AddParts3

On the first page of this section I asked if anyone had one of the vintage Weiand blower front covers to please contact me. The part that is even harder to find is the swing arm that mounts to the cover that holds the pulley that keeps tension on the blower belt.

Having seen good pictures of them I decided I could machine one myself. The original part is cast aluminum so I had to consider that "look" while figuring out how I was going to machine one. A friend with one of these swing arms took good dimensions for me and I drew it up in CAD. Here is the wire frame drawing of the part.

And then I of course rendered it with an aluminum finish. Some of the things that I took into consideration to make the part look cast was to be sure to machine all inside corners with a radius like a casting would have. I also rounded off all the outside corners as well.

After machining it out of a piece of billet aluminum it looked really nice, except it looked, well, machined. Otherwise I was very happy with it.

The next step was to smooth out all the machining marks and then to sand blast it so that it had a cast looking finish on it. To enhance the part even more to appear cast it even has a spot of "porosity" which occurs in a casting, along with a corner that perhaps didn't fill in the mold quite right. Yes, I am very detail oriented.

And here is the finished part next to a picture of an original part. Though the pictures were not taken at exactly the same angles I think it still shows how close my reproduction part is to the original. I am very pleased with it. Mine is the one on the right.