Freestyle Grp and Wheels

November 10th 2013

 GRP Moulding By Eye
 Having tried the Weber carb on the car, and stupidly cutting a hole in the bonnet for it instead of trying it without a bonnet at all, I now have a hole to fill.

Going back to the SU-style carb left a Weber-shaped hole in the bonnet. For the trial at Firbank I taped over it with red gaffer tape (which was a really good match).

In fact in Glen's pics you can hardly tell.

But that won't do for me so, I decided to make a proper patch, in-situ, by laying some grp mat over some bubblewrap under the hole in the bonnet.
I put the bubblewrap on the engine with some soft cardboard on top, covered in parcel tape to prevent the resin sticking. Then I wet-out the GSM matting with resin and stuck it to the inside of the bonnet, which I then put in place, so the cardboard pushed the GSM up to the required position.
Easy to say, bit more tricky to do.
This is the grp matting cut to hole-size and laid on the packing on the engine. It's just see that the concept will work.

This is the mat, resin-bonded into place. The shaping is provided by the bubblewrap pushing it up from below. It is bonded to the inside of the bonnet about
an inch inwards from the edge of the hole.

Next I put some filler over the grp mat. It was a bit lumpy to be honest, but as it needed rubbing down to get the right profile that wasn't a problem.

Once I managed to get the right shape some primer made it look better. I added a slight bulge on the left of the hole to clear the new progressive throttle mechanism.

Then a bit or top coat and it looks sort of OK. I used what the yanks love to call "rattle-cans". Aerosols, if you are not a red-neck.

I find them a bit crap really. You have little control over the viscosity of the paint, and in addition humidity and temperature have an enormous effect on the finish. Arcylic paint virtually never gives a finish from the can, so you have to flat it and compound it. As the rattle-cans lay the paint a bit thinly you can easily cut-back through the top coat to the primer.

I think for the next year summer break I may buy some cellulose and spray the whole car properly. I have a compressor and spray gun and can get a decent finish with that.

Which I did on a previous project.

Wheels

I had decided the gold wheels were no longer suitable as the only thing they keyed into was the gold stripe on the bonnet, which I no longer have.

I thought of all sorts of options. Red and silver, black and gold, black and silver.

I tried them out on a photo in Photoshop but still wasn't sure. I know I hadn't liked them when they were all silver, which is how they were when I bought the car.

So I stripped them and painted them in primer. Then I put a coat of silver on before trying different coloured centres. However, I quite liked the silver this time. So that's how they ended up.

I have just ordered some bead sealer. These older tyres go down slowly. A  test shows slight leaking all around the rim. It doesn't really matter on an event as we reduce the pressure anyway and the wheelspinning brings the pressure back up a bit. But in the garage over a few days they go down and need pumping up. So some bead sealer should solve that.

The next event is next weekend.