Ivan's coupe: seeing RED

[Ivan141]

Little update because it is kinda cool (imo): I bought an aerodynamic (flip-up) grille from japan that was missing all its thermostatic bits that need to be plumbed into the cooling system. Thinking I was never really up for the whole plumbing adventure anyway, I got a little linear actuator to replace the wax element that is supposed to open the grille.

Had a tinkering session in the garage yesterday to test the principle, so here goes:

The actuator is a tiny 15mm stroke thing from china. Fit's easy enough with just a little opening up of the hole it passes through and a little bracket that just bolts on to the grille.
Took me 2 attempts to get it about right, I needed to mount it further inboard toward the hinge to get it to open (almost) all the way.
The mounting hole on the hinge was welded shut and drilled + tapped to accept an M3 screw. Here's a picture of the setup:


To finish it, it will need a small H-bridge pcb to take care of inverting the power source for changes of direction. I intend to try to make the wiring compatible with what the foglight grille requires so I can swap styles easily without any wiring worries.

The car itself is one day of sanding removed from it's first expeditions to the paint shop. I'll be finishing the sills and rear next saturday, after that we need a proper paint booth for the following steps.