My Fall/Winter project - Turbo Desk Art

blue-sun

Member
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2008.5 Mazdaspeed3
So a while back someone on the MR2 board posted this up:

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So I wanted to improve on that design and make my own desk art.

This past weekend I was at DS1 Motorsports just chilling and they have a blown VF39 (wheel missing completely from the turbine side and some decent bends of the fins on the compressor side), so I took it home and started working on it.

Cleaned it up with brake cleaner then some heavy duty all purpose cleaner.

Then I removed the moutning bolts and came up with a position that it would look good in, marked the holes and started drilling them out.

Last night I spray painted the wood block and mounting bolts that I'm going to use.

Here's a pic of it cleaned and mocked up on my kitchen island.

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The plan for this week will be to remove the compressor housing and start to sand it smooth so that I can polish it to a mirror finish.

Then I'm gonna get some diamond plating and cover at least the top of the base and she'll pretty much be done.

Here's a pic of 2 of the mounting bolts painted. I think these were from my MR2, so I'm looking for a 3rd bolt on the MR2 forums to make sure the turbo is secure on the base.

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bolt2.jpg


Next step is to remove the compressor housing and start the sanding/polishing.

Tonight I did a bit more legwork on it, I took the compressor housing off. mounted the rest of the turbo to the temporary wooden piece.

Unfortunately, the only sand paper I could find in my garage was very light, 1000 grit was the harshest. I went to town on it briefly with the 1000 grit, but I definitely will be stopping and getting some 200, 400, 600, 800 etc paper this weekend and doing more work on it.

Pics:
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VF39 imprint
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Busted/bent wheel
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Something's missing?
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Housing off
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inside of compressor
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Remainder mounted
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Mounting bolts
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Starting to sand
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more sanding
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cleaned off sanding residue
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not much difference at this point
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Looks pretty cool man. Have you thought about maybe leaving it partially disassembled and making an exploded view?
 
Looks pretty cool man. Have you thought about maybe leaving it partially disassembled and making an exploded view?

Thanks!

Nope, maybe if I do another one for my garage in the future I could do something like that, but this one's going at my desk @ work, so assembled and polished.
 
Thanks guys!

I took the dremel that I had and the steele brush attachment to it last night. it makes it slightly shinier. not much though. Then I took a small sandpaper attachment to it and the paper comes off of it, so I gotta do this b**** by hand.
 
Cool idea. I really like it David!

Thanks!

http://www.dremel.com/en-us/Attachm...oducts.aspx?catid=66&catname=Polishing+Wheels

Felt pads and polishing compund if you have a bench grinder you can get the felt pads from home depot and polishing compound as well. It will be polished in about a day or two.

I've got a generic dremel that I got for x-mas a few years back from my dad. It's got some felt pads and polishing wheels too, but again they are all off-brand. I need to get a real dremel one day if I do any more.

David,
This website should really help. They should also be able to tell you what to use to get the most out of it.

http://www.swmetal.com/cart/search?category=Polishing Compounds

Thanks for the links! I may look into those.

I have done this before though it was a while ago and I had access to a bench grinder and some polished at a shop. This is a trial and error type of thing for me and something to occupy myself with this winter indoors.

I did the hot pipe in my old MR2.

Got it like this:
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and with lots of sanding and polising it looked like this when I sold that car. Not quite as nice as the chromed pipe, but not bad either.

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