The Sport Fairing Project (end of the saga)

[Extent]

Clearances for the exhaust and controlls have always been my biggest worry, the whole bottom may just get the chop and I may instead follow what the factory full fairing did for the bottom, still not sure yet.  One thing I am sure of is I much prefer working with composite materials than with metal, at least without having a welder.

How much room is there on/behind the dash?  Would you still want to go all digital or keep some analog guages in there?  I really like not having the guages mounted to the handlebars, even when running naked (lol)  I think the bike looks really mean when it's "headless"  too bad running without a headlight is illegal (don't get caught out at night!)

[h2olawyer]

That's definitely a different look! ?I can get an idea of what it would look like without the lowers - kind of a bulbous protrusion. ?The lowers will really help the appearance.

Interesting engine case guard - did you fabricate it?

H2O

[Extent]

Nope, it was on the bike when I bought it, I thought it was the standard engine guard until I saw some of them on ebay.  Personally I prefer this one.

[Superfly]

I am doing something similar on one of my project bikes, If you are going with the full-on fairing, you might want to consider making an additional mounting point where the current case guards attach to the engine.  That is where I was thinking of having my bottom attachment point.  It would act as a stabilizer.

[Extent]

Had to make a bit of a change, the main bracket just wasn't cutting it, and no amount of bracing would cure the shaking/wobble brought on by on-road forces, 3/16" flatstock just isn't enough.  With the square tubing welded in place almost all of the flex is gone, and you can now pick up the front end of the bike just from the stay without it flexing.

My welds are crappy because I haven't welded since highschool, and this was my first time MIGing, but it holds up to the stress test, so it's good enough for the time being.  I'm going to have to pick up some CO2 and ditch this fluxcore wire tho, convenient as it is...

[silicon_toad2000]

how much weight do you rekon will be added to the front end of the bike when all is said and done?

[ozian]

Extent   Argon is the right gas to use & you wont believe the difference , just stay out of the wind & make sure everything is shmick clean. Keep the gasless wire for any welding outdoors   Ian

[Extent]

This portion is heavily overbuilt, so it's getting quite a bit heavier than I want it to, at a random guess I'ld say maybe 7 pounds or so for the plastics and mirrors, and probably nearer to 10 for the bracket, I've no guess what the headlight weighs.  Design goal for the skins will be for the whole thing (top and bottom together) to come near to 10 pounds in carbon.  I hope to cut the weight of the stay down over half what it is now with a full redesign now that I can do welding, but that's a project I'm saving for the final piece, If I can't get the weight down well enough I may try cutting it out of Aluminum, but the costs of experimenting with that are more than I want to get into at this point.

[troy]

I was wondering where those replacement yics came frome and how well they work. looks pretty sick man! (i mean the whole fairing project);-)

[Extent]

I just threw that together in about 10 minutes one day after working on some of the glassing.  I tried to repair my YICS a couple times but never managed it right, so instead I just made a solid 1 piece one out of fiberglass.  It's ugly, and not made to any particular tolerances (and I put the mount tab on the wrong side :-[), but it works.  One of these days I'll replace it with a nicer looking one, see if I can maybe make them easier to create.

Some other people have been working with CO2 canisters as replacements, and some other ideas in metal.  Those are sure to be easier to deal with than something like this.  It's been recently discussed I'm pretty sure.

[Extent]

Alright I'm trying to keep updates a little further apart,  more content .. less spam.  I'm back working full swing on this sucker right now.  I was completely unsatisfied with how the sides were looking so I started from scratch on them.  Tried to sketch out a new design that complimented the bikes lines a little better and still matched up with what I have already done for the 1/4 fairing.  I don't think I was too sucessfull with that, but I think it looks a lot better than what I had before.

