BaDassumption Part 1

The Radiator Pod

Fibreglass. Ed "Big Daddy" Roth apparently loved the stuff, because he made most of his cars out of it. I had been itching to make something out of it for a while - and afterwards, I was just itching. Anyway, the radiator pod was the perfect candidate for some "fibreglass by the seat of your pants" fun.

It all started with a male plug mold, carved out of wood into the shape the inside of the pod had to be, and then finished with some bondo. The front was tapered down to fit a cut down 120mm fan, while the back was made to fit the shape of the radiator. After a bunch of sanding, painting, a coat of wax and being fit to a plywood base, it actually looked like something.

It was then wrapped with a couple of layers of woven fibreglass cloth and covered in polyester resin (a very messy job), then allowed to dry and it was popped off the mold. It worked out pretty well, I think. Some trimming with a Dremel cut-off wheel made everything fit.

To give the pod some shape and dimension, pieces of cherry were fit around the radiator end. A little time on the belt sander gave them some shape and a ring cut from plywood was fit to the fan's end of the pod. Strips of basswood were then glued to the surface of the fibreglass.

Spray-on insulation was used to fill the voids between the strips, and the resulting blob was carved to shape. Then, it was time for the bondo.

The whole thing was then coated in fibreglass cloth and resin. And after some more bondo and lots of dust, the pod was starting to look serious.

A ring was watercut from 3/4" aluminium and put through the router routine with a 1/2" round-over bit. The resulting prettier ring was then fit with mnpctech's modder's mesh and an aluminium model aeroplane prop spinner... an idea from the files of mnpctech.

Finally, it was all attached to a 1/4" thick aluminium plate that fits to the back of the rig.

Wait a minute... what plate?