New member - Excel SA

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Excel SA »

Dove head-first into making the center console out of fiberglass on the weekend. I had to cut out a few different panels to get around all the direction changes and corners - it was a messy job laying up all the layers - fiberglass doesn't like to change direction that much...Here's what it looked like after many hours of laying up and bagging:

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A few lessons learnt on vacuum bagging:
  • Don't start with something so complicated!
  • Do make the bag much bigger than the part and you think you need - I managed to pop the first one where it overstretched in an inside corner
  • No matter what you do, the bag will leak - a tank with vacuum would be a good addition to the setup
  • The vacuum from the intake of a compressor works - it pulled the bag tight!
Below is a pic of the part removed form the bag - the white stuff is an air-bleed material that allows the vacuum to be drawn from all over the part. There is a layer of peelply (mostly....) under that - where there was no peelply the air-bleed stuck to the fiberglass....sorry about the finger that got in the way and blurred the corner.

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The part with the peelply and air-bleed material removed. I have left the part in the mould still and will de-mould it this evening. It hasn't come out too badly - there are areas that aren't great, but this whole part will be covered with foam and leather, so nothing that can't be sanded out or added to. By making the pattern in 5 different pieces that I can take apart, I'm hoping there's not too much drama involved in separating it all - I did cover it in clear packing tape, and painted mould release over that.....

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Also made a cover for the console - this does have a bit of a curve to it. There is a layer of 3-ply plywood sandwiched by fiberglass - 1 layer underneath, 2 on top. I don't think I over-curved it enough as it has flattened out a bit more than I wanted - have also left it clamped up for longer to see if it will hold it's shape better, or version 2 will be made.

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Neil.

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Pete Boole »

Fantastic first effort for vacuum bagging! A really complicated piece as well. I love your idea of using the compressor for vacuum - inspired.

Pete

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by richardw »

Impressive work Neil!

Cheers, Richard
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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Marten »

Pete Boole wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 10:22
Fantastic first effort for vacuum bagging! A really complicated piece as well. I love your idea of using the compressor for vacuum - inspired.

Pete
A vacuum cleaner also works great to get the basic setup started, you then take over with the vacuum pump

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Pete Boole »

Marten wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 14:16
Pete Boole wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 10:22
Fantastic first effort for vacuum bagging! A really complicated piece as well. I love your idea of using the compressor for vacuum - inspired.

Pete
A vacuum cleaner also works great to get the basic setup started, you then take over with the vacuum pump
That sounds like a recipe for domestic bliss - not :lol:

Pete

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Marten »

Pete Boole wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 19:09
Marten wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 14:16
Pete Boole wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 10:22
Fantastic first effort for vacuum bagging! A really complicated piece as well. I love your idea of using the compressor for vacuum - inspired.

Pete
A vacuum cleaner also works great to get the basic setup started, you then take over with the vacuum pump
That sounds like a recipe for domestic bliss - not :lol:

Pete
Just get an industrial vacuum cleaner with switched powersockets for use with circular saws etc, and domestic bliss will go up a notch or two

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Re: New member - Excel SA

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The compressor pulled the air out pretty quickly - plenty fast enough for me, so I'll leave the vacuum cleaner in the house - safer all round :D It did take around 90 minutes I'd guess to get all the fiberglass laid - I was mixing smallish batches of resin - too much in a container and the exothermic reaction causes it to cure way too quickly.

It all released fairly easily from the pattern - once I had worked out that it couldn't come apart in the same order I put it together....There were no areas where it stuck to the mould at all.

Here's a pic of the back side of the part. I put some plasticine type filler in all the joints to round them out - need to clean that off those edge still and trim the fiberglass.

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And here's the pattern in all its pieces.

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And loosely fitted in the car.

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I'm not sure I want to do that again in a hurry....

Neil.

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Pete Boole »

By the time it's covered it will look like a factory part. In fact it will look better than the factory SA part (which I've never liked :roll:)! Multi-part patterns take ages - it's the same with patterns for castings - they take ages to get right so you know the finished item is going to release OK.

Pete

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by MetBlue »

Nice work Neil. It looks in keeping with the original trim.
Once covered, no one will know it didn't come out of the factory like that - which IMO is what this sort of thing is all about.
Tony
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Re: New member - Excel SA

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Thanks - hoping it does look mostly factory! There is very little tolerance with all the bits that need to fit together....

I trimmed up the fiberglass a bit, added in a few extra bits which I'd missed, and installed it over the gear lever base, then added the instrument binnacle.

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The binnacle only attaches to the fiberglass scuttle directly in one place, the other two points (circled in yellow) attach to the main fascia panel, so in the pic it's not really attached to much. The yellow arrow is where the binnacle attaches to the new part - the fiberglass is at an angle here, so I backfilled the space so the nut will sit flat - I didn't get the fancy pulsert with plastic tube :D

The board I made surrounding the gear lever does not curve enough, so will need to remake that part - it needs to curve to match the surface profile of the gear lever base. I'm still hoping to fit the clock where the white board is, but it will be tight....the clock is quite long and the angle of the face makes it interfere a bit.

