Does anyone have any suggestions for fabbing your own body kit? I'm planning on grabbing some items this weekend to start the process but what would you use to create a mold to work with so that everything will be precise? I know styraphome (spelling?) will cause the kit to be off about 1/4 of an inch if not more and I have no clue what is out their that will make a good mold.
use solid styrofoam......make one half at a time...... after you've got the basic layout for one half...turn it 90 degrees and trace the pattern onto the other side, so they'll be the same then spray that foam pattern with some release type agent, then fiberglass away! when you're done you should be able to just remove the foam... then bondo sand primer sand paint!
alright thanks guys, luckily one of my dads friends works with carbon fiber and all that good stuff for boeing and will be giving me a bunch of the styrofoam they use... so now its just a matter of drawing, cutting and going out and laying the fiberglass (hopefully no one thinks im making meth in the middle of the desert... damn Antelope Valley Hells Angels)
I've been building my own bodykit for awhile. You can see progress pics at my celica site. I have some more photos to post still, mostly, the molds are done, I just haven't made the actual body yet. http://www.garbled.net/tim/album/celica/index.html
Yeah, there are a ton of pics up there. The point however, is that the last 50 or so cover scratchbuilding a body. It is a terrific amount of work. In my case, this body is a one-off, I will not be attempting to produce any more than one of them. Because of that, I was actually able to take a few shortcuts. If you ever intended to try to sell these, or make more than one, the amount of work would probably double. Rye: Glad to see a 4th gen forum again. Good to be "back".
You'd just need to make a master mould, that's all....the way you went about it with the spray foam was totally unique..I like it and can't wait to see what it ends up turning out like!
Actually, thats more or less what I did. There are essentially three ways to make a custom bodykit with fiberglass: 1) Just handmake fiberglass structures onto the body. This is the best way to do one-off very simple modifications. It's alot of grinding, and setup work, but for simple, non-large changes, its the easiest. Doing this for a wide-body kit however, is almost impossible. You are also required to know *exactly* what it will look like when it is done, before you start. This is basically what you did with your hood. 2) Foam or woodbuild up the car to the shape you want, then start putting fiberglass onto that. The problem with this, is that you have to essentially predict where the body will be when you add about 3/16" of fiberglass thickness to what you have already built up. For anything big, or things that need to fit together, this is hard. 3) Buck->Mold->Part. This is the best for a large complex part, or set of parts, or any production work. Basically, you make the car out of anything you want, to scale, You take a mold of that, then make a part from the mold. This is what I did. The shortcut is, that the mold doesn't have to be perfect for a one-off, because I can spend 400 hours perfecting the buck/mold or 400 hours perfecting the part, and it's all a wash. But if I sold you one and told you to spend 400 hours fixing things in the part, you'd be pissed. Most scratchbuilt bodies are done via method 3. Production scratchbuilts or bodykits are sometimes done via Buck->Mold->Buck->Mold->Part. There is one other method, which is generally reserved for crazy people, and that is, to just build the mold first. This requires the ability to think and work in a mirrored/reversed fashion. For certain small parts, it can be done, but generally the average human can't think that way on a large scale. For steel work.. there is a completely different set of methods.
look for a foam shop in your area, try the yellowpages ;p we have a foam shop here that i never thought any use would come of but it makes sence now ;p
one other thing. unless you are doing a one off kit then you need to make several master moulds first before building the first kit. the moulds are good for 3-5 kits.
Building supply dealers will carry 4' x 8' x 4' blocks of foam somtimes. Usually these are the kind of places that sell to contractors, not home depot. You can probably find them in the yellow pages.
