Soul Cycle Mothership, a molded fiberglass speaker cabinet for bicycles.

After creating 5 or so fully custom Soul Cycles, painstakingly, one at a time, I needed a way to create attractive cabinets in a fraction of the time. So I invested extra time in the process of making a mold to be able to reproduce an attractive curved form in fiberglass. Now Rock the Bike can bust out a Soul Cycle Mothership in about a week, not months like the previous custom bikes.

Step 1 Sketch shape you wish to mold, keeping in mind undercuts in molding process

An example of an easy shape to mold would be a beach ball. An example of a hard shape to mold to would be a stegosaurus. What makes the stegosaurus harder? It has features like legs, that will make a left / right mold unable to pull apart. The spikes on a stegasaurus' back would create steep draft angles that would make a top/bottom mold difficult but possible to release cleanly.

For my bicycle music system, I chose a shape that was relatively easy to mold with a left / right mold.

Comments

[Duke Luke]

What kind of foam do you use? And where can I get it (as well as these other materials)?

[abadfart]

very nice but id mount it like the tank off of a motorcycle   

[supercrazytutorials]

supe woow man amazing

[[insert username here]]

how did you get the right shape for the inner panels?

[trebuchet03]

Hey FossilFool! I was in SF this past summer and saw your Choprical Fish ride at the bike music festival (I've seen it in photos before, but seeing it in action is a different story)... It was inspiring enough for me to make a bike sound system using a megaphone amplifier and boombox speaker.... But that wasn't enough for me. It was nice for riding, but far from a the party bike I so wanted to recreate. It's unfinished as of yet - I need to upholster it, make a longer kickstand, add lighting (built into upholstery), etc... Thanks for the inspiration! The instructable will be ready shortly after the project is done :D

[zeroemission]

hey... cool ride there "catapault" i wish i had a sun EZ so i could build a recumbent party bike. then you can cruise all day comfortably. unfortunately, where i am, fools that have sun EZs want list price for them 2+ years old! huh? nice job on the fabrication too. as you don't have an actual webpage to link to, you mind if i post your pic on my street party bike site?

[BobicusIX]

Awwww..... I thought it looked like it was gonna be like gel to the touch..... i was really disappointed when you didn't use gel and such

[cacaloz]

if falling rain??? but it very good.

[Yerboogieman]

what kind of amp is in there?

[nagutron]

This is amazing! The lighting effects are great. We really could have used one of these at 19th and Valencia on Tuesday night when everyone was out dancing in the street after the election :)

[dark sponge]

Awesome! You should enter it into the light up your ride contest!

[John Smith]

thats one badass amoeba. ha, this is actually very cool, i love it. +1

[alex-sharetskiy]

you might want to seat the speaker box, you will get much better, lower bass

also consider filling it with acousta-stuf

great instructable!

How many Amp Hours is your battery?