Ode to Tygaboy..making silver CF side covers..

[DougZ]

I did not want to take away from Tygaboy's(Chris) fender thread anymore than I already have, so I decided to make up a new thread for this project, making silver CF side covers for my SV1Ks. I basically learned everything I did from reading, and re-reading, and re-readings Chris' threads....and his answering all of my many questions.

I am in the midst of trying to make my own Silver CF fender, and have already had some set backs, as some of you may have seen in Chris's fender thread. To "learn" a little more, I decided to take the side covers that come stock on the SV1Ks, and jazz them up a bit. They will compliment nicely the fender and hugger that I plan on making as well.

Here is the first part of the process. Making the mold from the plug, in this case, the stock side covers. I do not actually plan on making the entire cover out of Silver CF, just a surface layer that I will bond to this set of covers.

The covers all prepped and ready to go...Partall'd and PVA'd..and edge taped.

After three layers of glass, in multiple pieces..2 oz, 4.6 oz, and a heavy weight that came with the Bondo kit:

The cured and dried molds, from the outside..let them sit for a good three hours while we went out to dinner.

Presto, two molds completed..not too bad for my first real attempt

And lastly, a glimpse of the Silver Carbon Fiber fabric that I am going to try and make my parts from.

This concludes part one.

 

[jake28]

Looking forward to the rest.

 

[tygaboy]

Way to go! And interesting that you chose to make these side panels:
We did the seminar yesterday (look for a thread about that - lots of pics and video!)
and one of the attendees made the same molds.
We had some, errr.., "learnings" around the more pointy corners. One of them turned out pretty well while the other, well, let's call it the 'practice' one!

But the real reason I'm posting is that you look to be using the aluminized fiberglass.
If that's the same product that I've used, it's REALLY stiff - it has a thin layer of aluminum on it - and will not lay down in the corners of your mold nearly as easily as 'glass or carbon. And, as you cut and handle it, it frays at the edges quite easily.

I'm interested to see how this turns out and if you find the need to vacuum bag in order to get the result you're after.

FWIW, we vacuum bagged a bunch of parts yesterday and got some really good results!

Congrats on going for it and best of luck with your new obsess..., uh, hobby!

 

[DougZ]

Making the mold was the easy part...I am scared to try and make the final part....but I am hoping the tack of the resin will hold the glass in place. The ones I am making will not be the entire cove, just a piece to adhere to the stock cover and cover 90% of the front.

I'll have to look up the other thread that you are speaking of.

I still have a lot of stuff to buy..I am still using the bondo resin for mold making..no need to use the expensive stuff just yet. I am also avoiding, at this point, getting the stuff for the vacuum molding.....in hind sight, it may just been cheaper to buy the Silver CF fender from OPPracing.com.LOL

 

[DougZ]

Also, I forgot to mention, I just got done trying to make the mold for the hugger. I made the same mistakes, using too large of pieces of glass. I have a feeling I will be trying to do it over.....I got a couple layers of glass on there now..not as many as I would have used if it were perfect.


More pics of that to come later as well.

 

[DougZ]

I can't find the second seminar thread..who posted it? Link perhaps.

 

[tygaboy]

I can't find the second seminar thread..who posted it? Link perhaps.

http://www.bayarearidersforum.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=191689

 

[DougZ]

I guess I am still in mold making mode today. cause I decided to hop onto making a mold for my hugger as well. I had a ton of air pockets, but luckily, none on the first layer of glass....only the layers that followed.

I thought that it was gonna be a disaster, so I plucked off the mold with in three hours....the side cover molds I let sit for 5-6 hours before popping them off.

Here we go:

The first two are the hugger all taped, waxed/PVA'd amd ready to get molded.

The mold, as far as I got, and stopped, thinking that I was gonna have to redo anyway.

The mold, after having a heck of a time popping out the hugger.

What happens when the resin sets up too quickly...not the first time for this mistake...LOL.

For as crappy as the outside looks, other than one spot that needs to fixed with sanding.....the rest of the mold, on the inside was perfect. I am gonna let it fully harder in the state that its in now, and add a thicker layer of glass to the outside tomorrow night....for more support. I am hoping that the thin layer of glass that I laid down first, on the isde, has enough strength to not crumble when I make my first part in it. We shall see.

