Quest for saving R5 doors with GFRP

People have been asking for either glass or carbon fiber doors for R5 quite a lot in topics and by PMs. It always comes down to price of making one-off set and postage to UK from Finland. As some of you know I have all the moulds already so I did some math and decided to offer glass fiber doors as one time group buy opportunity. My parts are made from high quality epoxy resin and woven glass fiber fabric having easily paintable white gelcoat surface. Even if they are glass fiber, these are nothing like those cheap-ass polyester chopped strand stuff you can find for some cars.

To make this possible I need five sets ordered for a price of £375/door making it total £750 for two doors. This wont include postage which I will quote if I get 5 interested people first. After getting 5 people or more i will quote the postage and need 50% paypal payments to start the work. After i upload pictures to this thread out of each door I will require the remaining amount before shipping them.

Doors will have window rails to make original windows to work but fitting original door cards might need some extra work. I would like to post all the doors to one UK address who can repost or give the doors to the members who ordered them. To further reduce postage i will send the doors skins UNBONDED. I will give you instructions how to fit and bond them, it's not really that difficult. I can post them separately and even bonded but that will have heavy impact on both my costs and postage. You need to source hinges from somewhere, I used renault spares which CGB sold.

Finally, I have to say that im bit pessimistic regarding if there is enough interest in these but i decided to give it a try since i need to finance my CF-roof somehow and I also want to help saving as many of these french-devils as possible.

pps. I can make some tailgates as well if needed..they tend to rust too.

one more thing, the doors are made with resin infusion which is superior method compared to hand-layup. Basically less resin in the part making it stronger and lighter..

Harri... its high time we had a serious chat with regards me getting two doors and a tailgate from you.... :agree:

Love the idea of this, but i'm can't afford £750 for 2 doors. (+postage+paint)
If the prices were more like these guys : http://www.honeybournemouldings.co.uk/doors.htm
then i think you would have a heap of orders.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Guybrush

Love the idea of this, but i'm can't afford £750 for 2 doors. (+postage+paint)
If the prices were more like these guys : http://www.honeybournemouldings.co.uk/doors.htm
then i think you would have a heap of orders.

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The parts Harri is making are a bit diffrent to those provided in the link, hence why they cost more. You get what you pay for.

Again these are high labour+material cost parts, I can't really match those prices with epoxy and woven fibers. With higher numbers than 5 sets I could maybe drop down the price a bit but not much.

Unfortunately i dont do polyester+chopped strand glass. Also I don't think it would be rigid enough to have working window rails. I remember that Reichhard MS tailgate I have was around 300€+delivery. Comparing more complex (4 moulded parts/each), more m2 and better ingredients my prices should be acceptable.

Im sure that if resell value of R5 was higher, people wouldnt feel that these are too expensive. I think these are something which members who want to keep their car without worries would invest on. I don't know in what condition exchange R5 doors are in UK but I had to really struggle to find a door in Finland which didn't have any rust between the door skins under the door where the rainwater falls out. Same with clio mk1 doors.

what was the outcome with this Harri, did you manage to get ant interest in a group buy?

composite materials and epoxy resin is deffo so much better than the fibreglass matting others are using still:) think the price your offering is very reasonable:) we need to invest in such parts to keep the cars going;)

No outcome, interest yes but people are not willing to invest in this.

If the quality is good (and it sounds good), that price is pretty good for 2 doors.
Infusion and woven cloth etc.

I think the problem is that you can buy some pretty good doors for far less probably... And the O.E. panels are fairly lightweight already....