Carbon Fiber Bodywork

What I would give to drop the hammer in one of those.... :whistle: :evil:

Thank you all for the kind words of encouragement; half made pizzas and mutated cake batter alike :laugh: After some creative trimming with a single edge razor blade we have this:

I'm going to trim around the edges and the backside a bit more, but it's basically done. I'll glass it up in a little while with regular polyester resin, then top it with tooling gelcoat (I'm running low)

It looks better from a profile view vs a plan view

You will find that it can be tough to cut a straight line in your cloth. You can follow one of the strands, but it's easy to get mixed up on which strand you're following when cutting say, a 60" wide peice of fabric. you can cut an arrow straight line too, but more often than not, there is some warp to the cloth, and you end up cutting across severl threads..sometimes back and forth :ohmy: An easy trick is to pull a thread out where you want to cut it, like so

When you don't have a perfect big table to cut the cloth on, it makes it easier to cut a straight line

I cut a section of glass cloth off the bolt, cut that into strips, then cut the strips into small squares/rectangles like so:

tape measure for scale

I mixed up some polyester resin and started painting. I needed to be careful since I didn't want any resin to spill down into my mold. I was pretty lucky and only had to wipe up a few drips. I started at the front/top of the cover and worked my way back and down the bottom

Here is 3/4 of the flange completed.

I need to let this set up before I finish the last 1/4 of it due to the angle (and the resin that would flood my mold ) You can see in the first pic of the flange layup that I had beveled the foam under the edge of the mold. That was so I could better integrate the flange to the mold by tucking the glass cloth under the lip. I'm trying to leave the polyester resin a little low as well, that way I can come back afterward and coat it with tooling gelcoat.

Boy, when I do the right side cover, things should go much easier and faster with less mold prep. It should go easier............

just about got the flange finished up. I'm sure I'll need to touch up the fiberglass in a spot or 2, mainly in the bottom front corner and bottom rear corner, but overall, it went well. I want to get the flange done before I mix the gelcoat since I don't have much left. Patch the pinholes, chips and coat the flange all in one shot. Finish prepping the mold a bit and I'll be ready to start some trial runs :woohoo:

Wow Plummen, thats the first popcorn guy you've posted in any of my threads...I'm honored

While the resin cures on my flange repair, heres a pic of some upgrades to the vacuum system-

Home Depot had some push lock fittings, just what I needed! I installed a 90 on the bag fitting so as not to interfere with my "auto clave" :laugh: I also installed an inline valve to isolate the vacuum on the bagged mold. As long as I don't have any leaks I should be able to pull the vaccum down and close the valve, keeping vacuum on the laminate without having to run the pump constantly.

I really like this! I will be taking a composites class in the next year or two, each student get's to make a project of their choice... I think I have an idea. I've had some carbon fiber experience with the K-State Mini Baja team, but mostly with pre-preg mat. It makes layup and lot easier, but you have to have an oven to cook it in... We usually just use sealant tape wrapped around our vacuum tube though, I like your setup a lot better! I will be paying close attention to how you attach these. We've used the quarter lock fasteners for our body panels and they look really nice!

Thanks for your interest Justinz830. I'm glad you can learn a little here, but I imagine you'll learn ALOT more from a college course in composite construction than you will following my trials and errors I had thought about using tape on the tube, but for $20 the specialized fitting was worth it. As far as the fasteners go, I want to use quarter turn fasteners, I just haven't done much research yet on the hardware. The amount of hours I have wrapped up in this ONE sidecover would frighten you. No doubt someone that knows what they are doing could knock out a mold in a handful of hours, but this is hands on, seat of the pants learning here :laugh: There is nothing like having the mentality of "I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing it anyway" :blink: Basically the mindset I've had for my whole bike, and it seems to be turning out ok so far

Adam