[project] Nothing To Do With 205's, But Behold!

[pip470 61]

How on earth did you guess that Ben? And this sounds awesome. Casting wheel centres, I wouldn't know where to start. I'm not even sure what it is you are planning to do. Look forward to some pictures.

[M3Evo 0]

Oh my god I should've done this differently!

 

I covered the pattern for the charge cooler in resin which I was gonna sand back and polish. Unfortunately the resin is much more resistant to sanding than body filler so it's taking rather a long time

 

Still, getting there!

 

The underside's almost done save for a little bit of making good. Filled the pots for the air outlets with plaster of paris to stop them from distorting whenever they had any weight put on them. Should've made them a bit shorter really thinking about it and might still chop them down to a more manageable size before making the molds.

 

 

 

And the top side, which needs to be perfect (ha!) for shape and finish as it'll all be visible.

 

[M3Evo 0]

Getting there slowly with the charge cooler pattern. Getting the visible faces nice and smooth / flat has taken quiiiite a long time! However, started to paint it this evening

 

 

 

Also, cut back the outlet stubs last weekend as for some reason I'd made them huge and the more I looked at them I couldn't figure out why! Bit more manageable now:

 

[M3Evo 0]

Been busy with holidays, meetings and new girlfriend of late so progress has been a bit slow.

 

Also, waiting for paint to dry is much like.....watching paint dry.

 

However, gave the pattern a couple of coats of metallic grey paint just as a guide coat, then laqured it about a million times and now.....finally....have flatted it back and polished the 'show' side

 

 

 

 

Have to say, it's immensely satisfying to have turned such a rough shape into something so smooth and shiny

 

Will start making the mold for the show side this weekend. The whole thing can then be turned over so the underside can be finished off, although this doesn't need to be quite so shiny

[hman205 1]

good work!!

[M3Evo 0]

Cheers dude!

 

Started on the mold for the top of the cooler today.

 

First step is to apply release wax. It says apply 3 to 5 coats, but I usually do a minimum of 8, just to be on the safe side.

 

 

 

For unimportant bits, you can just apply a thick coat of candle wax.

 

Next up is to make up margins for the mold. Done this by taping release film to cardboard:

 

 

This isn't the best way of doing things if you wanted dead flat flanges for example, but it's adequate for this mold.

 

These borders are then taped to the pattern and the little gap that's left filled with plasticine (forgot to photo the plasticine fillet!)

 

 

 

And last up is gelling the mold before laying up some glass reinforcement. The gel is this rather fetching shade of green as it's a special tooling gel. Have to say I'm not very impressed with it as it's just run off of the vertical surfaces and sagged at the bottom!

 

 

 

However, a very resin rich layer of surface tissue should prevent this from being a problem.

[M3Evo 0]

Have been slowly toiling away on the molds for the charge cooler of late.

 

The shiny side is all laid up, just have to pray that it releases all right!

 

Here's a quick snap of the underside:

 

 

The underside mold needs making in three parts (there'll be a second split line at the narrowest points between the outlet stubs) or the molds wouldn't come off the pattern and the new parts wouldn't come out of the molds!

[hman205 1]

getting there now

[M3Evo 0]

Sloooooooly!

 

Latest update: Bordered up for the first half of the runners and started making the mold.

 

Praying that this all releases all right as it's pretty much 5 months work so far!

 

[M3Evo 0]

Made a start on the prep for the final bit of the mold this afternoon.

 

Started off by stripping the border off of the pattern:

 

 

And then cleaned all of the plasticine out of the nooks and crannies before drilling some location nubbins and coating with release agent (which is the blue stuff)

 

[pip470 61]

I feel like Rolf Harris should be in the back ground with his diggeridoo saying "can you guess what it is yet?" Im looking forward to the finished thing as i know its going to be shiny, carbon fibre and super sexy. Until then I have no idea of what I am looking at. Keep up the good work!!!

[M3Evo 0]

The final part of the mold is curing as we speak!

 

Might do another couple of layers tomorrow, but in principal it's all in place

 

 

 

Everybody cross their fingers that it all releases okay!

[BusEngineer 7]

Were all rooting for you fella

[hman205 1]

Fingers and Toe's

[M3Evo 0]

Bit of a mixed bag with the cooler molds this weekend.

 

Haven't got a pic, but unfortunately the lovely polished paint I applied to the top side all dissolved under the resin!

 

The mold released fine (if a little stickily) and the paint cleans off easily enough, but there's a lot of flatting back and re-polishing to be done.

 

Good news is that the last section released...........after some stern persuasion!

 

 

 

 

Once the rest of the molds are released, I'll probably give them all a quick wax and PVA and knock up a crappy fibreglass shell just to make sure it all fits.

[M3Evo 0]

Started trying to sort out the mold for the top side of the cooler today.

 

Here's how it started:

 

 

 

Note to all, don't use halfords paint under polyester resin! Not their fault at all, just found out the hard way!

