayer gave up and we started to look for another paint sprayer who would meet this challenge. In the meantime, I visited the author of McLaren F1 replica which was recently reported in British media. I had a chance to drive this race car. It was September 2012.
After a long search I managed to find a new painer. The works advanced although it seemed that it would be more works with finishing of the bodywork than I expected because the paint sprayer decided that there would be still a lot of gypsum to be laid before he started with filling and final finish of the bodywork’s model. It was found, however, that it is not so bad. Below are the photos coming from one of the visit at the paint sprayer. You can see the totally filled bodywork with cavities for doors and flaps and rear flap and also half-filled cavities for door and front flap. At that time I realized that Kozmo went to the right man.
I greeted 2013 with a next visit at the paint shop. To my intense surprise I found Kozmo almost totally ready to impress the molds. The paint sprayer had only external plating of doors to finish which can only be done after impressing of internal sides of doors.
During this time I also continued with looking for funds for the further construction of the prototype as well as I was supervising works at first ready elements of the bodywork from glass fibers. These are internal parts of doors which were manufactured at www.carbonbike.pl, which deals with manufacturing of the lightest handbikes in the world and different car’s bodyworks from carbon fibers. Underneath are photos of forms and first prototype element of the bodywork.
The ready internal elements were reinforced in windows’ mechanisms and were subjected to testing. The consecutive ready elements were taken to the paint sprayer in order to match them into the door cavities done in the bodywork form. After marking of places for small corrections, the paint sprayer would work on them; a then would prepare the external parts of the doors for impressing. While waiting for forms of the door, which was taken to be impressed, the paint sprayer finished the dashboard.
And there came next long awaited day. I took the car from the paint sprayer, who was preparing the form of the bodywork to be impressed during 85 working days. Now such a prepared Kozmo would be waiting until the time I would find any sponsor, who would enable finishing of the project, that is: forms of the bodywork and the interior, first bodywork and interior, corrections of suspensions of the braking system, change of the engine to the target one 1,4 T-Jet engine tuned to ca. 230 hp, and at the end painting of the car and putting final touches.Underneath are the photos from loading of Kozmo on the platform. For this purpose I raised the suspension – thus, the car could look like little odd - the target is to have bigger and more offseted rims.
Since the photos of the car coming from transportation had the suspension raised and the wheels on them were too narrow in relation to the target ones, I decided to slightly retouch these two photos.So that would basically look like my car. I hope you now enjoy it more ;-)
Whilst searching for sponsor I decided to show Kozmo to large public in the preconstruction phase and I arranged first public presentation of progresses of works at Kozmo, which took place on first weekend of September 2013 on Slomczyn rallycross track.We had adventures but spent great time and profitably I hope.Below you will find some photos showing Kozmo among direct competitors.
![Kozmo HD [eng sub]](/proxy/?url=https://content.instructables.com/FQN/SFUW/I9CLYLJG/FQNSFUWI9CLYLJG.jpg&filename=Kozmo HD [eng sub])
I encourage you to watch conversation with me issued at the beginning of 2013 in Polish TV - TVN (with English subtitles):
Below I present photos taken at the occasion of directing of footage about crazy people with passion within the competition „It’s your life” hosted by Miss Polonia 2011 . The photos were taken by Mariusz Przygoda.
It happened that I was in the final round of this contest.
Some of the latest pictures made on the last day of August 2014.
Tthere are new renders of Kozmo. My friend made its because the car which I'm trying to make is looking now diffrent that in first renders.
Kozmo is financed by my own money which run out. I'm still looking for funds. So, I decided to try crowdfunding:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/kozmo-cool-sportscar-for-everyone/x/10615601
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/kozmo-cool-sportscar-for-everyone/x/10615601