crazy, super well done on the cf parts..
I have in the past created fibreglass molds and thats hard enough, i looked into carbon fibre and thought.. fOOK that !.
Big Credit due!
crazy, super well done on the cf parts..
I have in the past created fibreglass molds and thats hard enough, i looked into carbon fibre and thought.. fOOK that !.
Big Credit due!
i must admit i haven't looked in on your project for a long time now as i thought it was mainly focusing on the efi conversion which i don't think is a route i'd go down personally but credit where credit is due, well done
i like what you are doing with the carbon fibre parts, just a shame i can not see all your photos at the min. i'll be looking in more often now i know what's going on
keep up the good work
Thanks all for your encouragement! It's nice to see that this thread is getting more readers.
Yesterday I laminated second frontarch (LH) mold and released the second reararch (RH) mold. Today I added some leftover heat resistant gelcoat with heat resistant epoxy to those "renault5" and "gtturbo" emblems. This should allow me to go upto 130C when curing part, my plan is to use something special for those emblems. It will be interesting to see how well this works. Eitherway I have quite plenty of molds waiting for final trimming and actual part making. I've concentrated on making the molds lately due to having all the necessary stuff for making them but not having enough CF for actual parts.
I'll try to laminate rear bumper mold during sunday, after that I have all the molds except doors made. Doors are currently under work, I need to add lots of filler and sand them a lot to get them straight. I also see myself already thinking of CF semi-gloss dashboard.
today was a good day again.. the second front arch mold was quite perfect, this time I knew that original sheetmetal part needs to be sacrified to composite gods in order to save the mold from possible damage.
I also finally made aluminium fittings for the first front arch and bolted it on. I put it on scale and it weighted 690g with aluminium part and fittings while original weighted 3200g. I'll have rethink my original plan of losing only 50% of weight from each part.
I have made so good progress lately that I think Mr. Murphy will soon strike me wight lightning or something.
I like how you're fastening the wings to the car Harri!!
I wondered how you were going to make a 2 dimensional wing with a 3rd dimension fixing! Nicely done & it looks impressive.
I used 1mm aluminum sheet for that. I just bend it on 3rd direction quite easily against my knee.
I have just spotted this thread and read it from start to finish.
I am very impressed with your work and am loving the weight savings with the carbon.
My old 5 was 805kg with all std body parts and rollcage so with your parts 700kg should be easy.
Wish I had the time and patience to do bodywork like that. I had to pay someone to do mine.
Was your weight with interior and all extra removed? With or without full tank? My original almost std condition weight was 850kg, I somehow thought that gtt would weight bit less than that. This was with quarter tank of fuel wo spare wheel. My body shell is not gtt, it's gtx
All plastics no rears and buckets not std seats, full tank of fuel, no spare wheel.
While I've been busy with all that laminating I'm constantly thinking about my flexfuel conversion project. The car runs nicely with small boost but I'm afraid my 360cc bosch red injectors are insufficient with 200+ bhp when running on ethanol. So I'm thinking I should have 30% more flow with the injectors due to having to burn 30% more fuel when running with ethanol. Does anyone know which injector I could use to replace mine? I'm looking for something which is a direct fit. My red ones are the ones from aero saab.
Today Mr. Murphy finally came to visit my project. Those rear emblem molds I tried to make had some cracks and second one broke during release. Problem was related to making too rigid mold with too thick layer of gelcoat which is then quite britle. Luckily I didn't damage those emblems too much so I will try again. Next time I'll make more flexible molds that when releasing the original part I can get it out. After release I will strengthen the mold and it should be ok..
One thing that did go as it should was the surface of the mold. You can see brushed looking surface on the letters and cast looking on the bottom. It will look extremely awesome when those surfaces are on carbon fiber.
Harri, are you using a Carbon Fibre kit or have you sourced the different resins and cloths individually?
No kit I'm afraid, everything is bought separately. I have quite good contacts with two major importers here in Finland due to my work but actually last time I bought my carbon and vacuum bagging materials from fibermax which is in Greece. They have very competitive prices especially with twill woven carbon (this is the type I prefer) and vacuum bagging materials.
web page: http://www.fibermaxcomposites.com
Harri, I work in the aircraft industry so I can get the resin and carbon cloth in various weaves for 'training' to keep my skills up. I mainly do repairs, although haven't for some time now as I've been promoted to management (booooooo!). That said, the rule still applies.
