Would some of you care to comment on the shape of the headlamp cover I have layed out in black on the following photo?

Thanks.

I dont know how else to put it Steve but in my opinion it looks too flat.

If you can use the lights and covers from your first version in Bodywork section then you will have cracked it. They look great and suit the style of car.

Your latest rendering needs to move forward and angle down a little. So that the lower edge of the cover is either horizontal or sloping downwards to the front when viewed from the side. You don't want any angles going upwards at the front.

All in my humblest of opinions of course!

Terry

It's an optical illusion Terry.

Damn photos... they just don't show the shape as well as they should.




Cita, The perspex may appear slender, but the area for the actual lights is deeper than you might think.... (you are looking at spray paint on the bodywork...)

Steve, looks good to me......

Any thoughts on how you will make them?

Ok I'll get my coat!

The side picture looks much better Steve!!!
Front picture gives the impression that the nose doesnt "dive" as much as in the side picture.
Sorry that i have sounded on the negative side.
Looks good!!!!!

No worries guys,

my thought is that the photos of the flat white surface just kills the depth perception. Then my little mini-digital camera screws it up some more with the angle of the lens.

I had some friends come over to help work on the car this weekend and their first words were WOW, it looks MUCH better in person than it does in the photos. That's because the fotos make it look so very flat... A big drawback of non face-to-face communication IMHO.

Alan, the plan... ahh the plan... is to create two separate molds. (Probably cut directly off the car and modified to suit)

To shape a cover: Cut a large rectangle of plexi, drape it over the former, heat up the plexi with a heat gun and pull it down to shape, then trim the edges... Otherwise, make a female mold, and use heat and vaccum to suck the plexi into the mold.

I have a couple of websites bookmarked that show guys forming windshields for motorcycles in a similar fashion (heat).

OMG

It is SO taking shape!!!! Looks brilliant Steve!

I tend to agree with Cita... unless the headlight lens goes towards the top of the cover lens. I like flat lights look so cool.... good luck with mounting them.

Great job - keep it up.... it's great seeing your progress!!!!

Looks excellent, keep it as it is... as long as it can pass regs

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... as long as it can pass regs

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I can agree with cita, looks too flat, I think it's just because the headlight is too long. I also am kinda on edghe about the front air ducts, it seems too buck toothed.

I just kept thinking it should be straight up and down, rather than angled like that. I like the idea though of it being angled from front to BAck (going down in the back-bottom) making it look like a front splitter, but the sideways angle just struck me as being wrong.

anywhoo, here is my latest rendering of your car, some small changes like the front air ducts, and I made the headlight smaller. Oh yeh, I also added you in there with my hi-tech photo morphing analizer (otherwise known as MS paint)

[img][/img]

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Originally posted by sgraber
To shape a cover: Cut a large rectangle of plexi, drape it over the former, heat up the plexi with a heat gun and pull it down to shape, then trim the edges... Otherwise, make a female mold, and use heat and vaccum to suck the plexi into the mold.

I have a couple of websites bookmarked that show guys forming windshields for motorcycles in a similar fashion (heat).

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hay steve its your car make it the you want it!
as to makeing them its prety eisesy to make a vacum former.
just get a shallow strong box(knock it up out of plywood if you cant find one) the top panel needs to have lots of little holes in u want to find some hardboard or may be steel mesh or soething. And put draft excluder round the top edge as a seal. and duct tape the hose from a vacum cleaner into the box.
then make 2 wooden frames that fit on the top of the box and screw then together with a piece of acrylic in between so youve got what looks like a window. put the acrylic inits frame under the grill til it goes flopppy turn the vacum on and push the frame down over your buck of your headlight cover (which you made earlier and sat in the middle of the peforated box top)
and soon as the acrylic cools turn of the vacum and one headlight cover.
actuly now ive writen that down dont sound quite so quick!
so instead make the frame and plug as above but instead of the box make a cut out in a pice of thick board to the profile of the botom of the plug plus the thickness of the acrylic. heat it up lay it over the hole then push the plug through till its level with the base.
i can email u a diagram if that makes no sence!?
remember you need to start with thicker plastic than you want the finished article as it gets thiner as you form it.

[Edited on 26/10/04 by malakiblunt]

Derf, I do like the look of your front grille. I may be changing mine a bit because it does look like a buck-toothed bitch...

Hugh, Malakiblunt, Those are both good ideas and I am going to do some experimentation here in a few days and get back to you.

Here's what I gather from what you have said. I like the idea of flopping a piece of acrylic (boiled to about 250f) over the bodywork that I currently have, and letting it harden. When that cools I would drill a large number of holes in it and build a sealed vaccum box around its outside. So it's like the shape forms a cup inside the box. Then I can flop another piece of acrylic on top of the box and use vaccum to pull it tight to the inside of the first piece of acrylic. Trim the edges and Viola, a headlamp cover.

