Doors look amazing :agree:
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Doors look amazing :agree:
thats some cracking work, very impressed with all the parts so far, are you going to be looking to sell parts once you have all the molds done, may well be interested in some parts for mine :agree:
Yes I could, as long as there's agreement on the expected surface quality and price. You'll propably know how much labour and material costs are involved in epoxy laminates if done properly.
I'll also basicly have to modify my molds to be able to produce multiple parts out of them. They currently don't have any extension in the outer edges from needed geometry which makes releasing parts mold wearing. After making extensions I can also use most of them with infusion to produce parts with less variation and higher fiber volumes.
sounds like a plan , put me down for a set of doors when your ready :cool::D
CF progress list updated ;)
Weight 1570g wo fixings, anyone has OE bumper which they could scale?
It had few small air bubbles trapped between mold surface and first layer. Nothing that can't be fixed with little epoxy and sanding.
Amazing work, finish wouldnt be an issue imo.
Thanks guys. There's more to come but it's still curing.
As promised, here is the next mould for LH CF door outer skin. It was done differently than the others before mainly because Renault uses uber-thin sheetmetal in the doors and I can't use vacuum pressures to help here. Result is quite spotless luckily. I could make part straight away from this, but I'll propably make extensions to outer edges first. It makes laminating and vacuum bagging more easy.
On the inner skin I will use vacuum but I had to fill the door with PU foam to support the pressure. I will try to make this mould next before hidden rust under the filler starts come visible. :)
epic work !! surface finish wouldnt be an issue for me as i would paint for that OE look just fancy shedding a few pounds and have fewer parts that can rust :laugh:
keep up the good work cant wait to see the car done, power to weight ratio is going to be incredible
Yes, rust was one of the reasons why I started doing this. At least here in Finland it's quite impossible to find any R5 or Clio mk1 doors which don't have any rust between outer and inner door skins at the bottom inside. One company imports parts from France and it's almost as worse. The design against rust is quite poor in these doors. Renault propably meant that the cars should be recycled after 10 years of age before having these kind of issues.
Harri, truly great work. Wings would be great if you ever get round to doing a few sets:agree:
People like you will keep the car alive!:agree:
Awesome work here! You really should look into making a batch :D
Lots off people would be interested i think.
I could make a front wing set which has white, sandable gelcoat surface (for easy painting) and 4layers of 300g/m2 glass fiber with epoxy resin underneath. It will be light and strong while maintaining decent costs. Also you won't have any galvanic corrosion issues which CF can cause. I can use 200g/m2 Carbon as well but it will increase material costs by roughly 60€/wing. The wings will have the OE sheetmetal wing and GTT arch extensions combined, check my CF wing in previous pictures. If you're still interested I can calculate the cost and quote courier price for delivery.
for panels which will be painted that would be a far better solution imo:agree:
I just saw pictures of James5 CF vinyl wrap roof and realised that I need to do the same, just without vinyl. Luckily my mother in law is giving me gtx r5 for spares which I will use as roof donator. The car will never get finished.
For a set of carbon fibre wings which bolt straight on with archs thats great price :agree:
For me i would be interested in rear bumper,lower light trims, upper light trims, rear archs and boot trim if you ever decied to replicate them again.
I think i would want sections of carbon showing so wouldn't want a white gel coat on them
Ah sorry, £450 was for the glass fiber ones. Carbon front wings would be £120 more for a set. I can calculate pricing for the parts you mentioned. Did you want Carbon or painted finish?
What i wanted to do with them was paint sections of them and then have carbon areas on show so not sure whats best way to do it? Back bumper would be all carbon on show so no paint
I'm in no rush for stuff as still got to finish last few bits on the car but least can gauge how much i'll need when come to wanting them
Ok, then they should be without gelcoat definetly. The parts will be supplied without clear coating which you should paint for long term protection against UV radiation. You can use standard PU-based 2K clear coat. You can also paint the parts partly before clear coating and you should get decired finish. For these parts you will need to make fixings and trim off 2 - 4mm of extra material I'll leave on the outer edges. If there are any dry spots, I will fill them with same epoxy and sand down the spot. After clear coat you can't see them anymore. There might be pinholes in the parts however which can be filled with proper clear coat. The picture I attached shows typical pinholes, they aren't that large and are process related. Also aligment of fiber woven pattern is difficult which is why you can't expect the fiber aligment to be 100% similar on LH and RH parts.
Prices without postage:
-Rear bumper, 4 layers of carbon ~1mm thick, £620
-Boot trim (not the boot!), 4 layers of carbon (5 in the area where the handle is for extra stiffness), 1/1,25mm thick, £165
-Rear arches (both), 4 layers of carbon ~1mm thick, £380
-Upper&lower light trims (four parts), 3 layers of carbon ~0,75mm thick, £250
I will require 10% downpayment (paypal) when you decide to make order and we have agreed on delivery costs and time.
