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 Posted 7/20/2005 1:39:08 PM |
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"Tardmonkey of the Year"
Last Login: 9/6/2011 12:10:05 AM
Posts: 3,367,
Visits: 4,625
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Tim's back! YAY!
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| Posted 7/20/2005 8:50:32 PM |
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You reap what you sow
Last Login: 9/19/2023 12:52:32 AM
Posts: 7,314,
Visits: 29,372
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BatGod,
Maybe you could answer tech questions in general that are not specific to Batmobile only?
 
 
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| Posted 7/21/2005 4:05:12 AM |
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Forum Member
 
Last Login: 3/27/2010 4:47:19 AM
Posts: 471,
Visits: 435
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Hey Tim,
Yep, you are absolutely correct. The main reason is simply that it's a big b*tch of a car.
And that creates a number of different reasons for laying up the car in separate sections.
One... Easier to change the angle of the mold to glass most everything on a flat surface. I use a dry chop gun for most of my work and hand laid chop strand mat and mesh for edges and complex curves. As you know... Dry chop hates vertical surfaces. I can spray 4 Keaton hoods with a gun in the time it takes to lay up one Keaton side because of those intakes and all of the complex angles. A wet gun is more efficient and great for a car like the 89, but a bitch to clean for one car at a time. Bob's "friends" used to spray 5 or 6 a day.
Two... I can go down to the shop and make a single panel when I'm in the mood and walk away. Don't need any assistance taking a single mold out of the warehouse, tossing it on a workbench and glassing for a little while.
This doesn't sound like much when your in Florida or Cali, But when the weather is 12 degrees outside. Heating a warehouse and maintaining 85 for the glass to cure properly for a 30 foot mold is a real nightmare. Piece of cake in the summer, but winter is another matter altogether. So I've got a 125,000 BTU warehouse propane jet that we use for a 20 foot by 8 foot by 8 foot glass room that we can maintain 140 degrees indefinitely. Even if it's TWO outside!!!
Three... This goes along with two... Spraying 80 gallons of glass (my Keaton bodies were nothing if not THICK!)into the air in a single afternoon will draw quite a bit of attention from the EPA. Without a massive 80,000.00 paint booth set up around here. They'll take you down pretty quick. I started with a small shop bolting on parts near my home. The more I got involved with glass, the further towards Pennsylvania I was asked to move. Now I've got a damn 45 minute commute because no one wants to lease you a building once they discover your messing with glass. So I keep the building materials to a minimum around the shop. Lots of pictures, posters, props, mannequins and collectibles.
When asked "What exactly do you do here?"
"Mostly car stereos."
"You don't paint cars do you?"
"NOOOOOOO I don't PAINT cars here."
"What's that little room over there?"
"Closet."
"You don't work on cars over there do you?"
"Does it look like I could fit a car through that door?"
"Have a nice day! Thanks for the tour. Nice props!"
And no one knows that you didn't BUY that pile of Keaton car parts in the warehouse. They can't tell one car part from another.
The two "Partridge Keatons" were created because I ran out of gelcoat. Couldn't get black tint so I remembered Jay's red Keaton car and ordered red. Glass supplier didn't have gallon cans of tint, so I bought red and blue. (Spiderman was just coming out and I thought the client would appreciate a two-tone Spiderman body. (Wife dropped the digital that weekend and I lost all the pics of "Bathenge" Two Keaton bodies resting on their tails with noses touching, towering into the air higher than my building. Very cool) Only the client has pics of the car with the spiderman gelcoat on it and he's not shared them with myself or anyone else. He shot that car black fast and THEN publicized pics. The second Partridge car (The one that shows up just about everywhere was a car I made for myself, just as a kick. We had enough glass, but almost no gelcoat at all. When I decided to make the car, we just used all of the tints we had, scraping the bottoms of each color. But there was no more clear gel, so we dumped the tint into the white gelcoat.
Voila' ... Partridge Bat!
Four... Easier to store parts flat when you're done with them as opposed to storing an entire body in a warehouse. We put all the parts together a few days before the completed car is either picked up or shipped.
