Making the intake

The first task was to make a duct to conduct cold air from the front of the car. There is a suitable slot at the side of the radiator. I made a model out of softwood which transitioned as smoothly as possible from a rectangular to a circular cross-section. I smoothed and filled it with fine plaster type filler then spray painted it. I applied release agent (a coat of wax, a coat of poly vinyl alcohol and more wax. Then some gel coat followed by two or three layers of chopped strand mat and resin. The get the model out, I made two thin cuts through the GRP. Having removed the model, I glued the two halves back together with epoxy and laid a band of GRP over the seam to reinforce it. I bonded on a bracket and bolted it in the car.

I also needed to make a GRP duct to smoothly connect the flexible ducting to the aluminium base plate (see the photos towards the bottom of the page). The model for this was roughly conical in shape and could be extracted from the GRP without having to make any cuts.

Next I cut a card pattern of what I thought the base of the upper part of the intake should look like and tried it out with my new GRP intake fitted beside the radiator together with some flexible ducting. shape and could be extracted from the GRP without having to make any cuts. When I was satisfied with the design, I translated the card into 3.2mm aluminium sheet.

The next task was to make a mould for the cover.

An assembly of three 3 mm aluminium plates spans across the rocker covers. The middle part is cut out to take the Megajolt coil packs. Spacers lower this plate as much as possible into the “V” of the engine.

GRP duct

Cardboard pattern