I need to get some good resin, and soon.

 

[Mike T]

o0o0..how cool....looking forward for new updates...!

 

[DougZ]

Oh trust me, I am looking forward to succesfully making the parts. I actually figured out on the wat tomy future inlaws for Sunday dinner( hate missing working time for family stuff)....that the voids I had between the firstlayer of glass and the second layer of glass, could be filled, from the outside. I can poke a small hole in the outside layer of glass, and then suck some resin up into a plastic pippette( kind like an eye dropper), and squirt it down into the void. Let it cure, and it'll be rock solid.


I'll do that before I reinforce the outside of the mold with some heavier fabric...that I need to pick up more of anyway.

 

[DougZ]

Well, I learned some new things last night...let me tell ya what I did first. I got home yesterday with some supplies....a release film that I am going to try using for vacuum bagging, a large array of large ziplock bags, and some heavy weight fabric. I needed the heavy weight fabric for making the back side of my already made molds stronger.

So, once I did some stuff around the house, I got out my side cover molds, and prepped them for trying to make the side covers out of the Silver CF fabric that I have. Mind you, I still do not have "good" epoxy, but I wanted to test out a couple theories with the cheap resin:

1. How the molds will work with making the sider covers, with the little bends that are in there?

2. How well the release liner I got would work?

3. How well my bag filled with sand or water would work in place of vacuum bagging.?

This is how it went:
I prepped the molds, as I stated above. I then mixed up a good amount of resin...I knew I could use the excess to repair some areas of a crashed solo tail that I have. I cut the silver CF fabric to go into the side cover molds, and some release liner to cover the back side of them. I then started to put the resin into my molds..once fully covered and slightly tacky,, I laid in the pieces of glass, and immediately realized that I cut my Silver CF(SCF) too small. No big deal, since this was just a test to see how these molds would work.

At this point, it was either full abort, or see what can be accomplished and testing out the theories. I soldiered on. I got the glass into both side cover molds, and then full saturated the back sides. Chris was right, this glass does not want to bend around the bends....and it did its best to fight me.

Once I got to the best point I could, I laid on the release liner, and then tried out my alternative to vacuum bagging idea.

This idea was to fill the large ziplock bags with sand, and once the glass was in the mold and the release material was in place, to put the bag of sand on them, and let it push the fabric into all the nooks and crannies. Of course, it just snowed here in NJ like two days ago, and although we have had a warm winter thus far, the ground was frozen, and I could get no sand. SO, I decided to try water...at 8 lbs per gallon..I think that's its density...it might work as well. I went one step further to help speed the cure, and used hot water.

This kinda worked and kinda didn't work. The release liner worked fine, as far as releasing beautifully from the resin, but on the back side of the part I was try to make, it pooled the resin in all the voids...kinda like veins bulging in one's arm when working out.

The water did a good job of pushing the fabric into the mold, but not good enough, since there was also some pooling and voids on the "good" face of the side covers. I doubt sand will have worked much better, but would no doubt have been easier to handle.

Although the side covers seemed really smooth, especially after waxing to make the molds....they did have enough texture to not give the gloss appearance that I was looking for. I am going to have to remake these molds, and do the whole painting and repeatedly sanding/wet sanding to get them as smooth as possible. I also learned that I need to leave some more excess glass on my molds, and make sure its all waxed/PVA'd..I had a hell of a time getting the edge of the parts freed from the edge of the glass, at the edge of the mold...did ya get all that? LOL

I didn't even bother to take any pics of this whole thing..not happy with the way things worked out I may snap some off tonight, to get up.

So, it looks like I will have to get some vacuum bag set up, before moving onto the really complicated parts, like the hugger and front fender. And, as Chris stated, in hindsight,it would have prolly been easier to just pony up the $200 for the fender and call it a day. Good thing pride and a junk room full of materials will not let me do that now. LOL

 

[zeefrenchspy]

if you don't get the glossy finish that you want, one thing you could try (as opposed to doing it over again) is sanding it down with 600wet and then shooting clear over it. It's what I'm doing for the parts I did at Chris workshop this weekend and it seems to have worked really nice on the test pieces, I'll post up pics of the finished ones tomorrow.