New techniques, new materials.  The spray foam worked fine for the first try, but it's not particularly stiff so it doesen't hold it's shape very well.  It also takes a long time to get layerd up thick enough to be of any use.  This time around I got some 2 part polyurethane expanding foam from TAP plastics.  Mix equal parts of A and B and it expands to about 30 times the volume.  This foam is much stiffer so even thinner parts don't flex the way the insulating foam does, much better for working with.

Since I wasn't buying premade sheets of the foam I poured my own, it was going to be easier to work with sheets and blocks than to try and pour something from the bike.  I lined the inside of a carboard box with poly wrap and poured the foam in there, making sure to fill the entire bottom.  Here is a pic of the last bit of foam from the cans.


You're supposed to be able to glue the foam together with 3M super 70 spray glue but I foun it got lost in the pores and didn't stick fast enough.  Instead I used a hot melt glue gun.  For attatching distant parts together where I didn't have a foam bridge I used dowels cut up and glued in place, much how you'ld make a FG speaker pod.  Then as it started piecing together I'ld trim the spaces and fill them with other bits of foam, gluing it all up as I went.  Here is the inside of the left side foam plug.


To fill larger gaps I cut pieces of foam down and glued them in place, for smaller gaps bondo works beautifully.  Since I'm going to try and use this piece for the plug and I really don't want to do any finishing on the surface of the mold I covered the surface of the foam with a scraping of bondo to fill the pores of the foam and give an even surface for a quick primer and paint.  The bondo has a little flex in it so even with the plug bending a little it won't crack or fall off.  I haven't sanded any of it down yet, since it's too late to use the power sander  :-/ I'm going to try and keep myself from getting caught up in perfecting the surface, I've given up on getting a show quality finish to the whole deal (who would have thought that your first project wouldn't be absolutely perfect  :P) instead focusing on just getting this sucker done and applying the experience on the next one.

And of course here's the random pictures of it stuck on the bike.

[Extent]

This travesty of Vision lives on!  Despite a newfound interest in Lotus 7 replicas and an increasing urge to start work on the digital guages project in earnest I've been slowly picking away at this.  In the time since my last post I have managed to finish surfacing the plug, damage the plug, attempt a half hearted repair of the plug and then continue to make the mold anyway.  I was going to try and clean up the surface of the inside of the plug before making the part but it just sat for a long time and I decided to just push on and just spend my effort fixing the surface of the final part, since I'm never going to use the mold again anyway.

Here is the first part, freshly pulled from the mold (yay)


I've been having problems trapping air bubbles in the fiberglass in both the mold and in the part.  It makes it a real pain to get a nice surface since they all turn into craters  :-\.  I was thinking about trying a roller, but I'm sure that I'm making a much more fundamental error than that, tools can't make up for technique.  I've been using a diamond cutting wheel with a Dremel to do the cutting, circular blades just ground down far too quickly in the composite, but the cutting wheel has been working perfectly.

For the final layup I used 3 layers of 1.5oz CSM, then just pieces of cardboard box cut for the core, and then a final layer of 1.5oz CSM.  It's reasonably stiff, might have been able to use one less layer of CSM or not use the core, but that's stuff for future experiments.

Here I have the part trimmed and hung with temporary mounts.  I've got a lot of work to make all the edges meet up smooth with the other parts of the fairing and the bike, but I'm going to wait untill I have the mounting system completely finalized before cleaning that up.



The proportions look really odd from this angle



I'm going to make a new mount for the front fairing that runs all of it's support up between the forks and has mounting points for the sides running straight back from the headstock so I can avoid long loops of metal so far forward on the bike and try and minimise the effects of the added weight on the balance of the bike.  I want to do all my designing for the bracket in CAD rather than the guess-and-chop method I've been using so far.  So I need to model in the headstock and top portion of the forks to check for clearances and so I can play with different structures to try and optimize it structurally as much as possible.  For now all of the other mounts are welded onto the engine guard.

