Monday, December 20, 2010

Heat Forming Foam

Did some more experimenting on closing off the wheel wells.  At first I tried just using a flat sheet of foam, bending it, making slots for the handle bar and tie rod to go through and holding it in place with Velcro.  The slots for the tie rod and handle bar are smaller in area than the holes normally found in velomobiles for the tie rods to pass through.  Should be quite effective in keeping the water out.  While this worked well it didn't look much better than the cloth covers we have been using.  I ended up with a pucker in the back corner under the shifter.  So I tried heating the foam and holding it in the wheel well of the Sprint plug.   This got rid of the pucker and shows lots of promise as a good solution.  The foam  shaped quite easily but you would need matched moulds to do it properly.   Luckily the shape is fairly simple so it might be possible to do this.   Some fabric glued to the foam would spruce up its appearance.   These covers would be similar to the cockpit covers on the Quest and Mango velomobiles.   The next step will be to make a mould  to help shape the foam.

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