Loud & Low 8th Gen Civic - UBL #3 - The Final Chapter - Up to date

[scooter99]

Then I drilled out the blocks.

This is the best way I could hold the block in place. Problem is these clamps suck ass! So I'll be getting new ones for this tomorrow.

But they did do the job at the end of the day! Making aluminum coils! WOOT!

Now they're all drilled out.

It's time to tap them all out for the screws.

And done! Well, done with the first block. Got them all tapped and cleaned out, and the screws and terminals on to get a look at what they're going to look like.

This is what it looks like temporarily on the terminal. I need to drill out the center for the screw and washers to sit down and give it a flush mount look.

Overall look. Second block needs to be done still.

Metal shavings anyone! WOW!

So that's as far as I got with it. Thought I'd get it done tonight, but I'm not feeling well. I have some work to do on the room tomorrow and then we'll see what tomorrow night brings. I have big plans for under the hood, wire management, but I'll hold off revealing that until later.

Thanks for checking in!

[scooter99]

Got a little more done today. Let's get started.

First things first, I went ahead and moved the grinder over to the end of the table like I was thinking. I like it much better. Gives me more room to work on the table. Not sure why I didn't think about that sooner.

Got some more stuff from Depot. Clamp, grinder bit, 3/4" drill bit, wire wheel for the grinder, a pair of 4' angle iron, and some braising rods. Those are for later on!

Angle iron.

The grinding bit I got for the bottom part of the terminals. I wanted them to sit down on the terminal of the battery instead of just on top of them. More stability I think. Not sure it was going to work, but for a couple bucks why not. However, if it doesn't work, I'm not sure what will happen as the end result.

It sits about 3/16 - 1/4" above the top. I don't like that. As much as this is going to have hanging off of it, I want it to be as stable as I can get it.

Lining it up on the drill press. Not really feeling this, but we're gonna give it a go. Using the new clamp too.

Ok here we go

Sooooo, this is the last pic of it. It did not work out so well. Really a couple of reasons why too. One, the clamp wasn't strong enough to hold it down. The block kept moving around and also, the grinding wheel wasn't perfectly circular so it wasn't spinning very well. Hard to explain. Anyway, didn't work out.

So I drilled out the top piece for the allen screw and washers.

Doesn't drill down a perfectly flat interior like a mill would, and it's quite possible I just don't have the right bit, or even the right knowledge of h ow to do it.

But it works! Positive side

Negative side

[scooter99]

Both are now bolted on. After having them both on there I was confirmed in my theory that it's not very stable. It is tight and on fine, but you can definitely tell on the edges that hang off where the cables are going to be, that it will put some sure stress on the screw. I don't want any issues later on down the line because of it. I'm gonna have to figure something out.

This was my solution. I'm sure it's not the best way to do it, but it's a possible solution.

This is what it looked like after the grinding wheel. Like I said, it didn't work out so well. The square is what needs to be removed. Here goes! Safety glasses again, VERY IMPORTANT IF YOU"RE DOING THIS!! Now this was the first time I've ever done anything like this, so there was some definite apprehension when getting ready to do it.

It also really makes a mess. And this crap is NOT EASY to clean up!

On the table too.

It's a little ragged but it worked out ok. Have to be sooo very careful when doing this if you do it with a router. Remember very very small bits at a time. I was doing about 1/16" per pass in depth and one initial full bit width, and then after that each pass was about a half bit width. Very very small. I tried originally with a larger bit, but it didn't last long. I found a smaller one worked out much better. I used one that was about 1/4 or 3/8, I can't remember.

And this was the look and height I was going for. See the difference between the left and right? Much better. Nice solid base.

Close up of the left

close up of the right.

Now it's time to do the other one. This one I decided to do a bit differently cause I felt like I took a bit much out of the first one.

Here you can see that. I even changed the direction after this.

Here you can see how much needs to be taken out.

[scooter99]

Onto the amp rack. This just wasn't sitting well with me so I decided I was going to cut it off, and replace it with a wood piece and then glass around it. You can see how bad and uneven it is.

