Been awhile since I posted anything. Been kinda busy...
Gotta be out of my apartment Tuesday.
Haven't been working on the car much, but I did clean up all that shit that fell out of my dash.
Also got a little inspiration, a day off when the wife worked a double, and had some friends over who were willing to help so I decided to try making my own ripoff of the scoop on Norm's nose.
I'm sure you've all seen this...
After my near overheat in the drive through, I started looking around for a bolt on or glass in hood louver. Found some interesting stuff out there, but most of it was non-functional, so I decided to try to build a mold to bolt to the bottom of my hood, so I could glass over the top.
After thinking about the style of Norm's, I decided to simplify the design; namely eliminate most of the curve. I was on the phone with my buddy A aron (hereafter reffered to as HamHam so I don't have to type it funny to avoid the retard script), trying to explain it to him, and he just wasn't getting it so I made a cardboard model in the 10 minutes I had before he got to the house.
Once he had a visual, HamHam and I made some measurements and set about building the mold out of plywood scraps I had lying around.
Getting this far was easy, starting at the hood hinge center pin, we measured back to clear the radiator fan, and from there to the rear reinforcement of the hood (no need to cut into what little structure there is in the hood if we don't have to). The width was also dictated by the structure of the hood, just inside the hinges in the front, and inside the structure at the rear.
We set the mold in place over the spare tire and transferred measurements up from hood level to the mold for the angle of the louver, and the open space to maximize the opening while barely clearing the spare tire; we tried to bring it in very close to the spare, the plan is to cut out a section of the sheet metal in front of the spare, and butcher a spare front compartment gasket I have to make the hood still seal to the unibody (we'll see how that goes).
I'm on the left, HamHam's on the right, Shane's taking pictures, and Happy's around somewhere drinking my beer.
We notched a corner off a couple pieces of floral foam, and hot glued it to the plywood (I should have added some 4" decking screws through the plywood into the foam to stabilize it a little more, one of the pieces fell off as I was shaping it, and had to be re-glued).
A large square set inside next to the foam gave a vertical line to follow by hand with a wood blade for a sawzall, then I made the curve by hand with sandpaper.
As soon as I finish the sanding, I'll screw the mold into the hood and lay some glass. It's been years since I tried anything this ambitious with glass, I'm pretty happy so far.
Not including the shit I already had lying around leftover from other projects, I'm $4 and 6 hours into this, and I already have matt and resin too.
Anyone have any tips on getting off the gelcoat that's under the hood paint? I've been sanding for a couple hours and have very little to show for it.
Those not actively involved in my project spent their time building this out of stuff I had lying around.
HamHam found out MA relaxed the laws governing model rocket engines. He's been all about it since. It flew, but not well, or high, or far. I'll see if I can get video of the fail.