The repairs I generally do (or should that be my team) don't require a mold so I don't really use gel coats. What I have got are lots of release tapes that the resin won't stick to but, you have to butt the seams together perfectly for a good finish.
Yes, it's good to "train" yourself by laminating something to your personal purposes every once in a whileOriginally Posted by Woznaldo
That's how I originally learned how to tig weld.
hope you dont mind but a couple of tips that may help you with the badges,
1. dont pigment the gelcoat on a mold that intricate as it will reduce the strength and also spread the gel realy thin, literaly bare minimum.
2. do your first layer over as a wet layup (not infusion) with fibreglass tissue and work it into every nook and cranny making sure there are no air bubbles and the tissue is tight against the gel, matchsticks and lolly sticks are great for doing this.
3. try using a chopped strand mat to back it up as it breaks down to be a lot more pliable than woven mat.
not criticising in any way as your work looks to be very good, just trying to help where i can
I don't mind, any advice is always welcome especially from someone who does these things as pro, my work is related more on the structural composites and I don't normally do molds or use any gelcoat. This is why I've used epoxies and woven mats for my molds, I'm simply more used to working with them and I really hate the smell of polyester resin.hope you dont mind but a couple of tips that may help you with the badges,
1. dont pigment the gelcoat on a mold that intricate as it will reduce the strength and also spread the gel realy thin, literaly bare minimum.
2. do your first layer over as a wet layup (not infusion) with fibreglass tissue and work it into every nook and cranny making sure there are no air bubbles and the tissue is tight against the gel, matchsticks and lolly sticks are great for doing this.
3. try using a chopped strand mat to back it up as it breaks down to be a lot more pliable than woven mat.
not criticising in any way as your work looks to be very good, just trying to help where i can
1) I didn't pigment it, Axson which is the manufacturer sells this only blue if talking about sensible package sizes. I have actually started to like the color, it helps me to see when the fiber is wetted properly during handlaminating. My original worry was how to get glass fiber to bend on those thight edges and I didn't realise the gel would be too brittle if the layer was too thick. I'm planning to do really thin gelcoat next time as you suggested.
2) I'm using infusion pump but I'm actually handlaminating everything at the moment. The pump is just for vacuum bagging use which has been really helpful with tight corners and shapes most of the panels have.
3) I'll have to think about this, problem is that chopped strand mat is meant for polyester resin and it doesn't break that easy with epoxy resin. I think that maybe I could cut some chopped strand from woven glass and put it on the tight put-holes first. After that I could back them with maybe 2 or 3 layers of 300g/m2 plain glass fiber. This+thin gelcoat would propably give me little flexible mold which would ease the releasing of the original part from mold. Again, I think I will vacuumbag this to minimize voids.
I laminated GTTurbo emblem mold again today. It has really thin layer of gelcoat, some chopped strand glass in those tight corners and three layers of woven glass in top. It's in vacuumbag at the moment. I'm feeling positive about it but we shall see.
I also released rear bumper mold which came out to be excellent. I'm really happy that I switched gelcoat month ago.
Loving it Harri.
Your progress is making me feel guilty!
Last edited by Woznaldo; 06-09-2011 at 11:23.
thanks, I've been workin hard lately to get all the molds done since we are moving in to new house tomorrow and my garage moves there too by the end of the month. I'll have to set up working space for laminating and sanding and such so you can expect fewer updates during autumn and winter.
It's almost there but not quite. My second try on badge mold was quite lot better than the first one. It now only has few corners where there wasn't enough chopped glass to fill the tight corner which caused some pit-holes. I think I'll retry this method but this time I'll add lot more chopped glass and less woven.
I don't even want to think how difficult it's going to be make CF part with woven out of that mold. Luckily this is such small part that material costs for trying are not high.
Finally update; I've been quite busy setting up my new working space but last weekend I finally managed to laminate the "GTturbo" emblem third time.
Third try was basically almost same as second, this time I used more chopped glass and aligned the woven stuff behind the chopped in a way which would allow maximum bending of the fibers. I also used different vacuum bagging plastic which is more flexible allowing thight spots. Result is quite perfect, finally!