Five... Anybody who pisses me off in the shop spends an ENTIRE DAY in a hood and face mask, holding a whizzer wheel, a$$ deep in fibreglass "snow", cutting the flash from every damn part I can find in the warehouse until I'm not pissed at them anymore!
The monkey who melted my favorite Snap On screwdriver set on top of the running compressor spent a week cutting parts!
and Six... I get bored making the same thing over and over again, this way, I can work on the difficult parts of a job, and turn the simple sections of a car over to someone else. (Like the Ex-wife in the above pic)
This way I can work on several different cars at once and not have a space issue with anything.
Hope that answers your question.
   
"Where does he get those wonderful toys?"
He MAKES them you idiot!
www.tunergirlz.com
www.codeoneauto.com
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| Posted 7/21/2005 10:16:26 AM |
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Yipee-ki-yay...
Last Login: 8/14/2013 8:15:11 PM
Posts: 3,607,
Visits: 3,397
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Thanks, Paul (or do you prefer BATGOD?)
That explains a lot, even the "Partridge" car, which you can see a picture of hanging on my garage wall. If you're not already familiar with it, I think you would love vacuum infusion (NOT vacuum bagging.) You can spend all of the time in the world setting it up, come and go as you please until everything is perfect, just the way you want it and once you're ready you mix your resin and unclamp the tube(s). No mess, no fumes except those coming from the buckets and 10-15 minutes later it's completely wetted out. Of course that doesn't solve the storage problem. I attended a demonstration in Miami. This is a link to the pictures I took.
Vacuum Infusion Demo
This is my little plug building/mold making/fiberglass 101 project if you haven't already seen it. I've been around the fiberglass boat industry for years but always wanted to do a project of my own. This is an early photo, after I had just roughed out the basic shape...
This is a little later...
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| Posted 7/22/2005 3:38:56 AM |
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You reap what you sow
Last Login: 9/19/2023 12:52:32 AM
Posts: 7,314,
Visits: 29,372
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I can see why new people always have trouble with the site.
None of the thread ever stay on topic 
Who'd have thought we'd get so much technical stuff discussion in the After Hours Club.
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| Posted 7/22/2005 6:25:28 AM |
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Forum Member
Last Login: 3/27/2010 4:47:19 AM
Posts: 471,
Visits: 435
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Thanks, Paul (or do you prefer BATGOD?)
Hey Tim,
"Paul" works for me. I asked DH to put the BG title up there because it was a quick way to get a "feel" for the boardmembers.
Been reading this board since DH started it (Tossed him info for an annonymous post here and there)and have kept an interest in it for some time. I'm really happy with how far he's come in such a short time.
Ran into a little legal trouble about ten years ago (De-authenticated a "real" car. "Hey! It WAS fake, what was I supposed to do?") and was banned from using the "B" word in connection with my name on the internet or "Any Public Forum" as the paperwork stated. But now that I'm retired from the biz. I'm not using what I know to promote my business. (Not like I ever did anyway. I went out of my way to discourage people from buying a car from me. That kept me out of trouble when others went running for the hills.)
So I can pretty much talk about whatever I want. Won't talk about other manufacturers, won't talk about all the guys who worked on the film that took home car bodies for themselves. (One guy has even drywalled the 89 into his shop (I have some cool pics of that in this box!) And out of respect for clients and other builders, I will NEVER authenticate or de-authenticate any car or photo of a car that crosses my path.
As far as the general public is concerned.
"They're all REAL cars!"
Were they "screen-used"?
Don't have a clue... Were you there? How do you KNOW it wasn't there. I was there a few times... can't remember myself actually... might have been screen-used!
But I can tell you who built it!
So the night I "packed it in" as it were, I contacted DH and asked him to set me up on the board. Asked him for the BG ID, because I figured that the first time I posted something and got the
"Who the F#CK do you think YOU are???!!!" reply.
Well, that would be the last time I posted. I'd take my pics and my info and stuff it back in the closet.
Doesn't matter to ME.
