Who said this would be easy?

A long time since my last update. Not so much progress as I’ve been working in Paris for three of the last four weeks.  The work on the pattern for the air con system has had a couple of setbacks due to the way I constructed the shaped top part. The PU foam went soft after application of the filler. So although I had the shape I wanted, it was too fragile to finish to my satisfaction. I think I have been able to repair the soft areas now, but it wasted a lot of time and effort.

The design is also evolving. The removable lid will be fixed at the sides rather than the top. Hopefully that change will make it simple to fit the blower, evaporator and matrix.

It’s important to give the air an unrestricted flow into the air con box. The initial plan was to connect some 100mm hose, but that won’t be ideal due to limited space. The engine air inlet also has to occupy a the same space. My next crazy idea is to build a double-skinned top to the near-side inner wing and route the air through that… Again this will all be done in carbon-fibre.

Uni-Mould kit

The mould making materials arrived this week. I’m using the large Uni-Mould starter kit from Easy Composites. This includes a huge 25kg drum of tooling resin along with gel-coat, bonding resin and all the glass fibre mat I will ever need. With that and all of the parts I’ve been accumulating I’ve almost run out of space to actually make the moulds!

That’s all for this instalment. It will be a while before I can press-on with the mould making.