Monday, 25 May 2009

Screen power: enhanced



Armed with 2 sheets of 3mm 50cm x 50cm perspex (one clear, plus one in a very light blue tint, shown in the picture), plus a few hours sans kiddies, I had a go at bodging up a replacement for the PUIG screen. I should note that the PUIG did hold together fine, and in fact isn't a bad screen for the price, it's just that I wanted something a little bigger, and I'd cracked the PUIG when fitting the 8" screen to the 7" light on the Huonaio. With hindsight, I could definitely have avoided that by heating the screen before fitting.

The screen fabrication was pleasantly straightforward. A 7" plate provided a handy template for a semicircular hole in the bottom edge. A narrow fine toothed jigsaw blade easily followed the inside of the curve. Then I angled the sides into a basic inverted pyramidal shape, added a gentle curve to the top edge, and nibbled a little off the rear lower corners in order not to foul the indicator stalks.

Then it was out with the paintstripper heat gun, and the shaping was begun. It's a fairly simple process, it just requires patience and re-adjustments to get the lower sides curved in to fit the sides of the headlight, and a gentle curve across the whole screen. Clamping the bottom edges where the screen will attach to the headlight between (e.g.) two pieces of wood helps to keep them flat, or else it's easy to end up with very warped lower edges. If you're doing this yourself for the first time, then just take your time, move the gun steadily back and forth across the piece where you want the bend so that it doesn't get scorched, and don't force the perspex; once it gets up to temperature, it suddenly becomes very pliable.

Late in the process, I noticed that I'd stuffed up the top edge a bit, and I had to go back in with the jigsaw to even it up. Since the screen was curved by this point, I couldn't lay it properly flat, and managed to add a small crack. Ah, I can live with it.

The screen is attached just by bolting it to the headlight mounts, with 8mm holes drilled as far from the edges as I could manage. Just go up the bits one mm at a time and go very gently, and the perspex shouldn't crack. When I was doing the bolts up, I noticed that the twisted bottoms of the screen still weren't quite square, so I heated them up again gently while doing up the bolts. One side did crack very slightly, but I'm hoping that it holds together. If not, I can do the whole screen over, and this time I can just use the first attempt as a template to shape a second screen. Score!

It's a relatively tall screen, but it's resting against the instrument binnacle (and could be secured to it with a spare number plate sticky-pad that I'm sure I have somewhere), so I'm fairly happy that it's supported well enough. Actually, even at 50cm tall, it still manages to direct the airflow right onto my face... gaaaah. I'm not sure I want to go taller, but now I'm thinking... hmmm... could I lower the seat a bit?

Well, idle hands make for the devil's work, don't they?

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