Romans 2005 Toyota Echo

[Roman]

I've had some stuff out of the engine bay because of waterpump situation. 

My radiator crossmember, when it's got the 3d printed bits on it... Bit heavy. Scales say nearly 3kg. 
Now considering that doing something stupidly major like losing the power steering or fitting mega light wheels can only make that much difference. 
Figure I should try do something a bit lighter.
The aluminium part isnt that heavy, but my plastic shrouds are a fair bit of the weight. (Thanks again @Stu ) 
So I thought maybe I should just redo the shroud parts in carbon. But then ahhh what the hell, try make the whole thing. 

So drew up an inverse model of the radiator panel, this was a mission because it hated nearly all of the geometry so needed to redraw. 
Then printed in halves as total length was about 850mm.
I've found that its a waste of effort trying to sand out layer lines, just build up with filler primer instead. 
Then sanding smoothing etc etc



Stick halves together



paint 



A few layers of release wax and then get some layers on. 
I used mostly one continous sheet on the front side, so should hopefully look okay once it's sanded etc. 
Then used up some scrappy bits on the back.



Then much to my surprise, many hours later it actually came back off the mould.



I still need to trim up the edges, then give it a sand etc, drill some holes etc etc.
But pretty happy with it, it's real strong.
I was originally thinking of painting it blue but it might actually be good enough to keep as carbon finish after some sanding and a clear coat.
See how it goes. 

[flyingbrick]

that looks so good dude.

[mjrstar]

Looks great, I have found that a satin clear coat on the carbon shows up less of the imperfections than a gloss for the DIY'er

[Roman]

Yeah with hindsight one of the mistakes that I made was using red paint on the mould (figured it would help show where it needs sanding etc) 
Now I've got tiny red bits stuck here and there ,and it sticks out heaps.
If it was black instead you wouldnt even see them.
Ahh well!
Know for next time haha. 

 

[tigerstyle]

Few anorak questions here, regular spray gloss spray paint for the mould? And what resin/Epoxy are you using for the carbon fibre?

Love the result too! Will look amazing when shined up a bit 

[Roman]

Just used some regular spray can paint that I had laying around. 
I dont think the paint or surface finish is so important though, so long as it's smooth.
 @flyingbrick was saying you can use polished up bog as a reliable surface.

Important part is the release wax, use a meguires release wax that you buff into it a few times over, stops a chemical bond of the epoxy to the mould. 
Then some people put the PVA release stuff on it too. 

But you can still mechanically lock your part in place if you havent allowed enough draft angle to let the part pop off. 

Using an Adhesive Technologies epoxy, as it's rated for high temp as I originally bought it to make an intake manifold that would bolt directly to the head.


 

[flyingbrick]

Yeah I don't think you are waxing quite enough, and pva is a huge safety net. It's biggest pro is that it dissolves in water so I'd your wax ain't good enough and your parts still stuck- you just soak the whole lot in water till it pops free.

 

[Hyperblade]

On 27/12/2022 at 00:16, Roman said:

Here's an interesting one 

So I happened to snap a lot of pictures of the intakes on the old touring cars at Scope Classic on the weekend.

If you like seeing endless dollars spent on fancy carbon you can view them here...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/vXC7axnsmoXEaNXw5

[xsspeed]

lush, did you snap pics of all the cars too? would be cool to associate engine bay to particular gen/class of touring car

[Roman]

Hey those photos are super cool, cheers! 

Interesting to see that sneaky low side injector position on the BMW motor - Firing the injectors straight down the guts of the runner definitely doesnt seem to be a necessity. 

I've been working on a few things slowly. 
I bought some extra capacitors for the waterpump and have remote mounted them using a DTmini connector so I can hot swap them. I'll switch to Dad's motor controller circuit at some point but this keeps me going in the meantime, and wont leave me stranded if one blows up. 

I put some satin clear on the crossmember after a bunch of sanding and came up alright. 




Then I've been looking at air filter situation again. 

I was thinking about running similar to OEM setup and have a big panel filter over top of the gearbox. 
So had a dig through my box of filters to find biggest one that would fit. 
The problem from here is that some portion of it needs to be hard mounted to the body, and some to the motor. So I figured the top part could all be mounted to body, something like this.



