Not a big think, because it’s a small but important thing. What I was thinking about was what to do about the top of the frame?
Just in case you missed it, there will be a structural bellypan welded to everything on the bottom of the frame for aero and structural purposes. The problem is that leaves an open space to catch water and debris that will lead to rust spots as the frame ages. Possible solutions include moving the pan to the top of the bottom frame members which has the advantage of making the body mount easier, but which requires mounting the engine 1.5″(38.1mm) higher and also leaves a nasty lower area as far as aero is concerned. Plus that just moves the rust out area someplace harder to inspect.
Anywho, what I was thinking about was using some of the HDPE plastic I have for the fenders and hood to cover the exposed gaps in the frame. Then as I was thinking about the bellypan on top of the frame it occurred to me that it would be much easier to make access panels from HDPE than from steel or aluminum, and I wouldn’t need to paint it. And if I did the HDPE on the bottom I could just hotknife the hatches from the HDPE and be able to reuse the cut piece as the hatch because a hotknife has a very small kerf. For the Mini Sprint-T it wouldn’t make any difference because I would do the same thing for either one, glue a piece of 0.01″ styrene to the frame between the tubes. Visually it wouldn’t be any different on the model, a flat surface outside the body is a flat surface outside the body. Flat is flat, model or 1:1 scale. The main difference is if I put the solid bellypan above the rails I would paint it to match the body color of Omaha Orange aka Schoolbus Yellow, and the HDPE is a different kind of yellow. On the bottom the difference would be the steel pan would be black and the HDPE would be the same yellow as the top, because it’s cheaper that way. Or I could go with the black HDPE because it ain’t that much more expensive, and I’m really not quite that big a tightwad. Or getting back to cheaper, the flanges and bits to mount the HDPE plastic might be enough to make the part of the frame that goes under the body smooth might be enough to not need to weld the pan to the frame for stiffness, and I could just go with HDPE top and bottom and save a few ounces. Not to mention HDPE is cheaper than steel for the moment because of the tariffs. We make HDPE here in the US so no tariffs.
Well, this is the second post today, and there was a lot of stuff in the first post what with all the pictures, so I’m going to bliss out to my trance mix and get some meditation in.
Witch on a Bicycle 