Tub Splitting
This is the best thing you'll ever spend time doing.
Why it doesn't come that way from the factory I have no idea.
We always knew we'd be cutting our tub but were afraid to before we got the whole ship built because we had no idea how it would affect it. Knowing what we know now, that is the first thing that we would have done after completing the seatback/floor pan assembly. It would be so much easier to find the proper place for the skid tube holes plus not having to R & R the front skid tubes eight million times sure would have been nice lol. Anyhow it's not that tough to do.
If you have to work on the wiring, foot pedals, or anything else in the front end, it comes apart in a matter of minutes and gives you access to everything forward of the cyclic tube.
The down side is we still can't remove the rear tub without first removing all four of the skid pants.
Prior
to removing your forward skid pants
is
be sure to make an outline of where the skid pants are in
relationship to the tub.
The
reason you must do this at this point
is
to prevent the outcome of having a screw hole ending up under the
skid pants,
if
that happens you will have to remove them to get the forward part of
the tub off and that would make for alot of extra unwarrented work.
on our list was making the holes around our skid tubes look pretty.
Prior to taking the ship apart to cut the tub we used some small pieces of poster board to tape to the outside of the tub. Next we drew lines on the poster board where we wanted the holes to come to. We made them have a 1/2 inch gap at the top to allow for the skids spreading. We made the sides a 1/4" inch gap figuring the tubes would never move for and aft and the bottom holes would get bigger if anything so we made at that point 1/8" inch.
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Next we put wax paper on the poster board on the outside side and we glassed in the entire hole from the inside.
We then removed the patterns to get the wax paper off of them and replaced them and used them to mark out our new holes on the outside of the tub we were going to cut back into the tub.
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Next we glassed in the holes from the outside of the tub and waited for the resin to harden and then finish sanded them.
Next and last on the list was to cut the holes out to the pattern lines of our newly glassed in holes
After obtaining wax paper from Donna's kitchen and a 3" inch wide roll of fiberglass cloth along with some fresh resin we got from the local fiberglass supply folks we were good to go.
Our 1st step was to mark out where we wanted to cut the tub on the outside and then transfer the lines to the inside of the tub so we would know where to align the fiberglass strips we were going to make next.
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Next with a magic marker we traced a line down the center of each piece of the fiberglass strips of cloth.
Next we took some 12" inch wide wax paper and centered it along the lines.
Next we laid down one layer at a time and saturating it with resin as fast as we could and repeating the process until we had it three layers thick.
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After it cured we used the trace line in the center of the cured cloth to measure out 1 1/2 inches from in both directions.
Our plan was to end up with a 3 inch wide runner conforming to the exact pattern of the inside of the tub when we were finished. We used our belt grinding machine to sand it to the lines and wallah they were ready to be glassed to the rear tub.
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This is a tool used to cut out autoglass with and you may be able to borrow one from your local autoglass store. These things cost about $750 bucks so don't drop it lol, or you'll be out some major bucks. The blade itself costs somewhere around $50 bucks and you'll most likely have to buy it directly from "the Fien power tool people themselves" because it's actually made to be used to cut automotive body panels. Autobody shops find this tool way to expensive to operate for that purpose so you'll probably never find one so don't be surprised if they have no idea what your talking about. I'm not sure but I think doctors use a similar tool to remove body casts from people, so if you have a doctor friend you may have a shot at a similar or perhaps the very same power tool.
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Fein's site page for the glass cut out tool |
http://www.feinus.com/p/window/autoglass.htm |
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Feins site page for the blades |
http://www.feinus.com/p/newmultimaster/cutting.htm |
We
took very special care
while
we were cutting so we wouldn't have to add any body filler and so
the joint would match up perfectly when we were finished.
Next
we mixed some resin and
bonded the finished strips to the REAR tub one
at a time using
several clamps
and then we turned it over pretty side up and removed the excess
resin the squeezed out as fast as we could before it set up and at
that point the hard part was over.
If
you run behind and don't clean it at this time you'll be sanding forever
to
get the two to match up evenly.
When
the resin has dried for at least two days
put
the two halves together, (easier said than done lol) and drill all
of your holes,
being
careful not to
put holes where the skid pants would cover them
or
you will have to remove them to get your front tub off and back on.
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After we got finished with all that we reinstalled the rear tub. When we went to install our front tub we found we kinda sorta messed up.
The front tub wouldn't go on because the air intake scoop in it was hitting our wiring harnesses where they exit out of the storage compartment.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Our next chore grumble, grumble was to revamp the scoop duct by curving it around so it would point forward instead of rearward like RotorWay had intended it to be.
We cut the old one back off the tub and created a new one using play dough for modeling clay to make a mold and reglassed it back to the tub.
The Finished Product
WOO! HOOOO!!
