Preliminary Sanding of Body

(46 days until the 2012 WHPSC)

Dad getting medieval on the foam with 40-grit on an 8-inch gear drive sander

The sander removes the 10-pound foam VERY quickly

Starting to look like a streamliner

Dad buzzing the canopy area

Closeup of the gear drive sander in action.

More snow in Perris, California in the middle of Summer

Even Annie got show on her

Just about ready for glass!

The excess armature protruding from the nose will get trimmed once the nose is extended (it tapers too quickly at the front, and would likely present clearance problems with my toes).

Head-on shot

Continuing around

... and around

A shot down low

Stick a fork in it! (Fork is Done-O-Mundo!)

(48 days until the 2012 WHPSC)

After over two weeks of whittling parts and and fixtures, I finally welded the fork today!

Closeup with the fork in the fixture (the forking fixture ;-)

My welds aren't going to win any beauty contests

Here's the fork out of the fixture

Closeup of the fork out of the fixture

Another closeup of the fork showing the crown

Closeup of the drive side dropout

And the moment I've been waiting for... how does the wheel fit? Here's the drive side.

... and the brake side

The lens of my iPhone's camera produced a strange distortion. The Stanchion on the right is actually VERY parallel to the wheel, but the camera makes look like it's tapered inward at the bottom.

Same distortion in this view, but you can see there's plenty of clearance between the tire and the crown (breathing a sigh of relief)

Epoxy and the Other Fork Stanchion

(49 days until the 2012 WHPSC)

My dad buys resin by the 55-gallon drum. It's polyester resin, however, which doesn't play nicely with polystyrene foam. So you can either seal the foam with several goats of gesso and hope the polyester doesn't seep through before it cures, or go the expensive route and use epoxy. West System 105/205 epoxy kit arrived today...

Bent the stanchion for the disk brake side of the fork.

Milling off the excess from the crown end

Boring a recess for the dropout

Checking the fit using a calibrated Mt Dew stanchion alignment spacer

Closeup of the stack-O-spacers

Closeup of the dropout

Another closeup of the dropout

Closeup of the fork crown end

Reverse engineering the brake caliper mounting bracket using the fork off my stationary trainer

The brake caliper will fit something like this