Wife is out for the night, good time for resin fumes. That's a whole lot of surface area, this is gonna take awhile
Wife is out for the night, good time for resin fumes. That's a whole lot of surface area, this is gonna take awhile
And all resin'd up, it's been hard to fight the urge to make it perfect, it should be irregular but irregular shapes bother me.
You have my full attention. Please continue with more updates and pictures!
Not too much accomplished tonight. Added an aluminum reinforcing rail along the bottom so the fiberglass doesnt get too beat up. Need one more strip of aluminum for the rear still. The "dune" is a bit flexible, tomorrow night I'll flip it and add some strategic reinforcement.
The reason I didnt get much done tonight (aside from getting stuck late at work) was I went to pick these up. 2 Trojan deep cycle batteries. These should provide all the run time Kelley can handle. Seller rebuilds industrial floor scrubbers and after hearing about our setup offered me a good deal on a solid state speed controller from a scrubber. I have to measure amp draw of my motor to make sure it wont cook the controller but it may be in the future plans.
They are also considerably larger so I have to cut out my existing battery mounts and make new ones. sigh
New Dune profiles, Remember the worm.
Cut out the old battery mount and moved it back. The batteries are too big to sit up front like before so I left that rack in place for a single battery for the lights ad made a larger rack in the center for the new ones. Keeping both also allows me to switch between battery types if needed.
Made some mounts for the "dune" to rest on.
Rear mount. Drilled the mounts and body together so it lines up then I pulled the body off and fiberglassed some aluminum plates on the underside to support the body on the mounts.
Prepped the "dune" for paint today, filled some gaps with expanding foam and gave it a quick sanding.
Then a base coat of some satin tan.
After the base coat it got a coat of stone fleck paint, the sand texture paint didn't have enough texture so I started with the stone to get a good texture. Then a coat of dark sand texture paint and a dusting of light sand texture for contrast, and a final dusting of the stone fleck again. Photos dont pick it up well but it really has a good sand look in person.
And then a little decoration, feels just like being at the beach eh?
too cool. nice dune
Ok, I think we can pretty much call it done until the next phase which would be electronic speed control and possibly remote steering.
Gotta have a bottle opener right?
Had to wait 'til it got darker so I could get a good shot with the underlights
Sweet! The tipped over bucket is a nice touch.
So I um installed the new batteries tonite.....holy crap, its fast, verging on scary fast (relative term when you are hanging in a hammock and trying to steer) Now I really want to get a 3rd one and see what this sucker will do on 36v :)
Mission accomplished, it was filmed by Buffet's crew to be used in the video that plays on the big screen during the concert. That was SWMBO's goal and she got it. Also photographed for the local paper. It was a big hit. I ended up running it on just 12v which was still faster than 24v with the old batteries. Ran all day on just the one battery.
Ok, now, some young single guy needs to buy this thing off me and spend their lives at Jimmy Buffet tailgates. It is a chick magnet. Girls kept coming up wanting to kiss the flamingo for pictures. Then one of them almost got her ass handed to her by SWMBO when she decided to kiss me instead. Young scantily clad drunk chicks kept asking if they could climb in the hammock with me....its a good thing my wife was there to keep me in line.
Like Red says, if they can't find ya handsome, they can at least find you handy! :)
Bryce
Nashco wrote: Like Red says, if they can't find ya handsome, they can at least find you handy! :) Bryce
Yeah, I get so used to hanging around you guys it still seems weird to be around people who are so amazed "you built this yourself?!?!" Really folks, this wasn't rocket science.
And I dont care if they find me handsome, handy or they were just drunk, if I was a single man I'd have had passengers!
Heh, sounds like your wife got more than she bargained for too!
I think that thing would be a hit at ANY tailgate.
bastomatic wrote: Heh, sounds like your wife got more than she bargained for too! I think that thing would be a hit at ANY tailgate.
Eh, she knows she can trust me, she just still gets a bit jealous. But she garnered just as much attention when she was driving and even ran into a few old friends (male) from HS so if I was the jealous type I'd worry but we're good.
Yeah we actually previewed it at another tailgate, it get's lots of love. Going to be taking it out to NJMP next year to be a judgemobile for Lemons.
Photo from the local paper online
Definitely a hit! Could probably make money renting it out as well
You need to hook up a trailer hitch- tow a trailer with a few seats for the "hangers on". Not strong enough for any man to sit, only <120lb or D cup and larger. Or both.
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