I take it you are good at glass? Do you have any good papers written for making custom things with glass? Material lists, preferred brands and such? Thanks.

 

I have made a lot of molds and many project that required the use of vacuum bagging. I have produced a couple of instructional DVD's of a hobby I used to be heavily involved in, RC Soaring. These were gliders made of Carbon, Kevlar and glass. VERY light 12' wingspan contest quality gliders.

http://www.paonline.com/hayman/video.htm

Bill

 

Thanks for that link. *Bookmarked* I may PM you if I get into trouble with some of my glass projects coming up this spring.

 

I am working on a set of carbon fiber covered T-Tops. I bought a set off eBay and have covered them with 2x2 carbon cloth. I love the look of carbon.

If it turns out nice I might do my head light doors and maybe the whole hood....

Bill

 

What's the best cloth to use for a clean smooth finish? Something that you could sand down without needing filler. Not for body panels, but like custom kicks or speaker boxes.

 

Regardless what fiberglass cloth you use, its all how you apply it. Chances are it won't be perfectly smooth. There is stuff out on the market called "Kitty hair". Its a lightweight bondo that actually has some thin tiny fiberglass strands in it and you can smooth it down. That way you don't have to put too many layers of actual fiberglass cloth and then apply the kitty hair to anything needing smoothing and strength. Works great for me. My brother and I have built tons of custom sub box enclosures.

Dr. Jay- I'm very excited to see what you end up with. I've always wanted to improve on the stock headlight setup and $450 for the new harness with xenos is a lot of money. I was either going to put some nice HID's where the license plate goes and enclose it like the C5-R cars or just upgrade the headlights themselves like your doing.
I remember a while ago someone posted about upgrading our vacume headlamps to electric like the firebirds and fiero's had. I've had 2 firebirds and have rebuilt the headlamps a few times, not too bad. I'd love to have time to toy with these ideas but I have other stuff on my plate.
I'm going to find a set of pop-up headlamp assemblies on ebay or junk yard to fool with when the time comes to adapt some HID's. Doesn't seem too bad as long as your electical system can handle it.
Good luck

 

68 NJConv 454 - If you want me to help you find a line on some of those headlight assemblies just let me know, and I'll find a few sets for you. Salvage yards are a good thing to have in your pocket.

 

Thanks man. I'll def let you know.
I'll be doing the sound system before i mess with the headlights. I'm not sure if I'll do some speakers over the #2 body mount or on the trans tunnel but it will involve some fiberglassin. Definitely putting some tweeters up in the pillars or hidden in the dash. Start a new thread when your ready to do it and I'll offer any experience I have with the sub boxes and share my ideas.

 

Thank you all for the tips. I'm looking forward to this project after I get the TPI installed. With the holidys, and suddenly being swamped at work The Vette has been put on the back burner until after the first of the year.
Keep the suggestions coming.

 

I think they use felt and cover a wood layout with the speaker mounts and stuff. with resin and let it get hard. Then they put filelr over and sand smooth. I may try it soon.

 

polyester felt stretched over a form work and soaked with resin..... that's how all the morphed speaker pods are made.... u can reinforce with resin/matte on the inside of the mold if needed

b

 

I've heard T-shirts work very well too, and I have lots of data on that kind of process...I was just wondering what material would be best and take the least amount of filler to make smooth enough for a good looking paint job. I hate sanding filler.

 

You cannot lay fiberglass over styrofoam. The styrofoam will melt and turn to slime. The best foam to use is polyurethane foam. It is available online in several densities. Use something soft like a 3 or 4 pound density for sculpting and sanding, then lay the glass over that. It works much better than styrofoam too, because you don't have to deal with the little 'beads'. If you must use styrofoam, you can apply epoxy (not polyester, like fiberglass) laminating resin to the styrofoam. If you need any help, PM me. I build molds for a living and can get you in touch with suppliers etc.

 

You can lat ANY fiberglass or any other fabric over styrophome. YOU CAN NOT USE POLYESTER RESIN AND CATALYST on the glass that you put on the foam.

You need to use epoxy resin & hardener. You can melt the foam if you apply WAY TOO MUCH epoxy on the foam all at once. It will create a lot of heat when curing (NOT DRYING). ;-)

Bill

 

Well, after enduring many years with the Ecklers sugar scoop trays replacing my broken up headlights....from hitting a lo slung Florida deer in the '98 brush fires....

I decided to finally mod them to hold the more modern late Camaro lights...and so they are Halogen....but decent enough....
reducing the fore/aft opening measure by about 1/2....and cutting an EASY 50 lbs off the front end, too.....

vacuum or electric, don't matter what motor, that lid, steel braces, hinges, mounting bracket and so forth...are much heavier than necessary for any headlight....

see site for results....

the Camaro lights are held in place with vinyl 1x2's cut to size and glued up with PVC cement and GOOP to the trays using stock junkyard parts completely....they don't flicker or vibrate over roads...they look much more sleek than anything stock, or even original Ecklers which are decades old allready yet....

 

Already have them in my vette heres the pic fabbed them up in some
l88 style boxes also have hella f55 driving/fog lights you will need to upgrade your alt for more power these lights use it.

 

Those tiny 4" lights look pretty good in there.

 

They are bright too I had a new Benz hit me with his high beems thinkin mine were on well he got a shock when i hit my high beems These things are bright

 

they are basically like the lights used in 24 hour lemans

 

I like those camro headlights, they look good in there, i would consider forming a mold to reduce the light openings in my flip-ups for those smaller lights. I don't want to get rid of the flip-up style.
Good work though.

Durango, you can use a t-shirt to form the shaping on the fiberglass. Cotton works best. I use cotton bed sheets. For the subs I make a wood frame for the speakers to sit on and wood main supports. Then use some poly foam and cover it with aluminum foil. Then lay the cotton on top of it and apply resin. Wait till it hardens then apply fiberglass cloth/mat. the alumimum foil will peel right off of any fiberglass resin and the foil will create a barrier b/w the cotton & foam. I also calk the wood seams but your doing small kick pannel speakers and probably won't be using any wood on wood.
I don't think you will be able to avoid using some type of filler to get the exact shape you desire unless your not that worried about being picture perfect.