Graydon's Miscellaneous Projects

'76 Corvette before'76 Corvette after Here's a '76 Corvette that I restored with my Father.  It was pretty rough when we started, but it turned out very well.  It was one of the tightest 'Vettes I have ever been in because we had a wrench on virtually every nut and bolt in the entire car.  I was in the 9th grade at the time we rebuilt this car.  I learned alot from this experience.  I learned I don't like bodywork. :-)

Honda CB125 This is a Honda CB125 for which I fabricated the fibreglass panels below the seat.  I then painted the panels and the gas tank to match.  I was only in the tenth grade at the time.  This was my first try at making moulds and pulling fibreglass parts.  I liked the paintwork though, so I tried my snowmobile next...

'72 Raider 340'72 Raider 340    This is a 1972 Raider 340 which originally was painted white.  I liked the black paint on the Honda, so I continued that trend.  I guess the red pinstripes were a bit over the top, but  I was young and lacked subtlety at the time. :-)  I learned that black shows body imperfections though, and before I was done, there were very few ripples in that paint.

Porsche 911 Turbo - c. GD Stuckey    After grade 13, I went to the Ontario College of Art to study Automotive design from an aesthetic standpoint.  This was a great place to learn design, and drawing.  Here's a 911 Turbo that I drew early in the program.  For more samples of my car drawings, go here.

'83 RX7 Photo H. Tomlinson'83 RX7 Photo H. Tomlinson    After Ontario College of Art, I spent a couple years working before starting my Engineering degree at GMI.  During this time, I got hooked on RX7s.  They were fun, fast (relatively) and fairly inexpensive.  This was actually my second one, which I used for autocrossing for a few years.  This car eventually sported a red & green argyle paint job like the Mazda that won LeMans in 1991.  If I ever dig up a photo of that, I'll post it here.

Prototype Seat Pan   Prototype Seat Pan    During GMI, I worked as a prototype builder at Integram, which later became Magna Seating Systems.  Here is a sheet metal seat pan for a prototype seat that I built using flat sheets of steel.  The steel was worked by cutting and welding until it looked like a single sheet of steel which had been pressed in a punch press.  This was alot of work!

Wankel expansion chamberWankel expansion chamberWankel expansion chamber    One of the things I have always wanted to try on a Mazda rotary was to design and build tuned expansion chambers such as are used on 2-stroke engines to see if they could be made to work on a rotary.  This is the first prototype that I built for an '86 13B.  These were modified a few times and so far are producing as much power as the best conventional exhaust system that we could find.  This project is currently on the back burner as I don't have a normally aspirated RX7 on which to test these pipes.  If I ever get another RX7 without a turbo, then I will continue this development.

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