Bought the Civic Hatch lease out, so rebooting the install thread

[dumdum]

You have taken this hobby to the next level. Who's having more fun than geolemon? The answer is nobody or maybe dumdum. Kudos and keep going.

Haha, ya gotta love playing, building and experimenting

[geolemon]

Haha, ya gotta love playing, building and experimenting

Amen!!

It's funny, back a couple years (or decades ) I wanted my installs to blow people away - though I only dabbled a little in competition, and with shop rides, not mine...

...fast forward through a bunch of totally experimental, cheap, stuff-lying-around, why-not winter beaters (can't drive the nice car all winter!) and too many forums, too many CES visits... maybe a little Pinterest in the past few...

Now it's just more fun for me to set a goal (or three), do my install - get stoked that I met my goals... and even if not that's an excuse to change things up.

DumDum is my idea of a competitor. Call me crazy but I NEVER loved the idea of competitors writing checks then competing as if that's THEIR accomplishment... it's the installer's achievement.
He's putting in the work, making the improvements, pursuing his goals AND the rulebook AND anticipating judges critiques AND experimenting - I love following his thread.

It's a car that would be on my short list (maybe just after anything 'Buwalda' and a few historical cars like either Richard Clark or Harry Kimura's HCLD cars) of "I wish I could hear that!"

[geolemon]

Working around the freezing temps sucks - I'm hoping my texture spray ultimately is OK or I'm going to have to find a spray booth.

For now, I'm working on the parts indoors (basement shop) so they are warm, keeping the paint indoors so it is warm, putting it on a piece of scrap ply that's kept warm indoors...
Running them outside to spray...
Pulling them in the garage to fume off for about 15 minutes...
Then bringing them into my basement shop, opening both tiny basement windows in there for ventilation to let them cure a few hours at room temperature.
What a pain.

I'm getting closer on the bodywork - sprayed this filler primer a little too thick (find the run! ) but one more sand might do it.

[geolemon]

...and on the other hand, These sail panels - I haven't even started the body work.

There were a couple difficulties I've caused myself - I hoped not to have to touch the flanges that are where the doors closed, but I accidentally hit them with the hot plastic welder in a few places, so now I need to fix those spots. Ugh.

Other than that - these won't be as curved or flowy as the A-pillars. These just hold the other Bohlender Graebner Neo3s at the angle needed to align with the ones in the A-pillars. Hoping to basically just smooth them off, other than that - as-is.


EDIT:
I think this is all the more shape I want to give them. Even after I sanded the hell out of it with 60 grit, I drilled a couple 1/4" holes and pushed it through for reinforcement, since adhesion to this kind of plastic is always sketchy.

I may buy a specialty plastic filler or use my plastic epoxy rather than body filler for that same reason, to smooth this out.

[geolemon]

Getting closer.
Still a couple curves that aren't quite right - you can see from this angle.
And a couple pinhole air bubbles you probably can't see.

But - getting close to where I can get the texture on.

Bodywork always feels like an endless cycle of sanding, thinking it's good - then more sanding.


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[Glenn]

Getting closer.
Still a couple curves that aren't quite right - you can see from this angle.
And a couple pinhole air bubbles you probably can't see.

But - getting close to where I can get the texture on.

Bodywork always feels like an endless cycle of sanding, thinking it's good - then more sanding.


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Looking good! Bodywork sucks....all....the.....time LOL. Maybe I'll get to hear your creation one day!

[dumdum]

Amen!!

It's funny, back a couple years (or decades ) I wanted my installs to blow people away - though I only dabbled a little in competition, and with shop rides, not mine...

...fast forward through a bunch of totally experimental, cheap, stuff-lying-around, why-not winter beaters (can't drive the nice car all winter!) and too many forums, too many CES visits... maybe a little Pinterest in the past few...

Now it's just more fun for me to set a goal (or three), do my install - get stoked that I met my goals... and even if not that's an excuse to change things up.

DumDum is my idea of a competitor. Call me crazy but I NEVER loved the idea of competitors writing checks then competing as if that's THEIR accomplishment... it's the installer's achievement.
He's putting in the work, making the improvements, pursuing his goals AND the rulebook AND anticipating judges critiques AND experimenting - I love following his thread.

It's a car that would be on my short list (maybe just after anything 'Buwalda' and a few historical cars like either Richard Clark or Harry Kimura's HCLD cars) of "I wish I could hear that!"

why thankyou, it genuinely keeps getting better… and it’s just about to get even better after something I tried the other day with virtual channels to get left and right far more point source

demos when someone (who won an Emma championship in the U.K., granted I tuned it a little and built it’s boot for the I’ll fated Emma 2019 euros, pics early in my build thread from memory I think…) sits there and says “it sounded awesome before… but it’s even better now…” and “is there anything it doesn’t play very well?” Kinda make it worth it

[geolemon]

Oh crap.

So - besides the endless "sanding" loop to perfect the shape - I decided to reference the OEM A-pillars and had an "oh crap" epiphany.

The A-pillars actually drop down about 1cm into the dash. You can see it molded into the original panel...
...and completely forgotten about by me when I stretched my cloth - which you can see from prior pics went ALL the way to the bottom.

So now, I have to cut and patch - a bit of a pain to determine my cut line by looking straight on at the right angle:

Then you can see from the below angle what kind of hole I'm going to have to patch up - ugh:


From the test fitting, I'm also finding two more areas I'll need to spend time on - both apparent in this photo:

1) Even the small amount of material I added at the tips is too much to squash into the dash/windshield gap - and there's a bit of flex necessary to pop them in, so I'm going to try to reshape the glass so the tips are purely OEM material.

However, that plan exacerbates this:
2) Even the epoxy resin I used doesn't bond that well to this kind of plastic, as you can see.
That wasn't a concern if it fully wraps around like I had it, but now I'll likely need to drill through the plastic to make some anchors. When I fix that gap, I'll push the tiger hair through the holes to secure it. That way, when the tip flexes at install time, the fiberglass won't separate.


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[Boosted54]

When attaching fabric to plastics I always use one of the many SEM 2 part plastic adhesives then apply resin. This stuff can be used as a filler as well and actually sand decent. It’s not to late to cut back some of your filler & apply a 2 part epoxy. Also the original plastic prep. Clean plastic, scuff plastic clean again, then apply adhesive.
I didn’t read through he entire thread so I may have missed that you did this.

[geolemon]

No - I hadn't because I was completely not thinking of this area that recessed into the dash. That was even a thought behind the wrap - it'll wrap so I won't really have to worry about adhesion, the wrap and rigidity will re-enforce the bond inherently.

Now that I have this issue, I'm using an off-the-shelf product that I've had good luck with so far - though I only found it this year:

That said -
When I do add the tiger hair to fill that gap (thankfully are least i won't have to worry about cosmetics, other than getting that cutoff line looking good relative to the dash), I'm still going to drill holes through the plastic and push the material through it - that will just lock it in a similar way to a wrap - anchor points that will ensure it won't come loose.

I want that confidence since I shot myself in the foot - I want all the originally intended integrity, as tempting as it might be to just rush the patch job to prevent even more timeline slippage.

Fortunately - this is an install for me.

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