Mr. G. Brettin's Slow Motion Leg Hump

Rusty

Cromoly is your best bet is making a new sub frame. Ti would be $$$$$ just in materials.

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"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
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gbrettin

Oh, for sure. Ti would be done WAY down the road... if at all. I was thinking out loud how to get weight down and keep it strong. It's crazy expensive:

Just for grins:
https://store.tmstitanium.com/produc...er-95.800-long

Rusty

Ti wouldn't be the best material for that application anyway. If you never welded TI. Stay away from it.

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浪人 - 殺し屋
"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
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gbrettin

Come on man, you've seen my welds. That would 100% be done by a pro.

I have a hookup on chromoly and can get it cheap. Like I said, one sh1t show at a time. My car needs to roll under its own power before that happens. My buddy Dave wants to put a cage in my car. We both have serious safety concerns at high power levels. Next winter all that can happen. I also am going to pursue a rear cantilever suspension.

All these great / terrible ideas . That's what you get when you mix crazy with a sprinkle ADD I guess.

gbrettin

Hey ya'll... I'm back. Passed my certification test and now can go full retard on my build again. I'm a proud member of the GCFA club.

IG @gbrettin (again, because I'm too lazy to type.)

Fuel rail bracket mounts need to be changed due to injectors being smaller.

(day pass)
Bent some custom mounts, they work pretty good. Lots of pulling on and off of the fuel rail. Lost a bolt in the crevice of the head. Looks like I'm pulling the intake. What ever. I needed to put thread seal on the steam vent anyway. ����

(day pass.. or so)
Retrieved lost but and lock washer. Wrapped up custom fuel rail brace, perfect. Put the intake on and found that I didn't tighten the rail bolts to the intake. Attempted to take off the intake again and broke bolts off in the head. FACKKKKKKKKK. My buddy was kind enough to let me know 89 inch pounds is what it called for. Clearly I did more. ������

(Day passed with irritation)
<no IG text>
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I shifted gears to work on a carbon fiber hood and carbon fiber cowl. I was going to take a different route for my hood but apparently there is some synergy between my needs and people that have Whipple chargers. I made no promises to Mike but I'm not one to shy away from a challenge. Worst case scenario is that I don't make anything. Best case scenario is I make a limited run. We'll see.

What I can say about mold making process is that it's very time intensive. Good thing I'm on that Covid-19 extra time.

gbrettin

Waxed and buffed the hood one more time. Laid down two coats of PVA (liquid plastic). Put down a TON of gel coat. Started to lay in fiberglass but I ran out of MKEP. I'll need to buy more fiberglass and MKEP (hardner) so that the gel coat can completely cure. The gel coat will never fully harden with out a top coat of epoxy. Honestly, I might be a good thing I ran out of MKEP, because I think the gel coat was a bit thick. It will have time to dry off a bit. This mold will probably not be dry for a 1 week minimum. I suspect it will be closer to two weeks because it's still cold in MI and the shop doesn't get that warm. I'll bring a torpedo heater in later to ensure some heat makes it into the mold.

New supplies are on their way to make a plug for the cowl. That's gonna take me a lot of time to make so the timing works out.

Rusty

Be nice to have a chopper gun. You could build up the mold real quick that way.

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浪人 - 殺し屋
"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
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JARblue

Those things are fun. And a mess! Never used one for it's proper application, but I've shot a few of them over the years

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Rusty

When I worked for Champion Chassis. First floor, we built racing chassis's. 2nd floor, they made fiber glass body parts. They had a couple of different types of chopper guns. Made quick work of doing fiber glass.

__________________

浪人 - 殺し屋
"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
http://www.the370z.com/members-370z-...o-journal.html

gbrettin

Finished the first layer of fiberglass. It's not bad, not great. I have a few ideas I'll do different the next go around. I put in a large order to get additional supplies. I spoke with Elmo (group member name not sure if he wants me to use real name) and he said he would like a dual cooling plate that he can use on the track. I'm going to attempt to make a twin 2" cooling plate. I have an idea on how that will work so you will see some stuff come up in the future for that.

Coming up in the next few days, I should be able to get started in on making the cowl plug for the hood. The plug should be pretty fun to make. Hmmmm, I should probably make a couple plug designs... ya know... just incase one goes to sh1t.

As for the fiberglass below... I'm gonna cut out some of the air pockets and put in a TON of fiberglass this next go (hence my large order).

I feel like a lunatic doing this stuff, but I figure if I don't give it a try I will regret not doing it. Plus it's pretty fun, minus the crazy chemical stench all this puts off. My buddy wasn't too crazy about the chemical smell in the shop the next day.

Rusty

Surprised that you can still type after inhaling the fiberglass flumes. By rights. You should be in a corner somewhere sucking your thumb, playing with your toes

__________________

浪人 - 殺し屋
"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
http://www.the370z.com/members-370z-...o-journal.html

gbrettin

From IG @gbrettin:
Ground out air pockets, quite bad in a lot of areas. Lots of lessons were learned and not a waste of time. Probably would start over if more materials were here. When I pop the mold I'm certain there will be additional issues. Based off that I will make the decision for a go/no go.

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I have more supplies to build up additional layers on the way. Also, I hit my hands a few times with the grinder... Didn't think anyone wanted to see bloody hands. lol

gbrettin

A couple days ago I mixed up some more tooling gel and filled in areas that were ground out. That completely hardened and I set in on getting some ideas for a cowl. Ideally I would do mock up on the hood when it's released from the mold; but hey, I've got a little time to kill right now.

After going through some of the required dimensions, all I can say is wow... the Whipple charger sticks out of the hood like a mountain. I guess anyone that decides to go with an LS swap and uses a high ram could use the cowl too.

JARblue

Is that why the thing is so red? I'm surprised you didn't clean up the blood


In for pics of the mangled extremities

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gbrettin

IG @gbrettin:
So close to being done. Need a bit more tooling resin for the fiberglass. Next time I'll add some reinforcement via the used fiberglass rolls.

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I got a boat load more supplies and what I thought was enough tooling epoxy resin (expensive and gets ultra-hard) for fiberglass. I used two gallons of resin on this last pass. I added three additional layers in the center section of the hood and two on the flange. The outer flange needs more but I think the center is pretty darn strong. I think total support is at 6 layers inner and 3 on outer (sides of hood not the front and back of flange).

For the hood and cowl, heavy duty carbon fiber and a lighter weave was received from Composite Envisions. I have carbon kevlar for an outer layer... but I really don't want black and yellow on my hood. I need to get a few yards of silver and carbon.

With the scraps from the hood and cowl, I plan on using that for a wet layup + vacuum for Elijah/Elmo’s twin brake cooler. That will keep things simple that way, as opposed to doing vacuum infusion. But why does he need a twin cooler you might ask? From conversations with him, he said that a single 2.5 cooler isn’t cutting it on the track. I was shocked to hear that… but I’ve never tracked my car. *shrug*

The G8, which has been the bunk mate of my Z, has just been wrapped up. The car put down CRAZY numbers on low boost, to the tune where we were all scratching our heads. The owners of AutoDynamix have a fire under their a$$ to make my car’s turbo plumbing. I’m not gonna stop that train. Sooooo now it looks like I will bounce between turbo plumbing and composite build. I’m ok with that. Composite mold making takes tons of time and then there is a ton of wait time. This should balance out nicely.

I was asked not to post final numbers for the G8 on low boost due to potential grudge races. High boost is going to be quite ridiculous.

Enjoy!