I have been very impressed with all of the builds going on lately so I decided to try and start a cool one as well. My last bike turned out well and has been ridden many miles but this one should turn a few more heads. After building my first bike I started throwing around the idea of making a bike with fully enclosed wheels so it would look more streamlined. The finalized drawing ended up like this.
Starting with this drawing, I scaled the wheel fairings to a 26" tire and figured out how big the mold was going to be to make them. I used three layers of 2" extruded polystyrene held together with glue and zip ties to form the basic shape.
I made a sanding block from a piece of 6" pvc pipe lined with 36 grit sandpaper and went to town sanding the outside contour.
This is what I ended up with after a few hours of sanding and a very sore shoulder.
A test to see how it might look on an actual bike.
After the mold shape was finalized it was time to wrap it in fiberglass and apply a surface coat to finish it. All the fiberglass parts that are made from this mold will be made on the outside.
All the rough spots were sanded out of the surface coat and it was waxed three times in preparation for the first parts being made off of it. Getting exciting now. I layed one layer of glass on the mold to get the general shape of all the other layers and then transferred it to cardboard for easy repeating.
After getting several blanks cut out it was time to mix up some resin and get started. It took 750 grams of resin and three layers of glass to get the thickness I wanted without being too heavy.
That was last night. This morning before going to work I went to the shop to see if the part would come of the mold. With a little prying with some plastic scrapers around the edges and a blast of air it popped right off! Phew.
Tomorrow I will lay up the other half, trim both halves to the same height, and then glue them together. Then I get to do it two more times after that. Yeah. I will probably start the frame early next week and hope to have everything mocked up by the next weekend. But we will see what happens. Stay tuned.
Starting with this drawing, I scaled the wheel fairings to a 26" tire and figured out how big the mold was going to be to make them. I used three layers of 2" extruded polystyrene held together with glue and zip ties to form the basic shape.
I made a sanding block from a piece of 6" pvc pipe lined with 36 grit sandpaper and went to town sanding the outside contour.
This is what I ended up with after a few hours of sanding and a very sore shoulder.
A test to see how it might look on an actual bike.
After the mold shape was finalized it was time to wrap it in fiberglass and apply a surface coat to finish it. All the fiberglass parts that are made from this mold will be made on the outside.
All the rough spots were sanded out of the surface coat and it was waxed three times in preparation for the first parts being made off of it. Getting exciting now. I layed one layer of glass on the mold to get the general shape of all the other layers and then transferred it to cardboard for easy repeating.
After getting several blanks cut out it was time to mix up some resin and get started. It took 750 grams of resin and three layers of glass to get the thickness I wanted without being too heavy.
That was last night. This morning before going to work I went to the shop to see if the part would come of the mold. With a little prying with some plastic scrapers around the edges and a blast of air it popped right off! Phew.
Tomorrow I will lay up the other half, trim both halves to the same height, and then glue them together. Then I get to do it two more times after that. Yeah. I will probably start the frame early next week and hope to have everything mocked up by the next weekend. But we will see what happens. Stay tuned.