This is another retroactive post on something I worked on sometime ago.

I wanted avoid permanently attaching the side vents to the skins to allow more flexibility, but it’s not as easy as just making a simple bracket and screwing it to something like you could on a wooden frame.

I’d experimented with a few different methods but wasn’t happy with any of them, and I was convinced I’d end up using silicon to stick the vents to the skins permanently.

But at the last minute I gave this idea a shot – I tried attaching an aluminum plate to the back of the vents and hoped that a combination of sandwiching them between the opening in the skins and the pressure from the new aluminum plate from the inside would hold everything in place.

I took some of the same aluminum sheet I used for the side panels.

And cut squares that were slightly bigger than the vents and bent them to roughly the same curvature of the body.

This a shot of the new plate from the inside of the frame covering the side vent hole

I then used silicon to attach the plate to the backside of the vents

Then it was just a matter of waiting for the silicon to dry and wedging  them between the skins.