Aero Parts Finished

So you guys all know the drill whenever I don't update for a while, it's because I've been working my tuchus off just trying to get whatever I'm doing on the car finished.

In the last update we finished off the front making the new flares, headlights, and oil cooler. This time we're moving around the side of the car to try and carry all those aero elements around the car and make it all look like one piece.

I started off as usual with some CAD

I had this idea initially of using a little fin element to continue the arch of the flare down and bring more of that circular detail in, but I decided I just didn't really like it.

The inspiration for the sideskirt was initially from JGTC cars and some RWB builds, but after looking at it it just felt a little bit too clean or race oriented and a cyberpunk build like this really needed something a bit more interesting and unusual.

What I went for was a cut-off version of the sideskirt, with an opening in the front for a vent. Then on the front half I always really liked the look of this industrial looking frame piece I saw on an old Walter Kim render so I decided I'd run my own version of that too.

I didn't have any fancy 16mm pieces of alloy or titanium lying around so I just cut it out of some tanalised plywood that I then coated in resin, and then a thin layer of fiberglass for extra water protection.

You can see I also cut off the lower half of the front fender and re-purposed my old phone cover looking thing I made for the front bumper that I didn't really like anymore. I also added some end plates to the splitter piece.

Added a small bash plate to the front of the random little piece under the fender and then fiberglassed up the rear section of the sideskirt.

It was very easy to make, after carving the foam I just covered it in masking tape and nothing else, laid down all the fiberglass and then just popped it off. I swear you get the best releases when you aren't even trying.

Then to finish up the front fenders I finally made up my mind on those vents that I drew on and found some universal house vents from Bunnings and cut those up to make my own.

My continuity is getting all jumbled up but then after / before I did that I also put together a quick little diffuser to bring more of those sharp aero elements to the back of the car as well.

The diffuser and little splitter plates for the side are both made out of a sheet of waterproof bathroom lining and since they'd be getting painted it didn't matter what pattern they came in, so for bonus we got fake marble. Not many people out there with a marble diffuser.

Lastly, since the diffuser went right where the old exhaust used to go I needed to remove it. This meant I could bring back an old friend.

It's a cool little extra detail and I think it fills in the space and gives some nice asymmetry. With that last addition though that's pretty much the entire body of the car wrapped up at least for what I can fit in before flying back to Japan. The muffler doesn't connect to anything but it looks like it might and that's good enough for this build.

So I pushed the car outside for the first look of it with all its new parts. Excuse the excessive amount of photos from all pretty much the same angle since I can never make up my mind which looks best. Not like anybody ever complains that there's too many photos in these things.

As I mentioned up front I'm posting these after a bit of backlog. I'm actually back in Japan right now and the car is done and painted so if you think it's looking cool right now, wait until I finish editing the next batch of photos. I took well over a thousand photos of the thing knowing that was my last chance to catch it before leaving for Japan, so there's lots to dig through.

Will have the next post up as soon as I've finished editing, but things might be slow because everything is going wrong since I moved back to Japan and my water pump is broken so I haven't had running water in 3 days. There's also a new hole in the roof of the garage and it's raining inside.

No water in my house, too much water in my garage. Make up your mind Japan.