he finally painted the hood that i sent him a few months back...this is the prototype reverse cowl hood that i make.....i thought i would share a few pics

looks a bit wavy in a few places, no?

looks good overall though i like!

yeah the design is cool, it's a good idea, just looks like whatever plug was made had some waves in it before making the mold. Should be able to correct it on the mouldings before painting with some body work though, kindof annoying.



But if waves are visible in a small jpeg they must be quite visible in real life, I'd like to see pictures of some straight edges laying across some of the questionable parts to see how bad it is.



would be nice if rob could chime in, he definitely has a better eye for this stuff than me.

It looks good to my unexperience eyes..

looks nice..... i like its subtle look, kinda like the mazdaspeed hood for fd's

Take another more pics from another angle.

i think it needs like more of a "leading up to the scoop" kinda thing, like the bulge sorta just goes flat hood BAM bulge for scoop.



sorta the effect throwing a rock through the bottom of your hood would cause.



a gradually increasing slope to the scoop would be mucho better.



kevin.

yes that hood had some waves and it came off of a mold that got fuct that i used once and trashed and i now have a new clean mold with the same scoop.......i have more pics but overall it looks good

almost looks like a stock with a vended dent.... in a good way hehe

heres another

looks good.. what material? Fiberglass or Carbon fiber?

oh yeah.. is it me or do the rear corners look rounded..?

That's pretty decent.

this is the deal with that hood....it was my prototype that i had made...i made the mold....mold got screwed up and somehow my plug had also been damaged beyond repair so i had to make that hood out of the bad mold and thats why it looks decent but a few trouble spots so i started over..made a clean mold of an na hood with a mold of the same scoop then I glass it in......im soon making something similar to the RE hood as well and i will post pics of another hood out of my new mold this week with the underside as well

carbon fibre is fireglass... they just use a clear epoxy resisn on the last layer and use carbon fibre texture fibreglass weave.

I agree, maybe make the hole deeper and the top loop over more.

yes the corners are rounded on that particular hood.....made the mistake of standing the thing up on the corners too many times......Im making a few more of these hoods and i sell them for 425 a shot but im changing up to a new design.....this was my first experiment with shaping and now i want to try something very similar to the knightsports FD hood for an fc and still sell it for the same price but im also itching to make the front end that i am wanting to do.....anyhow..ill post more pics later as i go..

What are you trying to say? If you think that carbon fiber is in anyway fiberglass you are mistaken. If you are talking about the way most CF hoods are made, they just make the last layer of the laminate carbon fiber.

And to Answer teh question about which fiber, I believe that dltreezan said they are made out of fiberglass.

Hey dltreezan, are you making these hoods in Oregon? If so I should come down and check them out.

Looks good, can i have one pleasssssse.

hahahah



wtf are you smoking? Yeah, some people make cheap CF parts with a outer CF skin over a FG structure, but those are cheap pieces of junk



carbon fiber is not the same as glass fiber, they are different materials, why don't you do some research on the subject before you propagate stupidity.

yeah J200 i love in portland by PCC sylvania off of I-5 but i have my lil shop in wilsonville....PM me or something....and yes they are of fiberglass

this is why i love pengaru..in a platonic way lol





The hood is nice and subtle, the picture of that race car was gross, especially for the street. I would buy that hood in wet carbon in a minute

i want to make a different hood design then ill go with carbon and play with that...but i want to do that front end or something similar....i dont really like the rest of that car or that hood but im really digging something similar to knightsports for the fc....i wanted to be subtle in my first design but now i want to stretch a lil bit but i dont want to go overboard

you the guy who was making the hood on the other forum that

I gave some mold and hood making advice to?



I commend you on taking on such a project and normally

I dont trash people for trying to do something themselves, I offer

this as constructive critisizm in the hopes you arent

going to offer that hood for sale.

Maybe its the pics or whatever, but one could achieve the same results as you did by bondo'ing a old capri hood scoop to a original hood.



Your mold got damaged, but why did the painter even bother to

paint that hood? A blind man could at least feel the waves in it.



What did you make a new mold from? I hope you didnt use

that hood as a plug, if you did I hope you put the time into the

mold to correct it.



While its not rocket science, mold making and fiberglass

work has cerain procedures that must be followed to achieve

good results, any short cuts will show up.



Give that hood a few months out in the summer sun and

see what its going to look like. A good job is one that looks

good YEARS down the road.

yup thats me and the guy i sold the thing to knows he was getting an experiment and i have a hell of alot more knowledge on my head than when i started. And yes that mold got screwed..at which point i trashed it and just copied the scoop.....so now i have fresh mold made from a clean NA hood.....used that as a plug...glass in the scoop...then from that i have a new plug and new mold......and the waves in the hood have nothing to do with the layup involved......it was more to do with flatspots that had to be filled and smoothed and curved and sanded due to the fact that it was screwed from the mold itself.....and yes you are right.....fiberglass work isnt rocket science, but you have to burn your hands once or twice to get it right and by looking at the hood for my first try with fiberglass im pretty damned impressed with how good what i thought was going to be a disaster turned out. And now looking at my pics i can see where my first visualization got me....so for those out there that have an idea in mind dont let anything hold you back from trying to do it yourself.......so yes now i know what im doing and whats involved and im sure to have much much more to learn but i have fun doing it!!

you need to watch last weeks episode on Dream Car Garage. They should how they make a Fiberglass hood. Freakin AWESOME!