 

 

And here's how far I got it this evening:

 

 

Still some way to go!

 

 

Just to cheer myself up, released the remaining underside molds.

 

 

They came off nice and easy and look pretty much good to go!

[M3Evo 0]

Thought I'd capitolise on being at my folks' house for a while by making another mold.

 

This is my first direct mold (where the mold is made without first making a pattern) and is for the new vacuum capsules.

 

It's ever-so-shiny because, inevitably, these are being made in carbon fibre

 

 

 

 

Idea is to make two halves per capsule, then bond them together with the diaphragm inbetween. Think probably silicone sealant should do fine for this.

[hman205 1]

what is the purpose of these capsules can't quite picture what they are .

[M3Evo 0]

They're to shift all of the various valves around under vacuum so one does the inlet air valve, one handles the transition between turbos in the exhaust, one will do the wastegate and the last one will do the dump valve.

[M3Evo 0]

Had a quick trial run of the bottom half of the cooler this weekend.

 

Started off by waxing the three bits of the mold and then clamping them together. If you're not worried about the finish of the component, you can rub candle wax over the mold surface and the part will release dead easy. For a beld'n'braces approach, I coated it with PVA release agent too.

 

 

 

Next up is to plug the seams so that resin doesn't get in there and glue the mold sections together. This is just plasticine but for the final parts I'll be silicone sealing the sections together as I need them to be air tight.

 

 

 

And here's the result of a very quick and not especially thourough laminate of two plies of glass. Final produce will be 4 plies of carbon and one of diolen. This bit isn't much to look at, but it let me prove the molds release properly and I can use it to determine how long the trumpets need to be.

 

 

 

Also let me check that the hose joiners actually fit! And also that there's enough room for a trumpet there.

 

 

 

In other news, bought a little electric sander just to speed up the recovery of the top half of the mold. Hoping to get that finished this evening and then make a dummy top half so that it can all go under the bonnet to check for fit.

 

 

 

Last but not least, here's the dummy bottom half with the cores in it:

 

 

[M3Evo 0]

Turns out there was quite a lot of work involved in healing the top of the mold.

 

Sanded all the way through the gel pretty much everywhere which means it can't be polished

 

The only remedy for this is to build up some layers of resin, top off with a flow coat and then flat and polish that.

 

Probably doesn't show up all that well, but here's the flow coated mold waiting to be finished and used

 

[M3Evo 0]

Got slightly closer to the mold being ready to use last night

 

 

Pretty much all the rough shaping is done so that the surfaces are flat. Any last imperfections will have to be sanded and polished off the final product which will have a good 1mm thick clear coat molded onto it.

 

All that remains to be done now is to fine sand and polish

 

Had a delivery of all the resin infusion materials I'll need to do a trial run too.

 

For the trial, gonne experiment with a fire-retardant corner to the mold (where it's near the exhaust housing of the big turbo), a bit of carbon fibre, this clear coating idea and generally how the process works and what kind of finish the resin clears to.

[M3Evo 0]

Ooh, doesn't look too bad now!

 

There are still some scabby areas, but these can be flatted back and polished on the final thing:

 

 

 

 

Have got as far as coat two (out of eight) of release wax. Not taking any chances with this one, the coats are going on, getting a least an hour to set up before being buffed off ready for the next one! Will cry if this goes wrong now!

[M3Evo 0]

Still applying coats of release wax to the mold last night. Apply coat.....break surface film.....wait an hour.......buff off......apply coat.....

 

Up to coat 6 of 8 now though!

 

To ease the boredom between coats of wax, thought I'd re-start the sunroof. Gonna take molds from both the top side and the underside and then bond them together in much the same way that the factory did.

 

Plan is to make a direct replacement if people want it, so there's the option of having a tilt/slide carbon panel or it can be bonded in and all the mechanism binned

 

 

Have built up 4 coats of clear resin on this which can now be sanded and polished. Not risking paint again!

[M3Evo 0]

Managed to get a few bits and bobs done over the last couple of days for the cooler case

 

First up, here's the clear coat. Put two layers on as hopefully any imperfections will be slight and can easily be rectified. This is just an experimental jobby so we'll see how well the two coats work.

 

 

 

Had a bit of a panic about this all releasing so gave the edge a bit of a lift. Can't really see in the pic, but it's released easily....phew!

 

 

 

Last messy job is to give the whole surface a good going over with 80 grit paper so that the reinforcements stick. Once it's all roughed up, give it a thourough cleaning with acetone.

 

 

 

Next up, making a very accurate and space-age template for the reinforcements:

 

 

 

And then it's onto loading the mold up with carbon:

 

 

 

Two layers of glass:

 

 

 

A layer of peel ply:

 

 

 

Release film:

 

 

 

and infusion mesh:

 

 

 

Next job is to make the resin distribution network, vacuum path bag the whole thing up and also make a resin catch pot. It's all go 'ere!