Weight!!

Since I weigh less than 150 lbs and the Honda engine is lighter than the Ford engine, I need to add a lot of weight to get up to the minimum weight.  I figure I'm going to have to add a least 60 pounds and probably more.  I want the weight as low as possible and since most of the weight of the car is in the back, I want as much weight towards the front of the car as well.  So, I ordered 60 pounds of lead sheet.  Some of it is 1/16" inch thick and most of it is 1/8" thick.  The 1/16" thick lead is for the areas in between the extra bits of steel that Eric welded onto the frame and I can stack the 1/8" pieces can be stacked on top.  Lead is very soft so it actually came in rolls.

The 1/8" lead was a little bit of a challenge to unroll and here is a pic of the lead unrolled.

In order to get it flat so that I can work with it, I simply beat it with a hammer and a board.

Lead isn't exactly the safest stuff in the world and it oxidizes so I wanted to do something to cover it.  I came up with the idea of using Monokote.  I had never used it before but it is used to cover the wings of model airplanes.  It will stick (really melt) to itself using a heat gun and it acually shrinks a little bit as well.  It should be very resistent to different chemicals like oil and gas as well.  Here is a pic of a piece of lead covered in Monokote.

And a pic of it installed.

For the 1/8" thick pieces, I simply drilled holes in the first piece where the rivets were just like I did with the plywood that is underneath the fuel cell.  So far I have about 40 lbs of lead installed.  Here is a pic of the battery box and the fire extinguisher holder installed on top of some lead.  The hobby shop was out of black Monokote so I had to use blue.