now I need to re enforce the pieces I have made so far so I'm going to apply additional layers of fiberglass to the back side. I just cut out little chunks of cloth and overlap them to build up some strength. I could cut out exact shapes but its much easier to just use a bunch of chunks I've added some more layers along the bottom and along the sides and a big strip along the top and I cut up the angle piece I had made to frame along the bottom of the license plate
Now I just need to make a couple of flat pieces to go along the sides of the license plate and fill in those 2 holes. Then I can do some final shaping and start with the bondo.
this is pretty damn cool. are you gonna swap some untinted taillamps to compliment the redness of the new item?
Geeze you allways want me to go the hard route don't you ! I was thinking some night shades sprayed on the new lens would be alot easier than removing taillights and sealing in new ones. I got the 2 side pieces attached and now I'm putting in a couple strips that I can bolt the license plate to. I overlapped the side pieces so that I can glue them from both sides making a much stronger joint. I used some plasticine to make some molds around the nuts I need to attach and now its pretty much complete, I'll strengthen and thicken a few areas and then bondo time I managed to keep the original 5th gen license plate lighting, just have to solder the 4th gen conector onto it and now the nuts are pretty solidly mounted
You would be amazed at how strong those nuts are. When I was filling in around the nuts I got 1 drop of resin that went over the top of the nut and down into the thread so I removed the bolt so it wouldn't get stuck and when it dried I was going to use a tap to clean out the thread but when it was dry I was to lazy to search for my set of taps & dies so I decided I would just use a wrench and force the bolt on. I was actually amazed that the nut held up to the amount of force I was able to use so trust me those nut are on there real good that was the bottom right nut in this picture If you want to prevent the problem of getting resin in the threads a good trick is to take a wax candle and fill the treaded hole with wax. Once the resin is hard you can use a heat gun to melt the wax out. Once again I'm to lazy to bother......
It seems I have underestimated the power of fiberglass lol. Amazing stuff. Looking forward to final product of this!
I got tired of never having any space on my workbench so I did a little clean up I have a stand for my bench grinder but it got stolen by my drill press so I had the grinder mounted on my workbench so I'm going to make a little shelf for it instead. A piece of 2x10 amd some 3/4 plywood and some 1/4 plywood to tie it all together and give it some strength and I added another shelf on the bottom. I can allways use more shelves...... so now I have some work space found my backup camera and used a piece of masking tape to measure it's circumfrance and make a bracket out of aluminum for it so that should work well enough I'll probably have to do a bit more tweeking wth some needle nose pliers to get the holder shaped/angled just right I cut a couple strips of cardboard so I could leave a bit of space on each side of the red lens and then wraped that in wax paper so bondo wouldn't stick to it and now with the first coat of bondo
Well summer didn't last to long so it's a bit cold for bondo and fiberglass but I have been making some slow progress. I have re made the camera holder out of fiberglass So while I'm waiting for some nicer weather I'm going to make better use of my non existant back seats. Theirs never more than 2 people in my Celica's so I'm going to make some additional storage space. I'll start with the shelf at window level although I think its a bit high I need to start somewhere I decided to lower the shelf 5" and have now split it into 2 halfs. In addition to being a shelf it will also be the top cover for a set of 15" subs I have. I will be adding a 7" x 18" x 24" box to the bottom of each side of the shelf with the 15" speaker pointed down. The drivers side speaker will be designed to be permanently mounted but the passenger side speaker will be designed so it can be removed and flipped over and placed on top of the drivers side speaker so I can remove the passenger side seat and still be able to fit 10' - 12' long cargo inside and once the speakers are installed I'll still have about 7" of space remaining
Got more E-Bay goodies, their supposed to be golf ball markers but I'm going to use them in my center caps I'm going to make a hole in the center of the cap so the markers can sit flush 1 down.......... I'm useing GTS center caps with All Trac rims, their are slight differences so in order to get them to sit flush with the rims I have to shave off a bit on the bottom of each center cap I'm useing GTS center caps because they say Toyota on them and I have lots of them, All Trac center caps say Celica on them I just used a drill with a sanding disc clamped in a vise to remove the bottoms of the center cap I placed a piece of fiberglass inside each cap to glue the markers to I filled in the letters, sanded and now their ready for some paint Now I'm looking for a little cannon to use as a hood ornament :hehe
Your centre caps are a really nice touch, you need external speakers in the visor to blast out the tunes! The shelf is a great idea, i've wanted to do this but too many passengers. The sub holds things in place now i guess.
Maybe a couple tweeters to get the high end out there a little better, other than that I think you can hear the tunes pretty well allready from a fair distance I've got a few ideas for subtle touches that will tie the overall Dirty Deeds / AC DC theme together A flame thrower would be nice, may encourage those slow cars in front of me to get the F*** out of the way No comment
I'm finally getting around to finishing my wheels by getting some paint on the part I didn't polish. I just used a paintbrush freehand so the edges were a bit rough (red arrow) so I used a piece of cloth wrapped around my finger and dipped it in varsol and then rubbed along the edge of each opening after the paint had dried a bit but not totally so i could disolve the paint I didn't want and get a smoother edge, it pretty much looked like crap before with just the paintbrush but after a bit of work the edges are looking pretty good. For the outside edge of each spoke (black arrow) I will mask each one to get a nice straight line when I put on a second coat Still wet but I did use a gloss paint same as the hub caps
Well I don't think you can go wrong with black, the only question is gloss, semi gloss or flat. The first coat on my second rim I'm going to do semi gloss then I'll compare the 2 rims and decide what the second coat should be
First rim after its dry with 1 coat of gloss paint with natural light and center cap, aluminum part still needs to be polished but I need to finish painting first thats what it looks like after wet sand with 1000 grit