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Old 12-06-2012, 10:04 PM   #65 (permalink)
bennelson
EV test pilot
 
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Oconomowoc, WI, USA
Posts: 4,435

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)

The Wife's Car - Plug-in Prius - '04 Toyota Prius
90 day: 78.16 mpg (US)
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Nice diagram image.

It's interesting to see them side by side like that. To me, the Sport Side has never looked very aerodynamic - more um, lumpy, than anything.

Good eye for details to notice that taper though! At this point, I'm not inclined to swap out a bed for what would likely be fairly minimal aero-gains.

About the front though. I don't see why I couldn't combine some sort of grill-block with slanty-ness. After the work I did for the grill block on my wife's car, I'm more likely to think that I could do something to help improve the front end.

Since I'm learning fiberglass right now, maybe by the time I get to the front, I'll know what I'm doing!

Did more fiberglass work today. 2 Nights ago, I dropped the flat cover off at my parent's house. Today, I headed over there and set up a pair of sawhorses in the heated shop. I set out the cover, bottom side up, to start working on fiberglassing the bottom.

I had some thick chopped matt strips (6 inch wide by 60" long). That material looked so thick, I didn't want to use too much of it, but I thought maybe extra strength at the edges would be a good idea...So....

I ran that 6" width around the four edges of the bottom of the cover. After that, I used what I had of the woven fiberglass cloth to cover the entire middle.

The two materials are slightly different to work with.

The matt is thick, and sucks up lots of resin. It's easy to handle, because it's pretty stiff, but the individual fibers also come out of it really easy. So, if I had ANY resin at all on my fingers, I quickly had fingers covered with fiberglass fur.

The cloth was a much lighter weight. It was easy to cover a big area quick, but then I had to make sure to keep tugging the cloth in the right direction to get the wrinkles out. It seemed to make good use of the resin, needing very little to hold it down and absorb all the way through.

I also Elmers glued the "step" edge.

I'm thinking that I'll use some of the thick 6"-wide matt on the flat back side of the lip. That way, I'll have something solid to cut into, and I can try to make the finished end of the curved edge look a little better.



Can anyone tell me a bit more about using body filler with fiberglass? The foam is so soft, it's hard to sand without either damaging the foam, or overdoing it, or taking forever and creating insane amounts of static-charged white dust.

If I want a fairly smooth and clean finish to the top, should I put down some fiberglass and then bondo over the top of that with something like a 6-foot-long straight-edge to even it all out? And then more fiberglass, or just paint over at that point. Any suggestions?
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Last edited by bennelson; 12-06-2012 at 10:29 PM.. Reason: added photo
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