2X!!! Heck yeah thanks great idea.

INGENIOUS!
thanks for sharing that, as well as all the cool stuff on your site! (just about to use your roller perch kits)

Last edited by R5CYA (6/03/2014 10:49 AM)

Do you follow up with a few layers of fiberglass cloth for strength?  Seems like that would be a requirement for it to have any strength at all.

Good thinking on the wire ring.  That will work great. 

As far as strength, I think you might compare it to a window pane.  While it appears very strong and hard and solid, it has no strength if twisted or it gets hit with a impact load.  I am no fiberglass expert by any means, but if you sandwiched one layer of glass cloth on the inside and one on the outside, you would have a very strong shroud.  The tensile strength of the fiberglass cloth makes for alot of strength, where just a plain old cloth blanket would not be as strong.  This would also afford you a little working thickness to use while sanding and smoothing the fiberglass.

Great idea you have, and I am just adding my two cents to try and help avoid a crack down the road.

Afterthought... They make carbon fiber cloth that would look TOTALLY COOL if you put a layer on the exposed side.  It is not real expensive at AIRCRAFT SPRUCE.

boomyal wrote:

Daze, why the slanting fan opening versus the base plane?

because thats how the fan relates to the radiator.  Its not a huge slant but enough that I had to slant the opening so that it surrounds the middle of the fan blades, at the top and the bottom.
 

MustangSteve wrote:

Good thinking on the wire ring. 
Great idea you have, and I am just adding my two cents to try and help avoid a crack down the road.

Isn't that why we have the forum   one creative mind and his or her experiences are good and he or she can get a lot done.  A whole forum full ideas and experience and we can not only accomplish anything, but the end result will be 10X better.

I decided to add some glass to this. (after reading the coments on this forum and realy thinking through it).  I got some glass cloth.  It is not as forming as the mat but is significantly stronger.  (if you look online the prevailing opinion is the mat is stronger and people who believe that think so (and there is some logic to it) because  the fibers go in all different directions but after looking at some manufactures web sites the reality is the cloth is much much stronger.  Besides what the manufacturers say if the mat was stronger carbon fiber would be mat instead of woven cloth. The "which is stronger" debate is kind of like some of the debates we get on here like the function of a thermostat )

Anyway the cloth had enough give to it that I was able to shape it over the resined fleece.  The rough texture of the fleece actually helped grab the glass cloth and hold it in place.


After I got the cloth roughly shaped I pealed the cloth back, applied resin to the shroud, then reapplied the cloth.  the hardest part was working the bubbles out.  The same rough texture that helped hold the cloth in place also created pockets.  I was able to get about 90% of the bubbles out and the end result should be a good one.

MustangSteve wrote:

Afterthought... They make carbon fiber cloth that would look TOTALLY COOL if you put a layer on the exposed side.  It is not real expensive at AIRCRAFT SPRUCE.

I ended up with that look by accident.  the cloth is woven just like carbon fiber and it turned black when I resined it due to the black fleece I used.
 

How will you mount the shroud to the core support. Perhaps some small 90 degree brackets. I think they will need some reinforcements of some kind because you will be putting a hole in the smallest part of the shroud though.

My friend Mark made a hard top for his Factory 5 Cobra using the same method.

Made some more progress on my shroud.  Discovered a couple of things I did really well and a couple of things that I should have done differently.

First thing I did was remove all the staples from the back side of the shroud so that I could trim off the excess material.  I have an aggressive kitchen knife that I keep in my shop for cutting rubber and other things where normal cutting tools don't work as well and it was the perfect tool to trim the excess.  I was able to use a sawing motion with the blade flat against the back of the plug to cut off the excess fairly close to where I wanted it cut.

With most of the excess off I still had a rough edge that needed to be cleaned up, so I put on my respirator, fired up my orbital sander and sanded the edges flush with the plug again using the back of the plug as a guide.  

Using the plug as a guide gave me a really nice straight edge.

from there I flipped the shroud over and cut away the excess material from the round opening and also  removed the staples from that side.

I was now ready to begin releasing the shroud from the plug. I started by gently working an extremely thin putty knife between the shroud sides and the sides of the plug.

After going all the way around I still could not get the plug to budge from the shroud.  Fortunately for me,  I had had the foresight to build the plug with screws and in such a way that all the screws were accessible (with the exception of one piece) so that I could take the plug apart and remove it one piece at a time.  The first screws that had to come out were the ones that held the half round  top piece to the top of the plug and then the 5 screws that held the main round piece of plywood to the main body of the plug.

I then flipped the unit over, unscrewed the bottom piece of plywood and began working it loose.  this is where I discovered one of my mistakes.  when I taped the edges to avoid sticking I did not think to use multiple piece of tape and maintain the seams between the pieces of wood that made up the plug.  In other words I had taped over the seams and in essence taped the wood together.  It was only masking tape and I was able to tare it as I removed the plug pieces but it would have been easier had the pieces not stuck together.  If I was doing it again I would have either built the plug, labeled all the parts, disassembled it, taped the individual edges and then put it all back together OR taped it up the same way I did the first time and simply split the seams with a razor blade.


The next image shows why the masking tape was so important.  You can clearly see where the resin soaked through the fleece in the places where it had been pulled tight over the plug and was coming in contact with the plug.  Had I not used the tape the wood would have been in essence glued to the shroud in those locations.  In retrospect the masking tape worked well but I think clear packing tape would have worked better.

With the shroud out I was able to turn my attention to the wire ring I put in the fan blade opening.  I started by stretching and working the fleece around the wire.



I then applied a liberal amount of resin to the wire, folded the fleece over and used clothespins to hold it in place.  

The clothespins worked well and clamped the fleece down beautifully however they almost ruined my shroud.  I didn't think to put any tape or other non stick material on the close pins and the pressure they provided caused the resin to soak through the fleece and into some of the pins.  About half of the nearly 100 pins came off with out issue BUT the other half were a nightmare to get loose.  They were basically glued in place, most of them broke as I tried to remove them and the wood left behind had to be chiseled out with a pick.  This took a long time as I was walking that fine line between applying enough pressure to get the wood out but not so much pressure as to damage the shroud.

That is really creative.  How much room is between the fan blades and the shroud?

OK, I get it now...  Cast about 4 of those clothespins into the schroud and use them to clamp top and bottom flange of the radiator!!!  EZ on, EZ off !

Are you going to sand it smooth or some other thing or just leave it?  Some wrinkle paint would make it look uniform.