Its quite difficult to see the brushed vs matt surfaces in the emblemmold picture attached, but in right light even the mold looks quite cool. Next I will do the same with carbon fiber just adding the woven layers first and then the chopped ones. I'll hope it works.
Looks great. Looking forward to seeing the first one out of the bag!
I made some progress last weekend when I finally laminated the second front arch. I had a leakage, or even two, with my vacuumbag which I just couldn't find. Therefore expectations on the part where quite low. I will burn that vacuum-bag in hellfire for this.
In the end it came out quite ok. Because of the vacuum problems it has few spots which need some resin but it's good enough for saving. Especially since materials for the part of this size cost quite lot.
This is the first part I've made with the new blue gelcoat. Surface gloss is unbelivable. Too bad that I need to sand it a bit to repair the dry spots.
Rear arch moulds are ready for part making, I'll propably make one next weekend already.
Also, in the frontarch pictures you can see the oven I made for postcuring laminated or painted parts. It's made out of styrene foam and the size is enough for all the parts I can make for of my R5. I can go up to 60C with the oven if needed.
Would be good to see a collated list of all the parts you think you're going to make with this method and then an idea of how many you've done and how many are left to do. So we can watch you tick them off
Absolutely fantastic stuff Harri - keep up the good work.
Good idea, I'll edit the first post and add list there. I'm actually getting a bit confused about the progress too.Would be good to see a collated list of all the parts you think you're going to make with this method and then an idea of how many you've done and how many are left to do. So we can watch you tick them off
okay, it's there. I'll try to keep it updated.
Smart
Bloody hell, you're going to do the doors!
That's the plan. I will make two molds; one for the outer and one for the inner skin. There are also some U-shaped profiles guiding the window. I'll just replace those by bending suitable profiles from thin aluminum. It worked nicely with the front arch.
LH outer skin is almost ready for painting and mould making but the inner skin will require lot of work. I will have to use filler to smooth all the unnecessary forms out first before even making the mould.
CGB sells nice hinge-kit which I'm planning to use: http://www.cgbmotorsport.net/door-hi...yle-1118-p.asp
Here is the first carbon fiber rear arch. It weights only 180g directly from the mold. Surface also looks really good. I'll try to make the second rear arch later this week.
that arch is so sexual!
Good god man that's some damn fine work, your gunna have everyone wanting stuff done
Thanks. As I stated earlier I could make glass fiber parts out of the moulds if someone wanted. Carbon parts are a bit of problem. With my moulds/manufacturing tech there is a high risk of getting at least one small air bubble in the surface which basicly spoils the part if wanting to sell them perfect.
Normally if I get those spots, I will just repair them by adding some epoxy, sanding and polishing the spot away. This takes a lot of time however.
Looks awesome!
excellent work! its good to see other parts on the car getting the carbon fibre treatment!
Does anyone have rear OE rear arches which they could put on the scales?
I did the second rear arch last week. Result is as good as or even better than the first rear arch.
This one wieghts 220g while the RH side weights only 180g. This is strange, I'll have to scale the first one again. One solution might be that I might have added one extra layer of CFto the second arch by mistake. Eitherway I found my OE RH rear arch, which was showing 630g on the scales meaning both of the arches are well below my 50% weigth gain goal.
I'll try to do the CF version of "GTTurbo" emblem next. Hopefully I get it right the first time.
i was going to make moulds of the front of my car, bonnet bumper grill wing doors, but as you have them done would you sell the moulds or even make up a set (even if they dont appear perfect?
Hi, I won't sell my moulds but I could make parts to sell if we can agree on what's expected / acceptable surface quality. Im assuming that you want CF parts which will be left unpainted?
I did the third try with "Renault 5" and I finally got perfect mould.
Once again Harri amazing work, this is going to be a one of special car when completed
Super work Harri, this car is going to be very special indeed!Have you any idea of prices yet Harri?
Great work Harri!!
We should change your name to Carbonfibre-Harri!
What part did you have in mind?Super work Harri, this car is going to be very special indeed!
Have you any idea of prices yet Harri?
Both bumpers, side skirts and arches.
I'll get back to you later, I want to get succesful parts (out of those moulds) done first before thinking of making more of them.
I'd be interested in lightweight doors/bonnet, but would paint them, so if you get some parts that aren't suitable to leave bare, but are structurally sound keep me in mind
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