Does that sound about right? Missing something? No need for optical perfection right?

Steve, that's about spot on. I would be careful with the amount of vacuum to hole size ratio, as you could end up with a cover that looks like bubble-wrap!
I have done vacuum moulding before, but I didn't use a vacuum when flopping the hot acrylic. I just let gravity and occasional additions of hot water do the job. I would experiment though.

Hugh, this is the type of advice that makes this website such a jewel. Thanks much!

Graber

yeah experiment thats always the best way thers so many ways to skin the proverbial feline you need to find what works for you.
your right optics arnt very important but i have herd that you can get strange distortions with covers, the E type jag aperently.weather it maters i dont know, but jag scraped them on the mark2.
more importantly is you need them to look smooth as youve set your self such a high standard with the rest of your project1 cant muck it up now with woberly covers.
with the vac forming the buck is a positve of what you want and doesnt have any holes it sits on the base board which has the holes in so you dont get the buble wrap look.
i take it your going to make a mold from your body to then lay up the grp panels? so why not take a second cast from the mold of the headlamp area and use that as the vacum buck?
Rescued attachment vacform.jpg

Well Malik, that's a nifty idea too and I'd say well suited to making more than one set!

This cat better have 9 lives...

Graber

yeah ive gone and got caried away again!
but then once set up for vac forming you could make a 1/10 scale model of the graber mobeil
and flog um to the kids as bodys for ther rc cars

I thought maybe a short video would better show the headlamp cover shape? You can also see how much work I need to finish up the Passenger Side. The driver side is basically finished and ready for primer/sanding steps.

Link to Short Video Here

That video made a few things very clear to me,

1. It looks alot (from the front) like a ferrari
2. I also figured out what was bugging me about the headlight shape, for some reason it looks like the outside lower rear corner of the headlight cover is too close to the edge of the wheel arch.

The inner sides of the covers are a bit to straight Steve and in my opinion they are a bit too long to.
I would round them off in the front in some sort of eliptical form.
I really starting to look like bashing car Steve!!!

I have a BFH if you really want to bash his car

(BFH=Big Fing Hammer)

My English...oh well

Back to the original question..
One thing to be careful of is to make sure that you can't see the surface of the lens, or even near to it, when you are driving. It will blind you at night, especially in the rain. I had this problem with cycle guard mounted side lights. But, easier to fix with side lights than with the main ones.
Great to see you getting final shape on the car. Looks very good. Brian

Thanks Brian, nice to have you on the site btw.

Good point about the glare but it shouldn't be a problem. The light sources will be shielded from that direction.

I'll be working on it this weekend in another marathon day.

Hi Steve.. I just had a look at your video. Where's all your junk like I seem to have cluttering up the garage? You've got some long hours coming up. So I can see that you want to be really sure of your shape at this point. I'm interested to know how you will be going from here. I've only done small pieces using "styrofoam" like you are, not a whole car in one piece. What glue do you use? I found PVA glue was best, using nails as pins to hold it together whilst the glue sets. Other glues like neutral-cure pannel adhesive are quicker.. but they are too hard to cut through afterwards. Pays just to use small "buttons" of glue, so you can pick out the hard spots later when sanding. What will you use to finish over the foam? One friend of mine uses paper mache. Do you plan to make a female mold? or just lay up a final skin and sand it smooth. Being kind of $-averse I prefer to just do it once.. partly also because, you get to see the final thing sooner.. and sure-as.. you will then want to make changes. Will you do the whole car as one piece, or have joints under the doors etc? Lots of separate pieces does make the body a lot lighter and cheeper. One big piece adds more strength to the car.. but you have to get it right first time. really good to see your progress. I bet you thought before that the chassis design was the hard bit. Cheers, Brian

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Originally posted by Ratman
Hi Steve.. I just had a look at your video. Where's all your junk like I seem to have cluttering up the garage? You've got some long hours coming up. So I can see that you want to be really sure of your shape at this point. I'm interested to know how you will be going from here. I've only done small pieces using "styrofoam" like you are, not a whole car in one piece. What glue do you use? I found PVA glue was best, using nails as pins to hold it together whilst the glue sets. Other glues like neutral-cure pannel adhesive are quicker.. but they are too hard to cut through afterwards. Pays just to use small "buttons" of glue, so you can pick out the hard spots later when sanding. What will you use to finish over the foam? One friend of mine uses paper mache. Do you plan to make a female mold? or just lay up a final skin and sand it smooth. Being kind of $-averse I prefer to just do it once.. partly also because, you get to see the final thing sooner.. and sure-as.. you will then want to make changes. Will you do the whole car as one piece, or have joints under the doors etc? Lots of separate pieces does make the body a lot lighter and cheeper. One big piece adds more strength to the car.. but you have to get it right first time. really good to see your progress. I bet you thought before that the chassis design was the hard bit. Cheers, Brian

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