Hornet build

[kiwidesign79]

Originally Posted by davh12

I'm afraid to ask how many $$bones$$ that carbon fiber seat cost.............and cross bracket/ tube??

Hi Dave,
The seat probably cost around $50 - $60 bucks in materials & a whole lot of labour.

Not sure what bracket/tube your referring to?

[kiwidesign79]

In this video I lay up the 50K carbon fiber tow. The battery died in the camera just before I could finish so just to recap, I finished putting the 50K on then folded the twill weave over & put the top form on. I clamped it in several places, periodically tightening the clamps to allow the excess resin time to run out until the forms seated.

Engine mounts part 2 - YouTube

[kiwidesign79]

Here's a couple photos I took along the way. I've now trimmed the ends off & cut the bar in half. These will be the two bottom pieces of the engine mounts. The way I made this didn't realy save any weight. Size for size it weighs within a few grams of aluminium. I'm going to try infusion on the top mounts which should make a big difference in weight.

[kiwidesign79]

Well, not much head way on the engine mounts. Turns out tow doesn't infuse very well. All is not lost though I will keep trying.

I used some braided sleeve on the joystick. So far one layer of fiber glass and two layers of aramid, then sucked off any excess resin under vacuum. Will post results later on.

[kiwidesign79]

Well results of the joystick weren't that great, it kind of turned out all wrinkly. maybe I should have vacuumed 1 layer at a time (instead of 3), that way I could have got more slack out of the braid. And of course being Aramid it's not going to be easy to sand out the wrinkles. When will I learn, YOU CAN'T RUSH COMPOSITES!!

I broke down the gyro & started painting parts. I'm terrible at choosing colour schemes so hopefully it turns out ok.

I made the first of eight pulleys for the steering peddles, it took a few hours of cut, measure, cut, measure etc to get it right on, so I will talk to my friend with a CNC lathe and see how much he will charge me to do the rest.