So, since I am relocating the fuel tank to the front of the freeway to accommodate the moved seat, that means I need to cut out and fill in the existing headlight bucket, since it protrudes a long way into the interior where the fuel tank is now located.
I spent a bunch of time trying to get a good measurement of the front-end geometry, to make a mold for the replacement fiberglass. I initially was hoping to use the 3d scanner I have (a revopoint metro-x), but it doesn’t have the greatest tracking, and the gloss paint finish really makes scanning the thing extremely difficult.
I sprayed it down with scanning spray, but that was after I had applied all the tracking markers, and the scanning spray is apparently matte enough to block the tracking marker dots.
Anyways, I eventually wound up using the non tracking dot based scan mode, and got something usable. I then 3D printed a mold block to try to glass-against.
Moving on, I flipper the body top over and got to hacking:
I then feathered the edges of the cutout down to a sharp edge by sanding them down on the interior of the shell, and trying to be clever, attempted to use a vacuum pump to conform a silicone sheet to the geometry of the 3d printed mold, and also to hold the mold in place:
While the vacuum held the mold on fine, it didn’t have enough grunt (or there was a leak I didn’t find) to pull the thin silicone sheet into the full mold geometry. Since I wanted to get this done, I just went with it. I’m going to have to add a /bunch/ of filler to properly shape the nose out in the future, but the strength is back in it, in any event.
I wound up doing 2 layers of fiberglass, and then going to get food, before removing the mold and then adding more layers.
Of course, a bird took the opportunity to poop on the new fiberglass while I was at lunch.
I eventually wound up with 8 layers of fabric feathered into the existing body.