Here's a page from the service notes on how it fits together.

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I did have an extra, very homemade looking plate, installed to clamp the binnacle to the the fiberglass - circled below. Will try to remember to keep an eye on that when reassembling one day....

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Whilst I had the fiberglassing materials out.....

The left hand side head light did not sit flush with the bodywork, it was about 5mm too low at the red arrow. I decided that the easiest fix was to cut the inner lip in the corner - yellow lines, then push that corner up 5mm's, fill the gap with epoxy filler and put a layer of fiberglass over it.

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After a bit of cleaning up, there is a much better fit to the headlight pod - I didn't have enough hands to hold the pod in place and take the pic...

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The Lexus engine doesn't have an oil cooler, so I am not using one (for now - it can be added later, connecting up to the remote oil filler lines if necessary). It does have a gearbox oil cooler though, so I am using the excel one. Below is what it al looked like when I got the car - the gearbox cooler is on the left. It is not the standard one for the car, and was lifted off the mounting rail with a fairly flimsy aluminium bracket, and then strapped to the bracket with a strap - the black/rusty bit you can see - which clamped it all together and blocked a good chunk of the cooler....

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I bent up some aluminum, drilled a few holes and got a set of these.

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And all mounted up - on the right hand side now where the Lexus gearbox oil cooler lines run. The engine ones run on the left, so that will all work out if required.

Image

And then I started working on the air intake/filter system....

Neil.

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Pete Boole »

More good work Neil - I like the solid-looking cooler mounts. Didn't you like the snazzy impossible-to-get-to Lotus dash fitting? :lol:

Pete

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Re: New member - Excel SA

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Thanks Pete, the new brackets are pretty sturdy - easy to make too!

Apparently all the dash fittings are impossible to get to - they all need repairs done, below is the mounting point for the binnacle - needs a bit more sanding then to be patched along with a few others. Seems it was easier to just rip things out.....

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Neil.

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Pete Boole »

If Lotus had used a few stainless fittings it would save a lot of grief! :roll:

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Re: New member - Excel SA

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The fittings weren't rusted, I just don't think they were found before the part was removed, so it was done forcefully :shock:

I have remade the gear level surround - this time with a bit more curve to match the contour of the gear lever housing - an easyish part to make.

In order to make things difficult for myself, I have set about designing and manufacturing an air intake system. There is very little room left in the engine bay, and the air in that area will be hot - not ideal, especially when we already lose about 15% of the usual oxygen in air at altitude here in Johannesburg. The space crying out to be used is the large, empty space in the front of the car between the upper radiator duct and the nose of the car....

So this is the plan:

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I have cut out a rectangular piece of the upper radiator duct, it will be removable and will "hinge" back into place with a flange around the edges to fix it in place in the upper duct, and force it to seal against the ducting that will go to the intake. The only way to reasonable get access to the filter will be through the bottom radiator duct, so I will probably split that into two pieces, leaving the rear section permanently in place where it fastens to the radiator and A/C condenser - or I will need to make an access panel in that duct as well.

The biggest panel filter I could find that would fit (and going this big was maybe a size too far, but it does fit, just) was from a 2006 to 2015 Audi Q7, VW Touareg etc. and is bigger than the original Lexus filter. The filter housing was built around this filter. Below is the MDF pattern - as there are a lot of right angles and parallel faces I made sure I could dismantle it so that I could remove it from the fiberglass once it had cured.

Pattern ready for fiberglass - it was covered in fiberglass cloth and vacuumed.

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This was the result - it still needs a bit of work - it's tricky to get all the layers of fiberglass on, with the epoxy, and around all the tight corners....the open slit on the right will feed into more ducting to the air intake.

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With the filter in place, I still need to make a flange to hold the filter down - have bought some 3mm core material to make that - more experimenting to come!

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And finally where it will end up in the bodywork - it fits, but only just, still needs some trimming and fine tuning:

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The plan is to feed air to the filter from the space where the over-riders were on the front bumper - my over-riders are in need of replacement anyway, and quite frankly they seem to be there more for show rather than anything else - I'm pretty sure they are not effective at cushioning anything...

Neil.

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Re: New member - Excel SA

Post by Hawaiis0 »

Excel SA wrote:
Wed Jun 22, 2022 10:44
......

... my over-riders are in need of replacement anyway, and quite frankly they seem to be there more for show rather than anything else - I'm pretty sure they are not effective at cushioning anything...

Neil.
I came off a slow roundabout at the bottom of a mile long steep incline just after a massive storm and into some washed out slurry. Traction was lost, drift initiated, autobox said thanks very much and spooled up. Got traction 90 degrees to the flow of traffic shot into the verge and stopped at the hedge miraculously with quite a thud!

Turns out the over riders are inline with the crash panels and together they stopped me ! Just lucky I hit the strong point.

I say keèp 'em :D :D
Nothing is fool proof. Fools are clever!

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