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Building up neck of Snorkel

Stockmanreef

Well Known Member
Well it appears that I am off to do another Arts and Crafts project.

The snorkel for the RV-14 is made for a Avstar fuel controller. I upgraded to an FM-150. The former has an opening of 2.5" while the latter has an opening of 3".

I talked with Airflow performance and they suggested that the opening on the snorkel should be 3". I measured the OD of the current snorkel and it is 3" and as stated the ID is 2.5". this means that I need 1/4" wall thickness in the end. With this in mind, I need to build up the outside diameter to 3.5" and then open up the hole to 3".

Question:

what is the best way to build up 1/4". Just keep layering with glass? How many layers would this take (roughly). Should I prepreg the glass and apply or just wet up glass onto the surface as I go?

Any advice would be appreciated.

thanks
ken
 
Make

I would make a plug of foam, then glass that. If you just take what you have, put layers to make it thicker, then carve the inside out, I think you?ll have a heavy mess on your hands.
 
I would just go ahead and cut the end off instead of trying to salvage and modify what is there now. Like stated,,,it would be a mess. I would use a piece of 3" O.D. (2.5" I.D.) PVC pipe as the plug form.. Tack it in place with some bondo. Tape it up with clear packing tape and a couple waxing's of paste wax or mold release film. You will want a 1" overlap onto the existing end so prep that well with 40 grit. For parts like this, I like to lay out the fiberglass on clear heavy plastic with the cut lines marked out with black permanent marker. Make your part strong and light using just enough epoxy to wet out the fibers. A hair dryer works great to get the epoxy to flow and wet the fibers of the glass. Squeegee excess epoxy off the wet glass. Paint the joint with pure epoxy just enough to wet it. Cut out the wet fiberglass and lay it up. Cover with peel ply when done and let cure A little heat with the hair dryer will melt the wax and loosen up the plug for removal.
 
no mess at all. I just built up to about 3.3" with epoxy with flocked cotton. Then put on 3-4 layers of glass. Between the two layer and then down to the edge of the flange I put a skim coat of PTM&W ES6247 epoxy as a tie coat. Then I ground out the ID to 3" and smoothed the curves. Of all the random project atet I have done for the RV-14, this one was actually sort of a fun little project.
 
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