New poster! (less than 10 posts)
Damn !!
That's beutifull !!!!
I really love your work !
New poster! (less than 10 posts)
Damn !!
That's beutifull !!!!
I really love your work !
thanks, compliments appreciated.
Here's the result before post-curing and trimming the edges. I used 1.1m2 of CF +650g epoxy+100g of foam. Some epoxy was sucked out during vacuum bagging so I'm propably looking weight increase somewhere around 550-650g.
Hood is trimmed and back on. It seems that I need to adjust the fixings a bit to get it positioned perfectly again. To do this I need to have all the front's panels installed. That's why I started trimming front bumper and took some trial fitting pictures. Since the bumper is now "open mouth" it doesn't look as OE as my original target was. I still have to say that the result looks sick.
I can't wait to get everything fitted, surfaces damages repaired and clear coated.
looking good. great project
That's going to be awesome!!
whats the plan, polish and lacquer the c/f or paint?
polish & lacquer everything in CF. Body will be painted but haven't decided yet if I keep it red or do something else.
looking good, will look even better when finished.
I know it's a trial fit but hopefully you can get the grill to sit better as my eye was drawn straight to it. will you put mesh in the bumper/grill or leave them as is?
I think you need a bright colour to make the carbon stand out, I'd try and avoid a matt black or dark colours
p.s I would weight some parts for you to compare but most of mine are full of filler
Yes, the gap between hood and grill isnt correct currently. I need to adjust hood fittings since it was better before doing inner structure for the hood. Same problem between wings and hood.
Too much filler in my mould donator parts as well which is why I can't scale any OE condition parts myself
I would paint the standard panels tungsten grey or black or similar to try and compliment the carbon partsOriginally Posted by Harri
I think this could be the best looking r5gtt in the club, with the right colour choice.
Thanks. Im not sure if I like idea of having a lot of contrast with red or similar or trying to do your way better. I'll have plenty of time to think about this still before needing to paint the car. If I do roof Ill get it propably done next summer earliest.
I also think dark colours/lower contrast. It wont be necessary to use paint bright colours for people to notice the rest of the car is CF. Bright colours will make people think "looks how he feels the need to show off the fact he's got CF on his car". IMO.
its called a bonnet, not a 'hood'
yeah I agree, a bold colour and then get the c/f gleaming, should look good, if a little different!
Maybe I should do carbon vinyl wrap for all the parts which are still metal. That way normal people would think that the car is just completely vinyl wrapped with carbon pattern
That's a whole other dimension to the thing called 'sleeper'
This is what I think I am gonna do to the body kit, as am in the Process of buying a house and cannot afford to buy all your carbon goodies!!!
Think it might make your car look cheap and retract away from its carbon goodness.
yes, matching surface glosses between vinyl and real deal are quite impossible and it would propably look bad. The idea in general felt good at first though.
time for small update.
I painted RH door outer skin donator and my glass fiber Reichhard Motorsport tailgate outer skin. This means that I'm really stupid enough to do moulds from glass fiber tailgate just to get carbon fiber one instead.
I also finished modding LH outer skin mould. It now has 70mm extensions "painted" with ducttape. Nice thing about ducttape is that epoxy doesn't bond to the surface so it can be used for making quick mould surfaces. Now I can use the mould for vacuum infusion method (see http://wiki.techfam.com/index.php?title=Vacuum_Infusion). It's superior method compared to hand laminating and vacuum bagging. Let see what happends. If it works well I convert unfinished moulds with similar extensions as well.
Lovely work as always Harri.
I saw a demo car over here with the 3M Carbon Vinyl and it looked pretty good. It was a matt finish and you could feel the textured effect of the faux weave. The car was a Holden Commodore VE and was lowered on some 20" rims.
Yes, we have the same 3M vinyl here as well. It kind of looks good but finish is totally different from mine which means sleeper idea won't work with that type. Funny thing is that in normal laminate you shouldnt feel the texture on the a-surface. If you do, you have something seriously gone wrong. stupid 3M
Thats why you have to spray clear varnish over the 3M. However everyone just leaves it plain..
hmm.. so I could basicly spray same clear coat on CF-vinyl and CF areas? This means that my sleeper idea of having metal parts covered in CF-vinyl to mislead non-dedicated people might actually work. I have one spare CF-vinyl skin for my old tablet which I need to coat for testing.
Today I infused LH door. This is first this size part that I've infused at home garage so we will see what happends. There are pictures from layup, dry-vacuum and after infusion. I'm feeling quite positive regarding the results.. and already thinking about doing rest of the parts the same way.
Well i can't insure it will look the same but it looks more real than without laquer
good, I will give it a try later on. It's definetly worth a try.
