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[February 20, 2009]


The other day I received a master wiring kit from SteinAir. I am really impressed with the quality of the kit. I was missing some items, and got shipped duplicates of others. Stein was great to fix the mixup and get me my new parts on their way. Stein and put s free t-shirt in the box! Let the wiring madness begin!


The other day I got around to painting the magnetometer tray. This could be the last part I ever need to paint with AKZO.


So the problem of the night was "bending" the left intake on the plenum. The right side lined up perfectly with the inlet ring, but the left side was slightly offset outboard by 1/4 - 3/8". Other builders have told me not to worry about it because the neoprene between the plenum and rings will make up for the difference. Well, I wasn't so concerned with it not functioning as I was with how it would look.


What I ended up doing was drawing a line 3" back from the front of the plenum and cutting it about 330 degrees around the line.


You can see the 30 degrees or so on the inboard side of the inlet tube where I didn't cut. This would be my bend line.


I got the heat gun out and really cooked the inboard side of the plenum. I mean really cooked it. The great thing about fiberglass is it does become malleable when heated. Also, when it is heated and bent, it does show some visual signs of stress and fatigue, so I wouldn't recommend doing this without reinforcing it with glass layups after the heat. So, once heated I put a wedge of wood in the outboard side of the cut when it lined up with the inlet ring.


The alignment now is almost perfect. good enough for me.


Once the fiberglass cooled, it held its shape with the wood wedge in it.


Next I needed to glass all of this up. To prevent the epoxy resin from oozing inside the ring, I put a couple layers of packing tape on the inside of the ring. Packing tape is really my best friend when it comes to epoxy and fiberglass.


I took the plenum in my basement to do the layups since the fiberglass will cure way faster in the warmer environment (basement is about 65-70, garage is about 35 degrees). I made two slivers of cloth to put in the cut, then laid two 3" strips on top. I will probably do another layer inside once this dries.

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Last Modified: August 13, 2023