:hehe that cat, I recognise those paws as well, IIRC I asked at the time if the puss was for sale as a playmate for mine :hehe, apparantly it belonged to the neighbour. I'm interested in your econometer, I would actually prefer an econoguage instead of a tacho.
Girlfriend's parents' cat actually, same property, different house :hehe I've actually toyed with the idea of putting the screen in the tach hole, it fits pretty much perfectly. The econometer has a tach on it anyway so no loss I guess. I like having the nice needle tell me how power I'm pushing so I'll probably mount mine next to the dash on the window side. EDIT: I made a thread with some pics of the econometer for all interested: http://www.st162.net/forum/showthread.php?4566-Aaron-s-Custom-ST16x-Econometer&p=57606#post57606 On topic, I've been thinking of making myself a custom front spoiler too. Glad someone has done it before so I can have a basic idea of what's involved and build off of it. Nice job so far, the wood shaper is something I wouldn't have thought of doing myself. Aaron.
Lol, slowly. Every time I look at it I find another bit that needs sanding and filling( who'd have thought, it's only been on the car for 26 years). I decided I'd take a mould of where it's at at the moment, make a copy from that, and then keep working on the copy( I'm afraid I'll break the original and then the whole thing will be down the drain). SO, I've got to paint it first, then polish and wax it before I can take a mould. I meant to get into it on the weekend, but spent both days building a fence instead. Life, as they say,keeps getting in the way...
Tell me about man lol. Some of my friends have gotten a car and put some mods in it, sell it. Then get another car with a turbo did some work on it and sell it again. While me, in the same amount of time, have only tinted my windows and coated my wheels black in the span of 3 years. Where's the fun in that? Lol. But I keep thinking to myself that "Slowly and surely finishes" kinda like the Tortoise and the Hare story. I think I'll much happier when I take things slower at times and think about what I need to do. But life sure does get in the way lol. Keep on it man. I have a mold of my front splitter out of wood. It's just waiting for me in the garage until I buy some fiberglass and make the final product. And before I do that, I have to worry about adding some more oil because it keeps leaking, and getting my radiator fans working, and my transmission problem. Are you planning on covering the whole underside of the front like this?
I started making one years ago and never got to finish it The problem is making brackets to fit the chassis Mine was intended to stick out of the bumper so it acted as a splitter, bumper brace and engine shield. It's fairly easy to do and I've even seen guys using marine ply
I used marine ply but it starts to kinda deform the wood when wet. So I took mine off. The majority of the brackets can be fitted to where the radiator is I think it was. I wasn't done here with the brackets but you guys get the point.
i'll be building a diffuser and lower gaurds this summer. going to be using jabroc skid plate material. not the cheapest stuff, but it takes one hell of a hit to damage and is waterproof. it states you need metal cutting tools to work with it. it's a wood laminate.
whenever i have made em in the past, we use Alumilight I think thats how you spell it. Basically a honey comb material of aluminum. Super strong, super light. again not cheap...
Mine is Aluminium composite material (ACM), it's 5mm thick, light and goes a lot further back with a gap below the steering rack to let air out. The problem I have is the splitter is too thin and if I was to hit somebody it could cut their legs off? All splitters get damaged eventually, the secret with using wood is to varnish it properly and it won't de-laminate as quick
Those are one of the reasons why I don't want to go too thin haha because I was looking at some metal at a department store. Good idea and cheap but dangeroussss
Bet you lot thought I had forgotten about/given up on this huh? lol... no, the spoiler has sat forlornly on the table out back while I've been trying to fit fixing the other car's leaky transmission, fixing the many and varied problems with the house as well as keeping up with family and friends around my never-know-when-your-roster-will-change style of shift work. However, with the missus visiting a friend in Melbourne this weekend, three days off work and no other commitments I finally got a chance to get back to this thing. SO, a wash and a quick sand to get rid of the three months worth of dirt and crap that had accumulated on it, a few coats of paint, another sand, and now I'm onto polishing. It needs at least 10 coats of wax applied at least an hour apart to ensure that it doesn't stick in the mold when I lay the fibreglass over it. I'm currently six coats in. I'm not entirely happy with the finish, it still has a few lumps and bumps I want to get rid of but I figured if I kept fiddling with it, given that it's 27 years old and held together basically with spit string and sticky tape, it's gunna fall apart on me soon, so Im going to make a mold of where it is now, pop out a copy that I'll make real nice and thick, then I can get the finish to where I want and then make a mould of THAT so I can pop out the final product. Much more work than I had anticipated! (sounding familiar? lol...). It looks basically the same as last time, but FWIW (and because we're all picture whores); Here it is after three coats of paint (Mazda "Impulse Blue", in case anyone is wondering): ..and with six coats of wax applied. You can see a few bumps and dips in the finish, I want the final product to be baby's-butt smoooth but I'll work on that when I make the next plug: I should get to applying the gel-coat and 'glass later today, stay tuned...
Gel coat on. I brushed it, came out a bit messy, will have to look into buying the proper spray gun for this stuff. Not a problem for now.
sigh and fml.... here's a tip kids - don't try and finish things at 8:00 on Sunday night. I got about half way through laying the first sheet of 'glass down when I realised I wasn't going to have enough resin to finish the job. As there is nowhere on the planet to obtain fibreglassing supplies at this time of day, I had to pull it up which of course ruined the gelcoat and thus the entire weekends work. sigh and fml...
Good to know I'm not the only one that tries to finish things late in the afternoon and run out of supplies! :biggrin