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Have to admit I screwed up on the fans ... I thought I was getting the six I needed for a good price, what I actually got was 3 for an indifferent price ... and one of those was DOA ... which I only discovered after cutting the plug off

Between having to order more fans, plus a load of fasteners, studding, vacuum hose & mesh I need to finish these, costs so far have risen to

Those radiators look awesome dude.

Ta

I should have also added that the fans are very lacking in performance & noise ... the one time I _want_ fans to be noisy & powerful, it turns out all realistically affordable 30mm fans are gutless and very, very quiet, even on 12v ... on 7.2v you have to hold them less than 20mm from your ear to hear them, and the same distance away from you skin to feel them


I'm going to make the fans demountable, so you can always upgrade them - I did see some bloo alloy ones on eBay that could well be real screamers - but at

I agree, that is too much. I think the more agressive the pitch of the blades, the noisier they are.

Still waiting for some 1/2 decent weather so I can spray the primer

I've not been idle though, I've been working on "mk.2" of the welding kit ... just some subtle improvements really, the earth clamp will open & close, the hoses/cables will be silicone sleeving so they'll drape/fall more convincingly, and they'll attach via M2 threads

Managed to prime the fuel cells & the "welder" part of the TIG set in a very brief window of decent weather - it was the first time the temperature had been above 10 Celcuis & the humidity below 90% for about a week ... a bit windy, but you can't have everything ... only got those few bits done (+ a coat on the Scorcher & Sand Rover shells) before it started raining

Also managed to screw up one of the fan holder plates for the radiators - there just wasn't enough room on there to countersink the holes I think I can make some new ones a bit bigger & twice as thick, but TBH I made the rads too small to start with

I think I can say I've just wasted a lot of time, paint, money, effort, etc etc on the fuel cells - I started with flat red but even after 6 coats it was still streaky, so even though I didn't want them shiny I tried a couple of coats of gloss red ... now they're streaky, brush marked, and some weird paint reaction has gone on - so they're also bubbled & crazed too

I'll try wet sanding a couple with very fine paper to see if they can be saved, but TBH I'm thinking they need to go back to bare plastic ... perhaps I'll try some red oxide primer & leave them like that/.

The TIG welding sets on the other hand - which are the same material, had all the same processes, and the same primer - are all fine after two coats of my "machine blue" mixture

Well that didn't work, and now they're full of water

To add insult to injury, the clear I put over the "aluminum" I used on the filler cap doodads melted the paint & now they look like they've been painted by a toddler

Honestly, if I'd known how well these two projects would turn out, if I'd flushed

you could try heat shrinking them !

Jonny wrote:

Well that didn't work, and now they're full of water

To add insult to injury, the clear I put over the "aluminum" I used on the filler cap doodads melted the paint & now they look like they've been painted by a toddler

Man, that's some bad luck. Any way to restore it all without too much trouble?