"If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."

For fans of the Back to the Future trilogy, you'll recognize this quote as the line that Marty delivers to his father, George when they meet in 1955. For @CO and me, it was our mantra as we worked through our DeLorean time machine build.

It's taken us several weeks to realize our vision and we've shared a series of sneak peeks along the way. Check out these posts for details on how we built the:

License Plate

 

 

Taillights and Reactor Vents

 

 

Plutonium Chamber

 

 

The project started when we decided it was time to organize our hodge-podge collection of hardware.

We searched the web for "DIY hardware storage"  inspiration, but all of the results looked pretty much the same - a bunch of boxes inside of boxes.

Of course, this makes sense, because it's arguably the most efficient, space-saving way to store and organize hardware. For Chinloo and me, though, we wanted to make something that was a bit more fun!

In much the same was as we took inspiration from a Survivor Immunity Idol to build an Ouroboros drill bit holder...

 

...we looked to one of our favorite movie trilogies to inspire this build!

The reactor vents on the DeLorean time machine look like those efficient, space-saving cubbies you see in other DIY builds, but the rest of the vehicle is chock full of potential!

So we jumped right into SOLIDWORKS to model a scale version of the vehicle and jam pack it full of clever storage solutions. The main structure of the car was modeled off of a refence image we found online.

We used the "Split" command to divide the model into the various pieces we'd need to fabricate out of 3/4" MDF. Most of them were cut using a CNC router, but some were cut using traditional power tools like our table saw and miter saw.

The pieces were glued together like a layer cake and then further sculpted using files, rasps, and sand paper.

We did our best to get as smooth a surface finish as we could, so we spent a fair amount of time with wood putty, filler primer, and sandpaper to even out the layer lines, and any divots or nail holes we made.

After all the parts were primed, we spray painted the body a metallic silver, and the bumper and reactor vents a satin black.

Of course, completing the build required a lot of other work on things like the taillights, the license plate, the plutonium chamber, and more. We used SOLIDWORKS and xDesign to model all of the parts and shared details about them in the posts I've linked above. So do check them out too!

Be sure to check out the full video to see how all of the details of this epic project came together.

 

 

 

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