Piwoslaw's Peugeot 307sw modding thread

[elhigh]

My experience with spray paint on plastic is that it generally doesn't hurt the plastic, and you can tell because it doesn't stick very well, so you get to check the plastic's condition after a while. Ask around. Try modeling shops.

You could buff the plastic surface very gently with some 100-150 grit sandpaper, give it just enough of a texture for the paint to grip mechanically. Once you've got your paint sticking well, you can follow up with more coats to give it a proper shine.

[noxman]

Hallo!

How driving techniques do you using? You have nice consumption.

Good moods.
Keep going.

[Piwoslaw]

Quick update:
I've been working hard, modding furiously. At the end of last week I removed the roof railing and installed DRL's. The latter required removing what was left of the old grill block, and the new one is still in the works, so the radiator is naked, but the weather is hot, so no problem.
This whole week was spent working on the Kammback, tomorrow I hope to get material for the skirts. This is all taking much longer than I'd planned, and more important things (not excluding the family) are hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles.

No pics now, maybe in a few days I'll find more time.

[chuckm]

My experience with spray paint on plastic is that it generally doesn't hurt the plastic, and you can tell because it doesn't stick very well...

Krylon has a paint for plastic that I used on my vinyl gutter / side skirts. It bonds quite well; I haven't noticed any scratching in the 8 or so months I've had them on.

[Piwoslaw]

I've got a few minutes, so here's what I've been up to in the second half of July:

After the last episode of "Rainstorm Aerodynamics - Meet Mr. Soggyback and the Soggyskirts", I finally hunted down a 2x3m piece of coroplast (polypropylene). I cut out the top of the Kammback and both sides and hit a wall with how to smoothly join them. So I had to make another Kammy, this time one piece.



In order to bend it I needed to warm the inside of the bend. The Wife's hairdrier wasn't good enough, so I used a small camping stove. To make sure that the bend is straight I clamped the line between two pairs of wooden boards.



This setup also helped keep the heat close to the bend line and off the rest of the sheet.
Safety Note: Make sure to keep an eye on the wood when warming!!
After a few hours of fooling around I finally got it right

[Piwoslaw]

The next step wasn't easy either: I had to find a way to attach the Kammy to the hatch with the following (mutually excluding, it would seem) boundry conditions:
- No drilling,
- Strong and stable,
- On/off in under 90 seconds with no/limited tools.

After about six 4km bike rides to the local sewing supply store I did the following set up:
The top of the Kammback has slits for a 4cm wide band which loops around both ends of an 5mm aluminum bar.



The bar sits against the hatch's hinges.



The band is not elastic, so I needed something to be able to adjust its length/tension.



The bottom corners of the Kammy have elastic line inside the canals which loop around a rubber stop on the inside of the hatch.





In the near future I will add an extra set of 4mm bands in the center for more stability (and to cover up the red plastic of the stop light). I will also add elastic line at the upper outside corners, but I'm not yet sure where that can be anchored. I'll also glue an extra piece of coroplast to the underside to make the whole thing more rigid.

[Piwoslaw]

Now for the skirts. A visit to the local scrap metal yard got me (at the cost of 1 beer) a 2m profile of 2mm aluminum.



I quickly cut the sides off.



Safety Note: Notice the gloves and earplugs (I still had the glasses on).

I used the 2cm-wide sides for the horizontal reinforcement bars and cut up the center for the mounting tabs. The front of the reinforcement bar, and the two top pieces, hang on plastic pins which hold the plastic liner in place.



The rear tab sqeezes the inward-facing lip, like Darin did here. The first tab, unfortunately, didn't have anything to hang on to, so I bent it, drilled and threaded a hole, stuck it under the plastic liner and put a screw in. Yes, I had to make a 4mm hole in the plastic liner. Sorry CarloSW2, I know I just lost your approval



The rear of the reinforcement bar could be attached to one of three holes under the bumper. Instead of the hole just behind the wheel, I picked the middle one, since that allowed me to taper the bottom of the skirt. I'll build on this when the time comes for a belly pan under the rear.

[Piwoslaw]

A close inspection of the rear wheel well suggested something thinner than 5mm coroplast would be ideal for the skirt itself, so I got two 50x100cm sheets of 0.6mm aluminum. As in Darin's rear skirt thread, I first made a template out of newspaper, then cardboard, and finally aluminum. (BTW: Darin used one sheet of newspaper, I needed 3 taped together to span the wheel well. Does this mean a 15" wheel well is soooo much bigger than a 13", or are newspapers in Nova Scotia larger than in Poland?) As I found out, each template should be larger than the previous. I did this, but the aluminum on the first skirt was barely enough. The reason I needed something thin is that my wheel well's rear is the plastic bumper with a 'lip' that juts inward, while the front is the frame with no 'lip', so I tucked the aluminum sheet inside the well in the front and let it out in the back. This is probably the best way to go as far as being immune to wind.



The finished skirt is secured to the reinforcement bar with four 4mm screws, and the whole setup comes off together using only a screwdriver in about a minute. Putting it back on takes a little longer, but isn't too bad (we'll see how bad it is in the snow, hehehe). Both skirts together weigh less than 1.5kg.

[Piwoslaw]

As I mentioned earlier, I installed LED DRL's. They use 5.5W each and they save about 200W compared to using headlights (2x55W), position lights (4x5W) and cockpit lights (8x5W-20W). The DRL's are slightly crooked. This is because they are pushed from behind by a plastic wall which isolates the radiator from the rest of the engine bay. I'll cut a bit out next time I'm in there.



I also removed the roof rails. Unfortunately, a lot of cars today have roof rails standard, not optional, so there are no covers ready for the holes in the roof. I carved covers out of coroplast and screwed them in with shorter screws. Replacing the covers back with the rails takes less than 5 minutes (this was one of the WAC - Wife Approval Conditions).





(Those covers look better in the pictures than in real life, eh ) Hopefully the lack of rails on the roof will improve airflow down the Kammback. Each rail weighs about 1.5kg. That's not much, but since it's coming off the roof it will slightly lower the center of gravity.

I've been driving for 2 weeks without the grill block and the coolant temp is just under 80*C. The fan doesn't turn on when the A/C is on. Temperature was around 90*C with the full block, and just over 80*C with the intercooler unblocked. With A/C, the fan would kick in to keep the temp around 80*C. Since the upcoming trip will be at full load, in the mountains and in hot weather, I've decided to keep the grill unblocked. After we return I'll start working on the dual-openable version.

[Piwoslaw]

Here's a picture of the Kammback from the inside of the car:



I hoped that I could make both skirts on Saturday, then I could go testing at 4am on Sunday, but the job actually spilled over Sunday and I finally finished on Monday. Hopefully next weekend will be nice and get some testing before our trip.

I've already had a drive with the Kammy on Friday and I could notice the difference in two ways. First, when I would need to decelerate I would put it into neutral only to notice that I was decelerating at a slower pace, so I'd have to use the brakes. Second, I'm so used to P&G that I more or less know when to put it back into gear and accelerate again. With the Kammback, when P&G-ing between 50kph and 70 kph I would get into gear when I though I was down to 50kph, only to find that I was still at above 55kph! Today I will do 50-60km with the wheel skirts so the glide will be even longer

PS. I already have 1200km since fill-up and another 100-200km in the tank. And this was done without any mods Maybe a 1600km tank is within reach? What about 2000km?

BTW Am I the only person who sees a similarity in shape between a Kammback:



and an old-fashioned nun's cornet?