280z FP Build

[Ben280]

Also working on getting the radiator extractor wrapped up. This part has been a LONG time coming, and after a lot of pausing since I wanted to do it with carbon fiber, I've cheaped out and will just make it out of fiberglass and waft black paint towards it. 

 

This was a pretty fun thing to build, and figure I can get y'all up to speed! First tho, everybody in the way-back machine to March 2024. First thing to do was figure out how to make the shape. I started by cutting two huge holes in the hood, and start taping cardboard and paper to connect the three shapes. 

The challenge with this method is that I've firmly attached the hood to the car with tape, and because the shape is mostly paper, there was no good way to remove it to do anything with it! I decided here that expanding foam was going to be necessary to keep the shape and give me something to work with. I managed to squeeze a trash bag around the radiator, and bought some 2 part expanding foam from Amazon and started pouring.  

This process took SOOO MUCH FOAM! So much foam. I had to re-order 3 times to fill the shape out. Two things to note for folks thinking about doing this: This foam expands quite a bit requiring a pretty rigid form, and it gets HOT. The foam expands as part of an exothermic reaction, and will get up to about 180*. This gets worse if you pour a lot of foam on top of other foam, so you really want to let it cure and do it's thing before you layer it up. 

 

Once the thing was full, I trimmed the outlet and then took the hood off and realized the Big Chungus (tm) that I had created. 

Realized here that I forgot we need to make space for the air filter. Also, realizing that all the cardboard and other crap I used to make the shape is now glued forever to the foam. The drivers side channel is also quite a bit bigger than the passenger side, as the passenger side dodges a number of cooling tubes. Some shaping is clearly needed. Luckily because this is 2 part foam (never NEVER use Great Stuff foam for this), it was easily shaped with saws, grinders and other tools, was sandable and fillable with bondo. 

Ended up with a good shape! Last thing to do was fill in the area where the radiator sat so the fiberglass has a mounting flange. I then wrapped the whole thing in metal tape to promote reasonable release and it promptly sat in the shop for a year. 

 

I started fiberglassing it up this week, and have the bottom of the shape glassed in. My plan is to use plastic and more metal tape to create this piece in 2 parts, rather than trying to break, dissolve and generally remove the foam by disastrous methods. 

It's looking pretty alright, hoping to get the rest of it glassed up today!

 

Edited Tuesday at 05:53 PM by Ben280
random photo!

[Ben280]

Small fiberglass update. I got the general shape made, and it's ready for trimming and bonding together. I'd like to test fit it on the car, and make sure the radiator is picking up in the right spot. Excited for this, we've got fully ducted air going into and coming out of the radiator now!