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Old 11-28-2012, 01:26 PM   #30 (permalink)
bennelson
EV test pilot
 
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Oconomowoc, WI, USA
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Electric Cycle - '81 Kawasaki KZ440
90 day: 334.6 mpg (US)

S10 - '95 Chevy S10
90 day: 30.48 mpg (US)

Electro-Metro - '96 Ben Nelson's "Electro-Metro"
90 day: 129.81 mpg (US)

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Yes, that cartoon is an appropriate visualization about how I feel when I'm trying to do something I know NOTHING about!

I did do some work sanding the white sytrofoam (Ick! Snowglobe of Evil!)

And glued the two halves of my cover together with Great Stuff. I even ran an extra but down the edges of the cover to get more of a nice curved fit. I did that over aluminum foil and cooking spray, and didn't get ANY Great Stuff stuck all over!

Now, I'm trying to figure out how the whole thing will be held down to the truck. What are typical methods used on foam/fiberglass composites? I'm assuming that a bolt or some other fastener needs to be embedded in the fiberglass. I would think the weight or force needs to be spread out a bit too.
Do I need to do something like run a bolt through a piece of fiberglass, and into the foam, and fiberglass over the whole thing?

Ideally, I'd like the lid hinged, to make it easier to load the bed, but for a really simple clamping system, I noticed that the bottom of the foam is about level with the bottom of the frame rails. It would be pretty easy to just put a metal plate across the bottom of the two and a bolt up into the foam. It could be tightened with a nut or wing-nut.

Here's a terrible, not-to-scale drawing to help illustrate.



Could I do a Tee-nut fiberglassed into the foam so that I could easily remove external hardware?

Other ideas?
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