I'm just having fun looking at all the "goings on" here on the board and checking out everyone's progress on their assorted projects. "In progress" pics are infinitely more interesting than pics of finished cars. Gives you a look into the builder's brain and thought process.
Everyone here's been great these past two weeks! So I'm hanging out and talking with everybody.
Won't do tech, because, you know what Bob told me the first time I asked him a tech question???
"F#CK YOU!!! Go figure it out yourself! You shouldn't be trying to build these things on your own if you can't figure out how to solve a few problems here and there! If you don't remember, you didn't pay enough attention to your buddy Jay and it's your own fault. STOP F#CKING THE GIRLS IN MALIBU AND GO FIGURE IT OUT!!!"
I swear to God, that's exactly what he said. :laugh
Man I miss him...:sad
After a few transports,sales reps for him and lunches at the Sequan Indian Reservation, he loosened up and gave me some sketches and diagrams and a handfull of really good intel. But the "Go figure it out!" comment still stuck with me and out of personal interest for the things I DID have to figure out myself. I know how to make the canopy pop open and track forward without motors or springs. I know what those holes are used for on the sides of the roof. I keep that kind of info pretty secret. I DID eventually write a manual. But to keep it out of EVERYONE'S hands, I only give out the first chapter to a customer and when their project has reached that level of completion, they get another chapter and so on. But if the "PROPERTY OF THE WAYNE FOUNDATION" manual ever hits the streets, I'll cut all of them off from the rest of their info.
So they've all been great about not copying it. 
As for the Vaccum Infusion... Yep... know about it. LOVE IT!!! The guy who started Code One with me is now the fueler for Thomas Enge's Indy car and lives in Indy. He's been working on Indy cars for the last ten years. I spend a lot of time at Panther Pennzoil racing and learned some great tricks for carbon fibre and kevlar sandwich construction. EVERY part is vaccum infused from the bodies to parts the size of a quarter.
It's really cool, but working with it is really more about being prepared to do the same item or type of item over and over. I hate that. I like carving stuff and throwing foam all over the place like snow. So hand-laid gelcoat over a foam and duct tape buck to make a mold is my favorite thing. I like making prototypes and "figuring it out!" Hand-laid glass works best for that.
But I really want to thank you for the info. Oh... and YES, my Partridge Bat pic on your wall was the second thing I noticed in your pic. I'm glad it was of help.
I love the car!  Keep up the good work and share pics with us as often as you can.
"Where does he get those wonderful toys?"
He MAKES them you idiot!
www.tunergirlz.com
www.codeoneauto.com
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| Posted 7/22/2005 7:22:14 AM |
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Yipee-ki-yay...
Last Login: 8/14/2013 8:15:11 PM
Posts: 3,607,
Visits: 3,397
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"Who the F#CK do you think YOU are???!!!"
If you've been reading this since DH started it then you know you won't get that here. For the most part we're pretty laid back and just like to shoot the shit, and we NEVER stay on topic. I like it that way.
"...my Partridge Bat pic on your wall was the second thing I noticed in your pic."
Okay, so what was the first thing?
The blue is gone forever...
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| Posted 7/22/2005 4:00:41 PM |
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You reap what you sow
Last Login: 9/19/2023 12:52:32 AM
Posts: 7,314,
Visits: 29,372
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| Posted 7/22/2005 4:04:51 PM |
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"Tardmonkey of the Year"
Last Login: 9/6/2011 12:10:05 AM
Posts: 3,367,
Visits: 4,625
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I miss the blue. 
------------------------
Design and sell your own custom t-shirts, on your existing MySpace page, for free! Download the AP Product Labs app from the app gallery, today.
http://www.myspace.com/approductlabs
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| Posted 7/22/2005 4:09:33 PM |
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You reap what you sow
Last Login: 9/19/2023 12:52:32 AM
Posts: 7,314,
Visits: 29,372
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We should make the blue one otherwise Tim might go MIA on us again.
So can you do it Justin? Since you did the original blue icon?
We can just keep both'em around.
Poor folks who visit the site but not the forum will never know what kind of batmobiles blue and white ones are.
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