I didnt mean to come off harsh, I just cant understand why the painter

painted it instead of taking a hour or two to correct it first.

That knightsports hood is so nice!

no rob ur completely right and i didnt take it that way at all.....I just got an idea in my mind and was a complete novice with fiberglass...but people told me i couldnt do it and i did the best way i could and suprised most people......and let me tell you just what went wrong with that hood.......when i pulled the mold it ripped from the underside because i didnt use PVA.....novice......and then tried to fix it once i got a dent in my plug......so the best thing i could do was to make one from the "fixed" mold.....and then fix it from there........and i had like at least 20 or so lil spots where it was somewhat flat from the mold...then to top it off I made the mistake of mixing the remainer of one resin that was completely different than another....complete mistake and bubbles started appearing......my fun and experiment turned into a huge headache and i started learning lessons the hard and fast way...but the guy that bought it realised he was going to be the ginuea pig......so i had sanded the hell out of the thing....and clear past the gel coat in some spots......copied the scoop and grafted it onto a clean copy of an NA hood and started fresh.....the one in the pic was the fuct hood that got painted and in my opinion looks pretty damned good considering.....but im hooking him up soon with some free goodies as i go along.....and ill post pics of my progress as i go along....

when you didnt use PVA, what did you use as a release agent? nothing at all? not even wax?

you dont use PVA in a mold, you use high temp mold release wax

If you remember I told you NOT to use PVA and to use mold release

wax, so what kind of wax did you end up using?

yes i used mold release.......**** didnt work so ive used pva every now and then and the pro ive been talking to said used pva the first time then afetr that stick with wax........im just to paranoid after the wreck i had the first time to not usa PVA at least once on the mold

I'm well aware of the properties of carbon fibre. However i find it hard to believe that anyone here has the ability to make a hood from dry carbon fibre which requires you to put the mold into an oven while continuously compressing the product at high pressures for hours to days.

I'm well aware of the properties of carbon fibre. However i find it hard to believe that anyone here has the ability to make a hood from dry carbon fibre which requires you to put the mold into an oven while continuously compressing the product at high pressures for hours to days. [/quote]

Nobody mentioned using pre-preg carbon fiber. Pre-preg is not the only form carbon fiber fabrics are available in. There is such a thing as wet lay up which can be used just fine with carbon fiber and epoxy resins, and is how most hobbyists will use for carbon fiber, fiberglass, or aramid (kevlar) fabrics.



You, my friend, should read your post again, perhaps it's been too long since you posted, this last post of yours is first mention of dry/prepreg in this thread.









That statement is quite simply 100% false, there are plenty of books available on composites, many tailored specifically for DIY & high performance automotive use. I suggest you go buy or check one out at the library.

what are advantages of using styrene monomer and approximately how long does it take for tooling resin to cure and what are its flexibility properties?

you dont use styrene in a mold, there is no need.

You dont need it to make the mold, or to make a part from a mold, it hinders

the mold making process and slows down curing.



Tooling gel allows a bit more gel to be put into a mold so it wont crack, and its

a bit easier to sand and polish afterwords. Remember you have to polish a mold

to a mirror like finish if you want the parts to come out nice, and if you want

the parts to come out of the mold at all.



You need to stiffen a mold so it wont warp under the heat of curing fiberglass.

You also cannot lay up a whole hood in one shot, too much heat. You stiffen

a mold with some wood or even some cardboard tubes with some heavy duty glass on them.



3 stage lay-up at the least.



Sprayed gel coat with no wax or any reducers added, gel coat guns are cheap, but messy, allow it to cure, apply one layer of 3/4 OZ FG mat, allow that to cure, then you can add 2-3 layers of 1.5 oz mat. I dont know how thick you are making these? How did you make the underside and what did you add to the hood where

the hinges bolt up? Of course you need to steel roller the glass to remove air and excess resin. You MUST use laminating resin by the way.



Please post some pics of the underside.

as far as the mold goes i did a simple layer of 1.5zoz matting with a layer of coremat and then some e cloth, the thick weave and then backed it up with a wooden backbone and used foam to adhese it, which was a mistake because once its in place it puts a small flex even if there is room for it to move, and i didnt sand or polish anything on this mold as there is no use at this point because it is a clean copy of my NA hood that i only plan on pulling maybe three parts from maximum and then with one of the clean NA hoods ill mod for a plug for my new design and from there i will make the investment of having a kickass clean mold that ill sand the hell out of and spend the extra hundrd dollars reinforcing, plus most people that are getting my products know that the shop is going to prime it anyhow so having the surface 100 percent isnt totaly necesarry for at this stage, its still a hobby and not a profession and i can only build as the money comes in. Now if i was wanting to pull out perfect parts from a mold ready to paint then yes it would be a different story. As far as my lay up process goes im getting **** sick of mat, just soaks up resin with not enough strength so im experimenting. Right now i layed up veil mat with a cloth and then a coremat which i soaked the hell out of, and then cloth on top of that...im trying to see how light i can get with strength, then i take the mold of the partial bottom side (everything except the center) and glas it to the bottom of the skin, then i am going to add the scoop and then use e cloth over the whole gap and was thinking of glassing in rope as reinforcement going across the bottom at certain points to add strength.

btw of course im using laminating resin....i like the rollers, they are a lil pricey so i stick to my small plastic one.....any advice on that?

Looks good! https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/bigok.gif