My Fall/Winter project - Turbo Desk Art

[blue-sun]

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

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.

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.



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:

VF39 imprint

Busted/bent wheel

Something's missing?

Housing off

inside of compressor

Remainder mounted

Mounting bolts

Starting to sand

more sanding

cleaned off sanding residue

not much difference at this point

 

[GlossyTundra]

Thats really cool first off.



I have the same project in the works. My turbo is from a Caterpillar bulldozer!

 

[Setec Astronomy]

Boy, it's going to be a lot of work to sand the texture off of that casting. And when you do, and "mirror" polish it, it's going to have a wavy appearance to it from the hand sanding (or even machine sanding, because of the shape), like a bad panel on your car. If you want it to be shiny, I'd leave it as it is and have it chrome plated. Just my two cents.

 

[blue-sun]

Thats really cool first off.



I have the same project in the works. My turbo is from a Caterpillar bulldozer!

Thanks! Let's see pics of yours! The turbo on a Cat bulldozer has to be HUGE!

Boy, it's going to be a lot of work to sand the texture off of that casting. And when you do, and "mirror" polish it, it's going to have a wavy appearance to it from the hand sanding (or even machine sanding, because of the shape), like a bad panel on your car. If you want it to be shiny, I'd leave it as it is and have it chrome plated. Just my two cents.

I did the hot pipe in my old MR2.



Got the motor swapped and the pipe looked like this:

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.

 

[Setec Astronomy]

Well, you do what you want, that pipe was an easier shape than that housing, and IMO you'll have a really tough time around that lettering and getting it to look uniform. Let us know how it comes out.