Continuing the theme of ally panels, I finally got around to making the oil cooler ducting. I had previously made the templates from cut up cereal boxes, but this weekend I transferred these to ally.
Unfortunately our sheet bender is not big enough to do some of the longer bends so I had to resort to a length of 2 by 2 and a panel beating hammer. This is not really too much of a problem as the duct is not too much on view and by the time it has been pebble dashed you will never know!
I had to make the duct in multiple pieces as the shape becomes quite complex, even for this simple duct, towards the front of the duct. It would however be nice to make this from carbon as I could really get some nice curves in it. Perhaps a job for the future…
Above is the view into the duct, before all of the protective film was removed. The picture is not very clear, but towards the front of the duct it actually gets wider and shorter, hence the need to multiple pieces.
You can also see here it has to navigate around a load of chassis members.
Here is the final thing. I have taped over the joins to seal them. I thought about just bolting all the piece together but decided that would make it all too heavy, not to mention more complicated! I intended to just silicone the duct to the sidepod such that if I need to remove it, it wont be too hard. I can however still easily remove the sidepod as the duct is designed such that it does not wrap around any chassis members, even if it would have made it far easier to make!
Tags: Cooling System, Engine
