Reflective Stripe and Wind Damage

The first attempt at the reflective stripe came out quite nicely.  It does need a little modification but that is really minor.  I made up a pattern by taping plastic to the velo and drawing the shape of the strip on it.  Then measured coordinates of the  line so I could put it into my CAD program.  Took that file and transferred it into a file that the local sign shop could use to made the decal. Still have the Milan GT and velomobiles.ca decals to make and apply.  One more step closer to production.  

 

Reflective strip photo with flash.

Reflective strip without flash.

 

 

Wind Damage otherwise know as operator error.

This happened a couple of month ago.  The Milan was standing outside of the shop on a windy day.  It had been there for a couple on months with no problems.  I had thought of turning it to face into the wind as I walked by heading in to the house for lunch.  It was fairly windy with some good gusts.  The velo was sitting at about 30-40 degrees off the wind with the back end facing the wind.  Anyway  when I came out after lunch the door and hood were bend over the front of the velo bobbing in the wind looking like they were about to be ripped off.  I ran over and closed the door and then turned the velo to face into the wind.  I was a bit pissed off and didn't even look at the damage until much later.  A couple of beers that night helped.  What must have happened was that a gust got under the back edge of the hood as pressure built inside the velo from air going in the foot hole.   The gust must have been perfectly timed to lift to door.   We did have gusts up around 80 kph at the time.  When I took a proper look at the damage I was impressed on how well it stayed together.  There was no damaged at the hinge point that looks quite vulnerable just some cracking of the gel coat and some separation of the laminate at the crack.  The glass laminate has a polyester woven around the glass fibers.  It makes the laminate more damage tolerant.  I may just fix the door rather than make a new one as it makes for a good story.   I was originally going to replace the door as I wasn't quite satisfied on how the join line for the undercut came out.  Normally when riding you latch the door closed.