Back side view, it's very rough. Recall I had nothing to really hold it up. So that's why it failed.

Remember that I was going to just use filler and smooth it out and make it look good. After taking this long to get back to work on it, and thinking about it, that just wasn't "my way" of doing things. So true to form I decided to fix it the right way.

[scooter99]

Made some initial marks. But let's get it in the trunk and see where we're at.

You can see the gap behind it. That's space that's much needed and quite frankly it's so tight in there that I can use every eighth of an inch as I can get.

So after looking at it in there I decided the whole back wall needed to go. Cut it out completely then replace it the right way! Time to use the new saw!

Back wall gone!

Just a little view of how thick it was with filler. It's pretty heavy actually. So I'm happy to be doing this now. That's about 3/8" right there at the widest point. That's a lot of space to be loosing, on top of the space behind it that I was loosing. Should give me some good breathing room. I'll get about half of that back.

Now to clean it up. I bought this last year, so now I get to use it on my new compressor. Let's see how it does.

What I'm cleaning up is the top edge of the rack. Don't care much about the end of it yet. I'll address that though later on when I need to.

Nice, a little 80 grit and some love, and she's flat and good to go.

another view, closer up.

Some spots that are a little thin. That'll get taken care of when I replace it. NOW, to the trunk!!

[scooter99]

My tools of choice to make my template. Knife, tape (may not be needed), pencil, and some cardboard. We actually just bought some new furniture for the new remodeled room, so I had some nice thick couch cardboard. Nice and sturdy. Perfect for this.

Traced it out to the end of the amp rack. This will give me the ability to just get the other areas dialed in because the bottom is fine.

Perfect fit

Closer view

So here you can see, it's a much straighter piece. But there's still too much gap behind it. So I'll do some trimming and get it to sink in better. My goal is to have it sit flat against the back.

Trimming some more. Went from a straight piece to cutting out around a couple of grooves on the sides.

Here is why. These spots on the sides, round out bigger then the level of the back.

Other side.

Pretty tight fit on the bottom, and there's another round out there that needs to be cut out, or possibly.

Trimmed a little more for a cleaner edge. Probably being too perfect on it, but that's me.

Cut that bottom part out, it was pushing the piece out a little bit.

Trimmed a little more on the other side.

[scooter99]

And this is the final piece. I apparently forgot to take an over head view.

Time to make it wood! I'm going to get some more 1/4" wood. This is pretty warped and it's in pretty rough shape. I'm going to be making lots of templates, so probably not a bad idea to get some new straighter stuff. I may get some smaller sheets so they're easier to handle.

Got my cardboard all traced onto the wood. Ready to go.

I didn't use the air saw on this, I used my trusty electric jig saw on this one.

After some test fitting it still needed a bit of trimming. The cardboard does flex a little so it makes for a difficult template, or final one anyway.

After a little more test fitting, I decided the edges needed some trimming on the amp rack now. So I marked where that needed to be done. Then shaved it off with the sander and the 80 grit.

This is a much tighter fit. It's actually able to go all the way back flush against the back wall. Much better than the last one, and even better than the template. This gained me almost a full half inch.

View from the back seat. This will be much better. I'm kind of giddy at this point to be honest, while taking the picture anyway. And it only gets worse as the night goes on.

this is just the tape and getting ready to tape things off.

After doing that, and getting the rack back in, and ready to glass, I noticed that there wasn't anything behind the corners to glass to. So I decided to use some more of the orange fleece to fill those in.

Like so! Fills in the corners nicely and will work well for a first coat.

Close up of the driver side

Close up of the passenger side. Now, we're ready to glass!

So like a lot of folks do, I didn't obviously take pics while glassing. No resin on the phone!! So I layed down a nice layer of resin on the seam and the fleece. Soaked it pretty good. Then while I still had some left, I went ahead and laid down a layer of chop. then soaked that all in.

Ripped up some more chop and got it in place.

And got another coat of resin down. So that's 2 layers of chop all the way across and a layer of fleece in the corners.

