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Clear Poly carbonate see threw valve covers!!



suitercrew said:
Why engine fire? I agree with crazy guy, I'm sure with time they would get gunked up but I wonder if there is some kind of coating you could spray on the inside so that wouldn't happen or let's say it took 10k miles to get gunked up. Then I would be fine pulling off the front cover to clean it every 10k. That's like once a year almost

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I was referring to Scotty's soda bottles...lol
 
The tooling to even make them would cost a few thousand dollars to produce, minimum. You couldn't just use a factory cover as a mold either. You'd have to build a vacuum box, then factor in shrinkage of the plastic and then find a facility with the ability to thermoform it.

It would end up requiring a large commitment to make a quality product then it would still cost several hundred dollars for just the front cover and in the end it would be blackened and nasty by the first oil change.
 


stealthee said:
The tooling to even make them would cost a few thousand dollars to produce, minimum. You couldn't just use a factory cover as a mold either. You'd have to build a vacuum box, then factor in shrinkage of the plastic and then find a facility with the ability to thermoform it.

It would end up requiring a large commitment to make a quality product then it would still cost several hundred dollars for just the front cover and in the end it would be blackened and nasty by the first oil change.
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Stop being so da* practicul and stuff! No one wants that sh*t lol

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suitercrew said:
Yass!! Super cheap!! I just don't know if the material they use with those printers can withstand the heat.

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There's 3D printers that can use steel as the printing material, so I'm sure there's a way to do it with a clear, heat resistant plastic of some form.
 
Well which one of you guys wants to buy a few thousand dollar 3d printer? I'll chip in 2 dollars!

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stealthee said:
It would end up requiring a large commitment to make a quality product then it would still cost several hundred dollars for just the front cover
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Yeah, definitely. Probably why whoever was contacted needed to sell at least 10 at a cost of $2-$300ea.

Plastics range in all areas, transparency, melting point, scratch resistance, etc. It says the lexan for r/c bodies gets pliable at 297 degrees f. Those are incredibly thin, imagine a tougher plastic with more thickness.

Forming it takes a block of polished aluminum the size of the object, plus the CNC time to turn out a mold. Estimated cost could really be like the contact said, $2-$3,000 or "thousands of dollars."
 
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problem is that the polycarbonate will frost white after high temps

not worth it unless you are looking to test valvetrain stability with a high speed camera, and even then youd notch the side so you could see the pushrod/rocker/spring in profile
 
SaukRapids said:
Yeah, definitely. Probably why whoever was contacted needed to sell at least 10 at a cost of $2-$300ea.

Plastics range in all areas, transparency, melting point, scratch resistance, etc. It says the lexan for r/c bodies gets pliable at 297 degrees f. Those are incredibly thin, imagine a tougher plastic with more thickness.

Forming it takes a block of polished aluminum the size of the object, plus the CNC time to turn out a mold. Estimated cost could really be like the contact said, $2-$3,000 or "thousands of dollars."
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Yeah, I used to work in thermoforming. Initial tooling is not cheap. Initial costs on some of our molds were in excess of $30,000.

Facilities capable of actually doing thermoforming are getting harder to find too. Even if you did you would probably have to commit to a few hundred to even get a facility to make it worth their time to take it on.
 
Mr Gasket used to sell them, and clear distributor caps too. Parts failed miserably. Valvecovers get slopped with oil while running, and if oil is dark valve covers get dark too.
 


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