TerraTrike Velomobile Skinning Is Completed!

Yesterday and today I put the finishing touches to skinning the velomobile.  Here are the latest photos and info about the process of my work.

Here once again is the velomobile body before I added the framing to complete the skinning of the vehicle and get the correct finished shape of the cockpit.

Yesterday I fiber glassed three sides of a six foot section of styrofoam that was then cut down to make a strip one inch square. As the one side of the foam would be facing the underside of the foam strips of the skin it did not have to be fiber glassed.  Pieces of the six foot section were then cut and fitted into the velomobile as you see here.

I then laid down the last of the styrofoam strips to complete the look of the body that I wanted in a little over an hour.  A big improvement on how the cockpit now looks compared to the first photo and a nice finished look to the body as well.

I also have been doing tweaking to the hood of the velomobile as you can see by this photo.  The white on the hood is a fiber glass resin micro-balloon mixture that makes a putty like substance that is very light weight and helps fill voids in the hood.  This is laid down first to get the shape smoothed out as much as possible before the hood and the rest of the body are fiber glassed on the outside.  Time consuming as it can be but worth it in the end to get a nice smooth surface for painting.  

  So now the body has been completely skinned and I will move on to the next steps in the construction. That being, installing the housings for the signal lights (front and rear) and the access doors also at the rear of the vehicle.  I should have this done over the next couple of days and I'll post more info and photos of that part of the construction when I can.  I hope you enjoy the photos and are having a good day in your shop too!