View of the passenger corner

View of the driver side corner.

Much much better than the original. I'm very very pleased at how this came out.

This is really what made me decide to get new 1/4" material. Even as straight as I thought the ply was, you can see it's a little warped. Even for this small piece. I noticed it before I put it on, but there wasn't much I could do about it, and I didn't have time to go get more.

Also had an issue with the resin. My 3m resin isn't good anymore. Clumpy and stringy. Hard to explain but it's time for new, bottom line.

So that's it for now. I'm going to go an put an order in at US Composites and in the meantime I'll get the filler out and start getting this thing back to ready for finishing. More to come very soon!

[scooter99]

So this weekend I went out and got everything finished up with the shop. Actually Friday I got most of it wrapped up, but finished on Saturday. I'm not going to take time to show you all the pics here, but you're welcome to visit my facebook page and view them here. After all that was done, I was able to finally get this build restarted. Once you take a look at what was done to the shop, you'll begin to understand why I had to do what I did with it.

Understand that this is going to make my life so much easier than what I was doing before. I'm very excited about it, and it's already begun to prove itself to me as to how important it was to get it done.

Enough of that, let's get on to the pics.

Now, what are we going to do with this!!

Hung the hose for the new compressor in here for now. Still have to get some pipe ran for air outlets all around the shop as well as outside. I want to run a reel outside for air tools.

Ok let's get to work with some sanding. First I had to cut the wings of the corners here. They were buggin me!

And gone!

Other side gone

Sanded a little bit

These corners are gonna be a biotch!

Just a little knock down.

Found a 12 x 12 ceramic tile in my garage that I thought would be great for doing filler. I used to use cutting boards but the one I had warped and was all scratched up and just wasn't good anymore. I think this will hold up well! Also about to use Rage for the first time ever. We'll see about the Hype on it!

I should've shown the amount of hardener I used for it. I had about a 5" round blob of filler and used about a marble sized or just bigger than a dime sized amount of hardener. So right off the bat I can say the Hype is real! Love this stuff. The way it goes on, the ease of workability. It's awesome! I did this in a couple stages. I mixed enough for the back and one side and ran out. Actually found out I could've used a touch less hardener, cause by the time I was done with this part, it was starting to stiffen up.

Just another view. Also a look at the corner. Filled ok, but gonna take some work!

Mixed a little too much on this one too, so I just went down the middle a bit. I thought about doing the whole rack at this point, but I said nevermind. It's been done, and I just need to level out what I added on.

Just a look at the other side and corner. How it laid down. Nicely!

I was a little rough with this corner. I actually forgot about it when I did the back. So it ended up rougher than I wanted. OOPS! Just means more sanding!

[scooter99]

Speaking of sanding! Here we go! This stuff sands very well also! I think I waited a little longer than I should've, but even still, it sanded nicely.

Alot of this is being done by hand at this point. The corners and edges are being done by hand.

Starting to get there

Pretty flat now. The back is not going to take much to get clean!

I'm pretty happy with it. This again, has all been by hand.

After about a half hour or 45 minutes on the back, by hand, I decided to get out the palm sander and get this thing moving along.

Pretty happy with it at this point, but I know there are some low points. So I'm going to go ahead and prime it and see what's left to deal with and where.

I used a cloth and wet it a little bit, just damp, and wiped it all down.

[scooter99]

Rust-Oleum filler primer.

done

Here you can see some spots that need to be filled

more spots

and the corner.

Spot filling

Alot of the bottom edge needed to be addressed. So I just filled it all over again.

I got it all sanded down, but I had a hard time. I don't know if I didn't add enough hardener on it, or the primer wasn't dry or what was going on. I gave it about 45 minutes and had a fan blowing on it, and it was pretty warm today. So I figured that was good enough time.

As you can see here, it wasn't really sanding, it was more rubbing off. This corner sin't so terrible

the edge isn't great

but this was the worst one. I just wasn't getting any better either so I left it alone after a bit.

This is the top part. It was ok, but mostly the same thing.