2011 Production Log Entry 7: Vent Design

Sunday, May 1st, 2011 (7 hours) (Daren – 2 hours)

Another busy day today.  I spent a number of hours putting window screen onto the “conductor” bars for the back.  It looked good with two layers on it.  Then I decided that it would look even better if there was a black backing panel behind the lights, so I painted up some cardboard and glued it to the back.

Daren came over later and we worked on the reactor and vent area at the back of the Jeep.  The jury’s still out as to whether the spare tire will stay on or not for filming (probably not) but we’ve got a good plan for mounting the materials back there that will work either way.  The key is creating something that is easy to put on and take off, so I can continue to use my Jeep normally when we’re not shooting.  We’ve designed a board that will sandwich between the rear roll bar points and the tailgate, and everything will be mounted on that.  Gravity will keep it in place and it will easily lift out when not in use.

Daren took the lead on designing the vents for the back of the Jeep, one of the most pronounced features of the DeLorean.  One of the difficult things about doing this is that when looking at photos online, it’s hard to tell the fan-created cars from photos of the real movie DeLoreans.  So there are slight differences across the board and sometimes we’re not sure what it’s supposed to look like.  And the movie itself only offers so many views of the car.

At any rate, we’ve got a good solid design for the vents that Daren is going to cut out mostly from MDF composite wood, and we’ll use some slide-in sheet metal for the centers of the vents. The vents will bolt down to the wooden base with a couple of lag bolts.  The reactor itself will be created from a combination of wood, an oil drain pan, a worthless 8-lug steel rim, an old Ford hubcap, and some other random parts.  Trivia note: In researching online I found that the base of the original reactor was created from a Dodge Polara hubcap.

Still lots to do but I might have it done in a few weekends.