Here are some more pictures with the flash cleaned off and an exploritory primer coat




Now, aside from finishing this piece and all else I've mentioned above I've got to come up with a way to duplicate this part as a mirror image.  I'm going to try cutting slices that match the inside profile of the mold and use those as a skeleton to fill in the foam for the second plug carving.  The new plug also gets a layer of glass on it to keep it from being damaged in my garage while it waits to be finished.

[louthepou]

You know extent, I really enjoy following your progress on this long term project. Mostly the fact that we can, with your detailed account, watch the learning curve go up. And the project take shape (litterally).

Now, if you keep adding pieces to this, you'll need to head out to the Salt Flats and get a shot at Vision top speed record!  ;)

Lou

[Riche]

Extent, just curious, what Lotus 7 replicas are out there? Is the Caterham still being made? I drove a Series 2 super 7 for 9 seasons back in the 80s. What a car. Mine had a Ford 116E for power. Not that is was so fast but the fun factor was off the scale. Right now the car is worth maybe twice what I sold it for LOL.

[Extent]

Caterham is still around, they bought the rights back from Lotus and continued development on the Series 3 7. (http://www.caterham.co.uk/) They've got some crazy ones in their lineup, with the biggest having 260hp and a 0-60 of only 3.1 seconds.

There are a lot of replicas around too, Dax, Westfield, Tiger.  But of course that would be too easy, and I plan on scratchbuilding a modified chasis and building up from there :p

[Lucky]

Well i'm impressed, but you guys allways impress me..
Awesome job!

I thought the digital guages had fallen off the scope.  i'll have to go find my pics of them.

--Lucky

[kiawrench]

not that i have any first hand exp with it, but you were mentioning joint matching the plugs to the fairing,.
  i have seen on a few other projects , a weatherstrip/expanded soft foam type joint in those places, used to match the joint ,but also to kepp vibration from carrying up through the lowers to the uppers. this will keep mirrors from shaking off as well as help to blend all the joints. can get this type weatherstrip almost anywhere, and it isnt much. depending on how you taper or attach it , it may lower the amount of "perfect " joints that have to be made.
i think it comes in 1 inch,1.5 inch and two inch wide rolls.

[Extent]

Heh, my projects never die Lucky, they just sleep for long periods of time :p  I've got big plans for the digital dash, I just know if I start on too many things I don't have the slightest hope of finishing any of them.

Thanks for the tip Kia, I hadn't thought about trying to dampen vibration at the joints, that would make life easier in a couple of places, I'll have to see what the local Lowes has.

[kiawrench]

i think you would most likely be better off in an auto trim shop,, lowes would have home stripping but you are going to need somethin a bit tougher . i would say that jc whitney.com is the place,, can get flat, 1/4 rd,1/2 rd,3/4 rd ,and full round, it will depend on project budget and time, but it is cheap,, i redid entire pontoon boat (modified worker platform from 1956) and all the trim with different types of the stuff from there. it isnt really that expensive, and it does a heck of a job on vibration, squeaks and sealing from water transfer. most likely the best way to go.

[Extent]

So I've been picking about in SolidWorks to replace that rat's nest of steel with a proper fairing stay and I thought I'ld put up my initial diagrams incase anyone had any thoughts.


Here is the part in place with the proxy objects I used to check for interference.



The fork is 16ga sheet cut and welded, and the bracket arms are 1/2" square tube.  I thought of using solid rod for those like most stock stays seem to be made of, but I have 1/2" square tube :P and I have no good way to acurately bend rod. 




The whole thing comes out to about 2.1 pounds.  I did FEA tests with 500lb of force applied to the headlight proxy, maximum deflection horisontally is about .1" and vertically and straight on it's closer to .03"

Only major bit missing is the bracket to mount the guage cluster.  Turn signal mounts will have to be special untill I figure out for good where they go, and the wings for the mirrors have to be custom fit since the 1/4 fairing isn't perfectly symetrical.  I'll probably just leave them as bolt on parts to this so it can be more of a "generic F4 headlight mount" and when I do another fairing I don't have to redesign the core of it.