Re: tr6 radiator duct

[Joe Curry <curry@wolfenet.com>]

Dave Simpson wrote:

>     Good point I was leaning towards either aluminum or PVC.  But  you
> might be able to use some of the molding techniques  for making curved
> shapes, such as for around the air pump on side shields for spitfire
> engine bay.   These  techniques are  basically making some type of mold
> and then applying heat to from the plastic.  I plan on replacing the
> side shields my spitfire over the winter.
>

Dave,
Many moons ago when I was working on Racing Spits while in college, we used
to bend plexiglass to form little windshields after we removed the stock
ones.

The technique we used is to cut a pattern out of cardboard because it was
easy to bend and shape.  Once you obtained the correct pattern, you cut the
plexiglass and formed it buy dipping it on a washtob of extremely hot
water.

This seemed to work better than direct heat because it would spread the
heat more evenly in the plexiglass.  The bends would be more gradual.
Direct heat would always make the bends much sharper than we desired.

Practice makes perfect.  The finished product was trimmed with a rubber
gasket and mounted with angle brackets and rubber bushings to form a "shock
mount"  This avoided the cracking problem.

Joe Curry