Thats cool mate, those pin holes don't look bad at all and as you say once its clear coated they will be sealed up anyway
Totally understand about matching woven pattern, know its impossible to do so its cool ;) Its only for my drag car so not too worried
Once i'm ready i will let you know mate and send 10% deposit over to you, we'll arrange postage too. Thanks very much for sorting prices :agree:
No problem. Since it's drag car I understand why you asked just the rear parts. People don't see anything more than that when you're accelerating like these rockets do:cool:
I wonder should anybody be trying to get into the 10's with a C1J, other than making say 400+ BHP how else could they get over the line quicker;)
LH Door inner mould done. It really paid off to fill and smooth all those holes and some unnecessary surfaces. It has two dry spots which can be fixed easily with some gel, sanding and polishing. Im starting to think that the carbon doors will look so good when finished that I won't install my carbon door cards to hide all that epoxy-cf-porn inside :D
:agree::eek::D:goodJob:
There are some seriously talented people on RTOC
I'd definetly be leaving the carbon on show.
You seem to be getting better and better Harri.Great work. Just need to find £2000 from somewhere to get me some goodies. :D
Yes, they have gotten better. Mostly after starting to use that blue gelcoat somewhere around page 2. With the doors I'll try to improve moulds even more by doing extensions all over outer edges. It should make actual part making a lot easier. Downside is increased costs and labour for the mould.
Same funding problem here, making these has been eating far more funds than originally planned. Im running out of everything currently so I might just have time to actually fit recent parts soon. Maybe even drive the car during summer?
Today between applying release agent coats (this means that part list should be soon updated) I found myself not having anything else to do than actually trial fit parts I've made. Bumper is still not 100% in right place but fitment seems to be as good as OE. I just need to do mountings for bumper and rear arches now. Poor pictures, but I'm really starting to like what I see.
btw, I really like my 15 inch momo rims but I perhaps need to start looking for lighter ones. Any 14 inch suggestions? Are 15 inch Ronal Turbos light?
ooooooooooooooooooooooo :eek: really cant wait for this to be finished :agree:
Wow oh wow, oh wow!!!! Breathtaking work harri!!:):agree:
Thanks, I can't wait for the next part and fitting it. Front of the car will finally be whole again.
Awesome as always Harri. It would be nice to see the car looking this good and dipping below the 700kg mark.
Drop some weight and improve stop and go performance! :devil:
Yes, getting the car under 700kg with full tank is sort of the goal here. If I achieve that too easily I'll just add even tighter goal like 650kg :dearme: But then I definetly need lighter rims and CF seats.
I'll also go back to dyno someday after getting doors back again to increase the boost back to 1.3-1.4 bars which was the pressure I used prior blowing my T25.
I have excel sheet which calculates power/weight ratio constantly. It also has a row for €/kg and I can tell you that it would much cheaper to just concentrate on power increase. Powerweight ratio is now 177bhp/tonne. I hope to get 220bhp with my setup and current weight goal after all the mods is 703kg, that equals to 312bhp/tonne. Weight saving means less consumption so maybe ROI is just 100 years :)
It would help alot if someone could give me actual weights of OEM condition parts such as bumpers, skirts, arches, doors etc. Mine have so much filler+foam etc. that I can't use them for scaling anymore.
Hei harri where abouts in Finland are you from? I lived there for a while! I was up north, Levi ski resort also lived in Roveniemi, loved my time there, met some really good friends!
Also love the carbon work!
I live in Helsinki area so haven't propably met your friends ;)
Northern Finland is nice thought.
Even if it turns out that the eventual power to weight could have be achieved more cost effectively by concentrating on increasing power, you might find that the weight savings bring other, less directly comparable benefits, like driveability. What £-value might your attach to that in the spreadsheet? :)
Yes, you're absolutely right. I remember how my clio16v felt when I once had five adult inside. Performance wise it felt like a twingo
I'm looking into cheap ways of removing weight now, I currently have steel side mounts in drivers seat. They are modified to fit clio rails that fit my gtt. A mess really which weights roughly 8kg.
Are these any good:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2307203855...84.m1423.l2649
Weight saving with these alloy mount would cost only 10€/kg which is nothing compared to most of my CF parts.
However I'm bit worried that they are made from low grade aluminum which doesn't hold as well as 6082T6 or 7xxx series. Does anyone have experience on these budget alloy side mounts? Should I get proper sparco or omp ones?
Looks like progress, I made this mould just about 1 year ago in page 2 of this thread.
Front bumper in carbon fiber done. Came out ok considering its biggest and most complex of the parts I've made. It also had the worst mould (and the last one with the gray gelcoat which caused so many issues)
It has few air bubbles visible which I will fill with epoxy, sand and polish down. Weight 2273g untrimmed, should be roughly 2000g when done since the air intake section has same amount of layers as the actual part and will be cut off.
Making the first layer using 2150mm*650mm piece of carbon fiber was tricky. All the layers (4) under the first are made out of 3 pieces each.
After this Im really glad that I can make easy parts again (door outer skin next)
time for small update; I decided to do sort of inner skin for my hood to improve fitting by making the structure more rigid with as low extra weight as possible. First the old mould needed some cleaning. I taped it to hood to make sure that the hood is not anyway deformed when doing inner structure. Next I bonded 10mm thick 40kg/m3 PU foam following roughly the shape of the original inner structure. I trial fitted the hood and it will propably fit in original position. Next I'll add 0.5mm thick CF laminate to improve the rigidity of the hood.