Kz1000 Carbon Fiber Fuel Tank

dude...all I can give you is encouagement....stellar....and I guess I'll age myself cause the plaster casters were very famous when I was "young"

ill be 45 on the 6th

oh ya ...the royalty cheques are....ah...in the mailB)

holy crap that's old you didn't look like you needed the walker yet but time catches up with us all i guess. happy birthday brother.

yes phil started up omars first then sold out and is now back in bussiness doing other wierd and unusal things did you check out his z1-r fairing and the sound effects over at omars site, i love it.

testarossa wrote:

So if you were going to do the ghost Z1 paint job, how do you do it? Skip the primer, shoot your color super thin, and then clear? What is the trick to spraying ghost paint? Do you adjust the gun to shoot thin, or do you add/subtract something from your basecoat to achieve the translucent look?

Oh sure Josh, you ask about ghosting a Z1 paint scheme and get the royalty checks while I'm doing all the work :whistle: I'll do my best here, as I don't have indepth "custom" paint experience. The primer coat would not be used on my carbon tank, as the carbon is the "base" color. Primer would still be the undercoat for a base color on a metal tank. The pearl paint is very similar (I think) to standard base coat with less pigment and more pearl. The matrix for basecoat is relatively clear, or it used to be The actual painting would be accomplished in the same way as with any paint. Any professional painters wanna chime in and straighten me out?

Damn Ben, Happy Birthday! :woohoo: And my wife says I'm getting old, and I'm 32 :blink:

Starting to layup the 3rd chopped strand mat layer

After this will be 2 layers of 4oz fiberglass cloth, then some steel tubing

It's late, but I got one layer of cloth on the mold. Unless any of the members reading this requests different, I won't post anymore pics of the mold making unless it is something different that I haven't shown before. I am sooooooo excited to see how the mold is going to turn out :woohoo: Since my first spray on application didn't work out, it will be interesting to see the quality of the mold surface since I brushed it on. I brushed my first mold, and it sucked.....but I had several other mitigating factors.

Of interesting note, all the molds at Taylor Made Racing are made out of carbon fiber and epoxy resin. When I asked if they sprayed the first coat of resin on the plug, they said no, they brushed it. Another interesting thing they do with their molds is that there are 2 for each part; a male and a female. Each mold has several wood blocks bonded to the outside, and once the carbon is layed up on the female side, the male mold is mated and C clamps used on the wood blocks to compress the mold. Spring clamps are used around the perimeter of the mold. They told me that the clamps give signifigantly more compressive force than a vacuum pump.

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porchev914 wrote:

Here is my Kz1000 tail

It looks like the Z1 tail has a smaller lip around the back?
A close up of a Z1 tail would help.

I'm glad you stopped by Ben. I'm almost ready to prime the tank. Then I'll block sand the outside, then reprime. The underside will simply be wet sanded to remove sanding scratches, reprimed if necessary then polished.

Not sure if you still need a side by side of a z1 and a 1000 tail but I dug one out today I knew I had one but didnt want to say until I knew for sure where it was,any way here you go ,hope it helps

So it looks like the Z1 tail is quite a bit shorter than the Kz1000 tail, also has a taller profile and the turned out lip. Are my observations correct rslingshot? Thanks for the pics

porchev914 wrote:

So it looks like the Z1 tail is quite a bit shorter than the Kz1000 tail, also has a taller profile and the turned out lip. Are my observations correct rslingshot? Thanks for the pics

Ya the 1000 tail is a little wider and flater than the z1,the z1 has more of a round or more of an arc to it. but if you take a tape measure at the backend where they mount to the frame on the underside the are both 9 inches across.

Gotcha, thanks for the specifics. Now, on to the show!
I finished up the layup this afternoon, and once cured I began trying to demold the tank bottom. This proved harder than I had anticipated. I ended up chipping the gelcoat in one small spot while hammering a screwdriver between the tank and the mold :whistle: Generally, hammering anythig metal between your plug and mold is a no-no, but I was deforming my plastic wedges, and I need some more muscle. Here is the tank immediately after demolding

As you can see, despite the PVA, a signifigant amount of the primer stuck to the mold, as well as some of the bondo :blink: This explains why the mold didn't want to separate. I'll chalk this up to the short cutting I took after my first gelcoat failed and I patched it up for round 2.