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SV Carbon Tank project for Zoran

One plug with clayed splitter gap all waxed, PVA'd and ready to go.
See how that 2x4 lets me clamp the whole assembly to the cart and hold it in a nice level position for mold layup?
Pretty good idea, if you ask me. I can access everything with ease.

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About 45 minutes later, here's the first half of our production top mold in cure state.
Notice how the underside edge of the tank is also part of the top mold. Now you can see why I needed to wrap the splitter around and underneath at the front and back.
And see how easy it is to get at everything? Much easier than trying to do this work with the plug balanced and proped with stuff. Plus I don't have to worry about the other side of the plug being damaged from sitting on anything.

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And here's the top side.
I rolled the whole cart into the drive way to give it a bit of the ol' 'Solar Cure'.
(Hey, that'd be a good name for a rock band...)
Late tomorrow, I should be able to knock the splitter off and lay up the other half of the top mod.

Next, the real fun begins - layup of the production carbon top of the tank. And all sorts of exciting stuff awaits after that: adding the vent system and mounts for the petcock, cutting the hole for the gas cap and bonding that in...
Then bonding top to bottom and making the mounting system. That stuff actually goes pretty fast so Zoran just may ride with a carbon tank before this season ends!

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The solar cure did it's thing so I was able to get an earlier start that I'd expected. Or maybe the passing of another year has done nothing for my patience... :p
No worries, the part was nice and set up.

And let me say I'm sorry for the repetition of some of these steps - I'll be skipping some of the details so if you want the whole story on the mold making steps, take a look back in this thread at how we made the splash mold. It's all the same steps. I did use a couple different techniques (clay instead of bondo to seal the splitter) but the overall process is samey-same.
So anyway, I carefully removed the splitter plate, doing all I could to retain the seal between the mold and the plug. The results are quite nice. I think I'll defaut to the clay approach going forward. But the bondo method is a tool we have in the box for those cases when it's the best way to go.

So, here it is with the splitter removed. And as soon as I removed the splitter, I made those black dots on the mold flange. What's that about, you ask? :confused
Prior to laying up the other half of the mold, they remind me to drill the mold locking points that we need to align the mold halves (see earlier posts for more details). It would suck big time if I forgot to drill these countersinks as we'd likely end up with a 1/2 side offset carbon tank!
On the other hand, that really would be one-of-a-kind...

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With the locking points drilled, everything waxed and PVA'd and about an hour of layup later, (hey, I started this at about 7:00 this morning and was still on my first cup...) here's the whole production top mold in cure state. Gotta love that 2x4 fixture stand!

It's still foggy up here in Petaluma so no solar help until later today.

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you up for the challange of making me one of those for my Z1000?:confused lol

just kidding. man that tank is going to be awsome.

Cant wait for the finished product.

you are a carbon wizzard.;)
 
A bit of bonking with the rubber mallet and prying with the popsicle sticks and off pops the mold. Some trimming and here we are: One Gen 1 SV 650 race tank top mold! :teeth
It came out pretty good. One small flaw that I'll fix before making the top.

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I still need to drill the flanges for the bolts that hold the halves together so I just held it together with some pinchy clamps for this pic.
The crap in the seam is where some of the paint came off the plug - I haven't even washed off the PVA yet. And that black spot is a stray strand of carbon fiber that blew into during layup.
I'll polish the whole mold anyway so some minor imperfections at this point are of no real concern.

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So...all this effort to date has gotten us to where we can now (FINALLY) make the thing we actually want!
I can throw out the plug since I'll never use it again.
Anyone want it? You too can make your very own SV race tank mold and go into business making labor intensive parts that lots of people want but few will pay to own!:p

In any case, here's what we've made: a full mold set for the tank we now get to build.
You can also get a good feel for how the top and bottom will fit together and how the lip of each part will fit and bond to the other.

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Next, we make the patterns. Look back in this thread and you'll see when I made the patterns for the plug, I didn't pay any attention to the shape of the pieces. No need to since it was just a plug. But since we want to show off the bee-u-tee-full carbon fiber, we want to make the tank out of pieces that look as nice as possible.
The SV tank is particularly challenging as it's one big compound curve. Take a look back at my SV/MV tank - it's got a lot of nice, reasonably flat-ish surfaces. but this thing is way roundy.
No matter, we just have to deal with it. So I started making the patterns this evening. With a bit of luck, I'll get the top layed up in the next couple days. A 3 day weekend could not have come at a better time.

Oh, and I should mention, FibreGlast has carbon in stock! Not much and I bet not for long so hurry, hurry if you want some.

No worries for Zoran, though. I have a full supply of carbon and kevlar so we're all set to get this tank finished.

Cover me - I'm goin' in...;)

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saw Mythbusters do some CF/vacumn bagging work for their personal jetpack episode n instantly thought of this thread. they made it look soo easy just as u do. cant wait to c the finished product.
 
i just stumbled across this thread and i gotta say, i was glued to the screen. not to mention i am not really supposed to do fun things while at work, but i couldn't help it.

this is the most awsomest thing i ever read about making stuff and i'm a big fan of making stuff ! (well, i admit, mostly reading about making stuff, as i have no garage or time to make things)
 
TeAmFuNny said:
more more more...
when are these classes taking place???
Click to expand...

Currently, there are no plans to have another 'seminar'. I may do another one, but no idea when. If I do, I'll post an announcement like I did last time.
 
Wow....
I just ruined my r6 fairings the other day and now am seriously considering making my own.

What would you say the total cost and difficulty would be for a complete set.:teeth

I would make track plastics.:teeth
 
OK, let's lay up the top of this thing, shall we?
First I had to make all the patterns, but I won't review all that. Look back at earlier posts to see the approach I took to make the plug. For the production top piece, I had to consider how the carbon will look, in case Zoran wants to run it unpainted. So I ended up, as I suspected, struggling with the fact that the SV tank is WAAAAY compound curvy. Turns out I need 7 different pieces. And remember, it's going to be (from the outside going in) 2 layers of carbon, 1 layer of kevlar, a layer of fiberglass and 1 more layer of carbon.
Do the math and we have 5 layers x 7 pieces = 35 seperate pieces that had to be cut. Took me better than an hour to cut it all out.
So here's what a carbon SV tank looks like without the epoxy...:laughing

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