Honda Insight Tail Extension Project

[Varn]

I have seen heat and pressure warpage on parts including full fairings. Most of my parts have been pretty light duty.

Carbon (presumably fiberglass too) in an epoxy slurry is not the most stable of materials. We might consider the part to be cured in 48 hours when it comes out of the vacuum bagging or when we say that it is done with a wet layup. The epoxy works by the combining of the two parts of the chemistry. Eventually the chemicals become immobilized But I doubt if they are completely reacted. I think that rigidity keeps improving over months if not years. These chemicals are encumbered by their own rigidity.

When I first started doing composite work I got a tape and kit that was produced by Burt Rutan. He went over the processes that he used successfully in building light aircraft.

Aerospace users now use the prepeg type of layup with many tons of pressure. I doubt if those military or high end commercial planes have much trouble with heat/pressure induced flex.

I am not so sure about using too many dissimilar fillers, coefficient of expansion type of problems. I caught my wife using spackle on our Varna Streamliner. She was getting close to a deadline and needed something that would dry faster than the epoxy.

When we have sanded the body down it has a lot of colors in it.

Not sure if I answered your question very well.

[3-Wheeler]

This is an early picture of the LED lights on the side of the extension.



Here is a closeup of the of LED cluster for the stop lights. The center, clear bulb is the backup light, and the upper, amber bulb is one of the blinker lights.



This is a close-up of the license plate illumination light. Notice the roughed out spackling job on the extreme edge of the tail?



And a shot of the tail. This picture is from about 4 weeks ago.



A the funny wood thingy is positioned inside the foam and lines up with the rear hatch.



You can see the LED light assembly peeking through the cutout.



And now a wedge of foam is added to the wood piece, which will end up being shaped for acrylic glass is this spot.



The extension is off the car and tipped upside-down, where the bottom side is getting ready for glassing.



The cutout for the acrylic has been finished, and the outer edges are being glassed.



And here is what the surface looks like after the epoxy hardens.



Now the acrylic is fitting inside the cutout.



Here's a telephoto shot of the side of the extension in a parking.



And another shot much closer.



A closeup of several LED lights on the side.



And...



A shot of the rear end of the tail.



You can see the brush-strokes of the red paint. This is just a sealer for the winter.



A straight-on rear view of the tail.



In the lower portion of this picture, you can make out the start of rear wheel spats.



Jim.

[MetroMPG]

Awesome

[skyl4rk]

Very nice job!

[Angmaar]

If I see you on the road i'll honk and wave.

Sweet build!

[Cd]

My new dream car !
Can't wait to find out the new Cd !

[donee]

Hi Varn,

The issue (for the benefit of others) is how fast you can mix, and apply it. Its open time is short, and defenitaly variable based on the shape of the mixed container, and the final shape of the part. The practicality of this, is that really good parts can only be made so big by a single person. If the epoxy is not at the same state of cure in layers, its not going to make a good part. That is, if you have one end of an object half cured, and then apply freshly mixed epoxy on the other end there is going to be a
"knit" line that is prone to failure.

Allot of the problem can be eliminated with the vacuum bagging technique called "vacuum infusion" The epoxy is pulled into the matrix uniformly and quickly by this method. Two people can impregnate structures up to 50 foot long in a matter of hours, with a superior build quality. There was a video on the internet of this done by a Dutch boat builder. It was quite remarkable how straightforward and undramatic the impregnation was, in comparison to traditional techniques such as hand-lay-up.

[Cd]

U.C.L.A. did some testing on a Ford Taurus back in '97 in which they did a complete body overhaul. One of the things that they did was to add a short boat-tail to the car.

Something that I found interesting is that they hollowed out some of the area around the back license plate. Supposedly this helped as the airflow separated off the back.

Would you consider doing something like this on the Insights tail ? It would be an easy modification.

The link now appears to be dead, but here it is :http://www.team-fate.net/technical/1997TechReport.pdf

[NeilBlanchard]

I think the rear transom on this boattail is so small that making it concave wouldn't matter. Do you have pictures of the Taurus boattail?

[Daox]

Beautiful work.