Been quiet for awhile with all the COVID stuff going on but been doing a few little jobs, currently the car is without its rear driveshaft as the shop still has it and hasn't been able to source some parts for it... this has lead to many a long hour on Carsales looking at more Jeeps
Since the car isn't going anywhere I decided to try making myself a new air intake pipe, I'd been wanting to do this for some time as the stock suitcase has a way of always being in the way meaning the start to any activity is to remove it.
After looking at a few options I took a deep breath and hacked up the stock item, it actually has a pipe that is outlined externally so using a cut off wheel, saws, a dremel and tin snips I removed all the excess.
Now that I had it all shaped up I was trying to figure out how to seal it all, or create a copy or if I could just use some silicone race tape to seal it. I ended up finding some good videos of people using fibreglass tape that is used by the medical profession (this was a few months back) to shape it up so I gave that a shot (cost about $10 on Amazon). Despite just looking like cloth tape, this is actually rock hard.
This gave it shape and was actually very strong, what it wasn't was airtight! So now that I had that as a base closing up all the major holes I started fibreglassing it up with both resin and matting for the larger holes and just resin on the areas already sealed. Gave it a sand and a test fit to check it hadn't gone out of shape.
Then applied the final coat of resin to really seal it up, I ended up putting some Sikaflex on the inside of the tube to cover all the joins and holes from the inside which I now thing might have been overkill. Thinking I might give it some paint to finish it off but pretty happy with how it turned out, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it but reasonably confident that its all sealed up nicely.
