Re: Carbon Fiber Hoods and stuff
well since the wife isn't home and I've drank about 7 lavazza intensos tonight and since i finished up this project early here are some answers to the questions above:
We use products from fiberglast and some tooling gels and poly resins from ill street composites. If any of you guys know Austin from illstreet, I buy a bunch of product from him. We use 2x2 5.7oz and 11oz twill. We do use fiberglass to strengthen certain parts up.
The mold that you saw, yes, initially we use chop strand to test out initial molds(both layup and spay in) And while that was the actual hood the final carbon hood was made from, that is one of many molds we have made off of that hood. So no that mold doesn’t twist in the wind while we vacuum, each mold has its own box (unless prepreg or heated under vacuum). It gets inserted in a box before vacuum. I've made carbon fiber splitters from chop, and the poly resin that we use mixed with the layer process it looks the same as it did on the first one then as it did on the 28th one. Loads and loads of layers of mold release wax (like 10-15) and not the cheap peal ply either. We don't use cheap stuff at all. However, a hood (on the outside layer) is fairly easy when it comes to just the mold. Its getting it to flow right and obviously the bottom skeleton is the issue. We made around 6 molds in testing various ways we would get the inlets and outlets to feed properly under vacuum. I could have literally used any of the 6 and achieved the same top layer result. They were identical. When we make a final mold that we will be using over and over and over, we 2 by the mold to a box to get a perfect seal around the entire part and use a 2-4 inch lip around. Underneath (opposite side) strengthening up certain parts for rigidity, we build up under parts of the hood for instance on the non gel side. Some of the parts we use we can't put a wood box around them because they are getting thrown into an oven and when we are using pre-preg it just doesn't work right. But as far as an exact mold is concerned, if these were ever made for massive production there would be around 3 or 4 for each hood rotating. We have a few tricks here and there for the molds.
To answer your question about material. Each part is different. For instance, on the fenders we will be using 2-3 layers of 5.7oz, 4 layers of 11oz, 3 more layers of 5.7oz and then adding on the fronts where we deem necessary for stability. If we will be making a lot of hoods my guess would be that we would most certainly have to have at least 2 or 3 different options. Because if we were to use the same process that I will be using for the final hoods for my trucks, the price would be very expensive. I plan on 3 5.7oz layers, 3-4 11oz layers, 2 5.7oz layers. No fillers. Possibly more layers for my trucks and show quality not only on the outside but on the inside. cleared on both sides, UV sprayed on the outside. To make sure resin is flowing from start to finish under vacuum, that is a whole lot of resin.
Final construction on the hoods will be similar to the following: Multiple layers of 5.7oz, 11oz layers in between, glass backing on the bottom side. There will be no gel coat into the mold. Vacuumed resin throughout the mold. Overlay of the support structure similar to stock skeleton. First couple hoods in testing have a glass support skeleton, with built in bolt ups (on the support structure) then layed up to the top side. What i’m envisioning is that I’m going to have a 1/4” or 3/8” of CF Sheet (glossed finished) CNC’d out to overlay the support skeleton, small holes drilled through both the sheet as well as the structure support and then bound to the skeleton for looks. This will give the support(skeleton) yet another level of support. It is not needed and we’ve only done this once before but it looks really nice and more support never hurt. Especially if 5.7oz are only going to be used on top layers for reduced costs.
Again, as far as pricing is concerned I still do not have a final build on how these will be finally constructed. They will not leave raw though, they will be cleared and sanded. There are too many variables in play once they leave and you send them off to a body shop to have cleared and then sanded. And aside from the actual shipping cost(like from fedex or something) there will most likely be at least a 50.00 fee for boxing and packing. I have a friend in this industry and he has a special area in his shipping department where upon each high end part like this being shipped, he has a massive X on the floor and that is where they prepare, wrap and pack the shipment as well as put security tape and serial #’d tamper proof labels on each box with 2 HD cameras sending it back to the DVR. Shipping carriers pickup from that very location, it helps minimize on insurance claims dramatically as they see just the way the part left the facility from the time it was prepared to the time the carrier pickup up the package. That is my biggest fear in doing this to be honest, shipping this kind of stuff scares the hell out of me. If some of the guys really like the product and it is something that I would keep having made, hopefully most people that would want one of these are located in the NJ region.
But in closing, check these things out at the show, let a few guys on here bolt them up and test them, let me try and be rough with them for a month and see what I come up with. if there are run on sentences or my grammar is a little ****ed up my apologies