RH door outer mould done, I've had rather fruitful last couple of days.
would you be willing to do a group buy on these doors as i would deffo have a set
Sure. I just need to do first set first. However Im bit skeptical how many people are willing to pay for carbon fiber materials. I can always do everything in glass fiber as well for rust free results and lighter weight.
either way would be up for a set, great weight saving and no more rusty dented r5 doors
Door LH outer skin done. I'll definetly continue with infusion rather than hand-laminating from now on. It has almost no pin-holes and the surface quality is almost as good as my hood. The reflection is nice but it shows two (sort of) problems:
Some of the dents from original part are now visible (2nd picture). You couldn't see them on mould surface or original part (at least I didn't notice them). I can sand them a bit before spraying clear coat to the door someday. After that they shouldn't be visible anymore.
Also it is impossible to lay-up carbon cloth this big without misaligment if I do it alone. I sort of like not having perfectly aligned weave pattern since it looks more like proper stuff and not vinyl then.
I didn't scale the part yet but infusion should give me 10% better fiber volume. It basicly means that same amount of fibers have less epoxy resin meaning lower weight and improved strength.
The mould stayed in perfect condition to be re-used
wow !
I think you may need to make your care heavier Andyeither way would be up for a set, great weight saving and no more rusty dented r5 doors
Incredible
Is Andy Cooke still a member? I thought he would have been interested in this thread.
Is his car on a diet as well? Today I had to push my r5, it has never felt easier. Diet is starting to show results.
Put it this way Harri, you'll do well to make your car as light as his. However, you're doing different things to him in terms of how you're going about saving weight. Which means you would have something to gain from each other
That's interesting since I'm starting to run out of ideas where to lose weight next. I'll hope that he is still here and reads this.
In my opinion I have potential in at least:
-exhaust system
-fuel system
-wheels
-body
I guess I will need to start drilling the body sooner or later
carbon floorpan and boot floor ???
gotta be some weight saving there
I've been thinking about floors actually, especially trunk floor. I would use alu-honeycomb to reinforce them since they are quite flat areas. I'm bit concerned on long term durability issues of joints though. Having carbon fibers next to metal body can cause galvanic corrosion quite rapidly which is the reason Im bit cautios of using them. I can always use glass fiber on surfaces which have contact but still it's bit risky.
Corrosion is one easy way of losing weight too
to be honest i probably wouldnt touch the floor of the passenger shell just do the boot and wouldnt use carbon on the floor as its a bit of overkill just a couple of layers of glass, to strengthen rather than using a core, when making the mold i would fit on strips of bump strip tape so that the final item has reasonably deep ridges running front to back giving you the strength from the shape rather than adding materials.
cant wait to see the doors on, they look realy good
I has been a while since last update. I've been modifying remaining door moulds for infusion but progress has been rather slow. Two days ago I finally made tailgate outer skin mould. It came out really nicely. I used my reichhard motorsport glass fiber tailgate as donator. Good thing is that it already had the spoiler as part of the panel. I really like this approach of combining parts in seamless way.
Plan is to try to make tailgate inner mould and RH door inner mould next, then make every remaining part with infusion and fit all the CF parts by next summer. Next spring I want to start doing the CF roof and I aim to get these done first. Lets see.
great progress! tailgate mould looks pretty clean too!
Thanks for the ideas, I remember cutting boot floor for a spare sheet from my cliomk1 donator. It was surprisingly heavy so there's definetly potential.to be honest i probably wouldnt touch the floor of the passenger shell just do the boot and wouldnt use carbon on the floor as its a bit of overkill just a couple of layers of glass, to strengthen rather than using a core, when making the mold i would fit on strips of bump strip tape so that the final item has reasonably deep ridges running front to back giving you the strength from the shape rather than adding materials.
cant wait to see the doors on, they look realy good
I would actually like to do rear engine conversion but the problem is that they're impossible to get through mot in finland.
Time for a small update, I painted tailgate inner skin today. Painting went nicely when taking into account that i did it in a car tent
Last edited by Harri; 10-09-2012 at 04:15.
Very nice! Can't you fill the hole?
I actually cut the hole when I added all the mechanics inside on trial fitting of this tailgate. Getting the wiring inside the tailgate proved to be problematic without. So the carbon one will have similar hole maybe finished a bit better.
Very curious at the result!
I am too
I haven't been on here for a little while but, I can't believe how much more you done Harri! My job position has moved sideways and I'm now in charge of the Airframe Structures section. I have a cunning plan to do some training fir the new trainees which may involve moulding some GTT parts.....
Yes, I like the plan. Maybe they could do moulds for the dashboard? That would give good practice.
Tailgate inner mould done. It seems that each mould I make always have one spot which needs repairing before use. Luckily this time its on easily sandable spot.
hmm, time for small update. I've been doing a lot of mould prep work lately. Building extensions on the moulds, fixing air spots and such as you can see from the mess in my garage. R5 is outside in a tent until I get worst fiber-dust-work done.
RH door outer skin has almost all release coats in it (3+4+3 in total) and Im planning on infusing that during the weekend. I've made some improvements on the process which should give me even better results on the surface quality than I did with LH outer skin. LH inner skin or tailgate outer skin parts will shortly follow since they are almost ready. Im also doing good progress on the RH inner skin donator prepping. Hopefully RH outer skin goes well since I need all the motivation I can get to finish RH inner door prepping.
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