Then it would need to loop back underneath and feed throttles from the bottom, or something. 

However It all seemed a bit annoying and heaps of work. 
While mucking around with this I had another dig through box of filters, and put my trumpets on that had the base section for my big supersnoot intake thing that I didnt end up using. 

Weeelll shit. haha. This one almost fits in as it is.




It might end up being too close to the trumpet entry, and I'll maybe remake the base part so there's more exposed area around the trumpets. Especially on the bottom side where  space isnt so critical. 
But for starters I'll just print a little adapter to hold the filter on. Then see how it goes. If the motor runs real rich with it on, then there's issues.
I also need to remind myself that this motor only makes 150-160hp or whatever, it's not going to need an ultra super mega amount of filter area. 

In saying this I've also got the same height filter but that is closer to the full width of the crossmember gap. 
So might end up making it run that bigger size then make a carbon cover bit so its drawing air nicely from the front, and to stick to a theme. 
and it will look cool having an intake run the bigger width.

See how this goes first. Currently printing.

[GARDRB]

Have you got a side shot showing where the throttles sit in relation to the new rad support?

That mondeo setup looks like it might work, maybe with the filter tipped onto more of an angle than you have it now??

 

[Hyperblade]

18 hours ago, xsspeed said:

lush, did you snap pics of all the cars too? would be cool to associate engine bay to particular gen/class of touring car

Na was way to hot for my brain to think of smart things like that!

[xsspeed]

All good, keen to see in that engine bay of the CET p10 primera Steven Richards peddled, I see the P11 has a flipped head as per most of the later 90s touring cars

Sorry for touring car chat invading your thread romandayf

I did like the Volvo, I think it was, that was also using the same location either side of main intake to take ducts down, presumably to other oil/water coolers/brakes

Who was talking about low intakes? Speeno? All of these seem to sit high

[Snoozin]

18 hours ago, xsspeed said:

All good, keen to see in that engine bay of the CET p10 primera Steven Richards peddled, I see the P11 has a flipped head as per most of the later 90s touring cars

Sorry for touring car chat invading your thread romandayf

I did like the Volvo, I think it was, that was also using the same location either side of main intake to take ducts down, presumably to other oil/water coolers/brakes

Who was talking about low intakes? Speeno? All of these seem to sit high

Essentially, it's identical arrangement in that P10 vs the 98 P11.

[Spencer]

18 hours ago, xsspeed said:

Who was talking about low intakes? Speeno? All of these seem to sit high

The early cars hard normal heads and big duct work around the front to pickup behind the grill. Then the middle era cars had intakes at the front, usually a pickup behind the grill. Some of the last cars had the intake tied into the air feed from the bumper with full front end carbon ducting, just speculating that it is probably better airflow down that way or just packaging it all into the front aero who knows. Then kinda backhand suggesting that roman needs to move his engine back 30-40cm and flip the axles out the front so he can fit the outboard injection and the filter in nicely.

Renault and honda below.

 

[tortron]

 

 

[Roman]

I think its easier for those cars as the engines are solid mounted. It's having to account for engine moving, and the limited front space that makes life tricky. 

 

[flyingbrick]

The very obvious path forward is solid mounting of the engine. 

3d print some mount stuffers.

[flyingbrick]

I am curious (because i have limited materials knowledge) as to how they choose aramid fibre over carbon fibre when manufacturing this duct work. There has to be more to their thinking than simply wanting to add some color contrast to the otherwise black and blue engine bay.

[Snoozin]

Unsure about the properties of both materials, but is one of them more flexible than the other?

In that car (1997 Laguna, that's my shot), the radiators and ducting is mounted to a floating "subframe" arrangement hung off little dampers, it also retains the splitter and the undertray. Idea is you run super slammed and it just moves when you strike a ripple strip/curbing on track. Unsure if there is any strength or cost differential between them, but a quick Google suggests the aramid fibre is much less brittle than carbon so it could have a bearing on why those particular components are made out of the stuff?