Engine - Engine Cover

You might remember, almost 2 years ago now, when I first bought the engine, that I was giving thought to how I might make an engine cover to hide the engine a bit. Not so much to make it look like something other than a Lexus V8 but more so to make it a bit more appealing.

Click on this link, it will take you back to that post. "Engine - Engine Cover Design"

When I came up with that design I was only doing it from pictures as the actual engine was down in Wellington with Phil who of course wired it all up and got it running for me.

As far as the design was concerned I wasn't really that happy with it as it was pretty much still like the original one smoothed off a bit and with a fancy paint job. Since then I have been able to look at the actual engine now that its home and come up with a few more ideas.

I didn't want to try and make the engine look like a Ford or a Chev....its not.....and I don't mind that it is a Lexus or if anyone knows that. I just want it to look a bit better finished and maybe a bit more refined.

A big part of being able to do this was shifting the inlet pipe to the rear of the engine, which I did about 6 months ago. Click here to see that post "Engine - Intake Manifold Modifications" This paved the way for me to be able to make a cover that fitted more snuggly to the engine and one that was symmetrical.

So......armed with a rubbish bin, two sheets of cardboard, some poster tubes, plenty of masking tape and some plastic tubing I decided to get what was in my head onto the engine.....with a few tweaks and modifications as I went.

I want to make the engine cover out of Fibreglass and ultimately it will be painted to match the car. This will allow the shiny bits to be shown off while hiding all the uglies underneath.

After looking around a bit I decided a rubbish bin would be the basis for my engine cover.  What was even better was the fact that it was a two for one deal at the Warehouse, so I even got a new rubbish bin for the shed too!

To get underway I lay the bin on its side and waited for night to come! 

Then I grabbed my new toy (its a set square that allows me to project a flat laser beam at various angles) and I turned the lights out and projected a line onto the bin. I then marked the line using pinstripe masking tape.

After marking one side I lay some perpendicular lines across the bin.

Then added a centre line.

From the centre line I was able to measure out the other side and mark it. Then I cut the shape out using a sharp knife.

Here is the first part of the cover sitting on top of the engine.

That was fairly easy but the hard work was about to begin. This is where I had to hide all the ugly stuff you can see in the picture above, that lives between the black plastic cover I just made and the aluminium cam covers with the ribbed plastic strip running down the centre.

So here goes......first attempt. I thought what I would do was lay masking tape over the engine, and then fill over the top of that with papier mache.....yep thats right, just like we used to do at art class in school.

Here is the engine all masked up.

In this next pic you can see I have added some tubes. The idea of these is to make it look like they form part of the air intake. This has two purposes....the first is to take the plainness away as these will be polished stainless or chrome, so they add a bit of a feature.

Secondly though, the Lexus engine has some ugly big black boxes at the front of the engine and I want to hide them, so by having this inlet arrangement I can cover the black plastic cam boxes and make them look like they are part of the air intake too. You will get what I mean a bit later on.

Now after doing all that I decided I couldn't be bothered with all that papier mache and that I could do better with cardboard, so I taped a sheet into place on one side of the engine to see if I could get a better result. Here's what it looks like now.

And here is a side on view.

In this next pic you can see a pocket that I intend ducting those pipes into. If you double click on this picture to the right of that pocket you can see the big square black cam box. That will also be covered as I mentioned above and will hopefully look like it is part of the air intake.

From the front of the engine I needed to fabricate a panel to cover the ugly bits on top of the front of the engine. Here I have the cardboard in place and cut to go around the radiator hoses.

Here it is cut further and folded into place. The Mickey Mouse ear looking bits are the front of the covers that will hide those black plastic cam boxes.

And now, here it is all in place with the mocked up tubes in position.

Another view of the same thing.

And another look from the front. I am kinda happy with this, but still a long way to go.

So next up, I want to cover these plastic cam boxes.

This is where the cardboard tube came into play. Looks much tidier already.

Next up I completed the top of the engine by putting more cardboard in place and another piece of the cardboard tube over the cam box on the other side. 

Once I had done that the cover looked a bit plain so I created these "nostrils" to make it look a bit more functional. Then by adding the plastic cover I made from the rubbish bin earlier it is starting to look a bit better and certainly a lot different from original. 

Its amazing what 24 hours and a few minutes reviewing the previous nights work does. I decided the "nostrils" looked a bit crude, so I came up with a different plan. Firstly I took a section out of the cardboard tube a bit like I did with the rubbish bin above.

Here it is cut out.

Then I laid that on top of the engine cover as a pattern to draw around.

I then cut out that piece and turned the section of the cardboard tube over to turn it into a scoop. Here it is taped into position. I like this much better. The black tube sticking out of the vent hole will be removed later and I will fashion a grill that can be chromed/polished to fit in the opening.

Now that is done, I set about taping the plastic top cover into place. This covers all the throttle cables and linkages at the back of the engine.

Here's what it looks like from the front. 

So what is this funny shaped bit for?

Taped in place it flares out from the top cover to hide more of the ugly bits at the back of the engine.

Here is another view of the same piece.

I then fashioned a top panel to join that "wing" to the black plastic top cover.

What I also noticed while doing all this was that line the sides of the top black cover made, were pretty much in line with the small scoop I made earlier. You can see this if you look again at this picture below. Draw a line along the side of the black cover and it lines up with the side of the scoop.

So here it is again with those lines blended together. The two bits look like they belong together. Now we are cooking!

Okay so what was that plastic tubing for?

I am using it to give the edges some definition and depth. At a later point i will build up the surface above the tube and then the cover will have a nice round edge over the tube. You'll see more on this later, so don't worry if it doesn't make sense just yet.

Here is some more of the tubing taped in.

I also ran a length of the tube down the centre of the top cover. Again this will just add a feature that will make it look a bit more refined. Anyway this next picture is where I am up to. Really starting to take shape now. I'm still not happy with all aspects but I will develop it more as I go and I think it is at least on the right track.

Compare it to what it looked like originally....poles apart.