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Old 07-26-2010, 01:36 PM   #50 (permalink)
3-Wheeler
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Location: Southern WI
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AlienMobile - '00 Honda Insight
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimepting View Post
....To eliminate dips from bondo work, not much different from your problem, I used a full 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of sandpaper stapled to a dressed 1 x 4 x 11" block....

.....Also, once you have the fiberglas covering into place, you will be able to add small quantities of bondo to smooth any remaining dips, so it isn't ultra critical.....
Your large sheet sanding approach has been also mentioned by my brother, who has painted many car bodies over the years, so I hear you on that one.

In my working with foam, there two options to get the body work really smooth.

1) Roughly finish the foam work and then cover with fiberglass/resin, and THEN start the smoothing process, using Bondo and so on.

2) Finely finish the foam work, add cloth/resin and only apply glazing putting to fill around the glass seams, which are inevitable with glass work.

The second approach ends up in a body shape that is just as smooth, but weighs less because adding foam and/or light weight spackling weighs less than any body filler, and costs less too.

So the objective is to get things as smooth as possible before any cloth is added!! This goes so far as sanding with only a "shading light" on, in a dark garage. It's amazing how easy it is to see small defects in the curvature using this method.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jimepting View Post
....I wonder a bit about that sharp edge on the bottom outsides. As I think I remember from Darin's Metro tail, there is flow "down" the lower tail to repressurize the diffusion area underneath. As I'm sure you have noticed, there is a bit of a problem extending the stock Insight line since it is quite sharp on the fender skirts and bumper. I wondered just what to do with this problelm myself, but it would seem that continuing the sharp line through the length of the boattail would not be correct. Clearly you can round this area considerably by installing extra foam inside the corner. What do you think?...
I agree!!

Actually this came to mind this last weekend when "eye-ball engineering" the situation. It dawned on me that holding this Honda feature to the end of the tail extension is not at all ideal.

Instead, what is needed is to blend this feature, and "roll" the curvature just as you described, so it disappears into a smoothing curvature more like Basjoos has on his design.

And yes, working out the details may take adding more foam to accomplish this.

Jim.
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