I have had a few request for details showing how I do a project from start to finish so here goes.

Some of you may have gathered from some of my posts that I hate skinning, I have huge admiration for anyone who manages to make a living from doing it as I certainly can't. So when I was asked by a customer to skin the door mirrors from his Fiesta ST my initial reaction was "no thank you". After mulling things over I thought maybe there is another approach to this, make skins that can be made with infusion and then bonded on afterwards. As there seems to be lots of Fiestas out there and Fords kindly fit the same mirrors to all the models there could be a potential market for something that could be DIY fitted without the customer having to remove the covers, send them for skinning and have the car off the road until they came back. So here is how it was done.

First the original covers where removed from the car and given a degrease and a good coat of PVA.

Then I wet laid three layers of 200grm onto them. This was followed by flatting, re coating, flatting re coating until a smooth high gloss finish was achieved. ( this is why I hate skinning ) The final skins would be 2 layers plus roughly 0.2 gap for bonding them on.

These skins where then trimmed and released from the originals.

Because I wanted to produce two new skins at a time the two new skins where fixed to some Kingspan to form a pattern to mould form. The whole pattern was then given a layer of coating resin with some black pigment added and polished. ( black shows up any imperfections/scratches).

Because of the shape of the skins this would have to be a split mould, so the pattern was cut down the middle and a flange added. The whole thing was then bonded to a base board and any gaps filled with filleting wax.

A mould was then made using Uni Mould. The two halves where then bolted together with some gum tape between the flanges.

GC50 was then sprayed into the mould for UV protection.

The mould was then laid up with two layers of 200grm and bagged ready for infusion.

Once infused and cured they were trimmed using the originals as a template and given a polish.

If they prove popular then I think pre-preg may be the way forward to reduce manufacturing times and increase profit.


Warren

Carbon Copies Ltd

Hi Warren

Here you go Craig

Carbon Copies Ltd

Thanks for sharing! looks great!

Matthieu Libeert
Founder MAT2 Composites X Sports
website: www.mat2composites.com

Warren they look great. Has given me some idea how that spoiler of mine could be done. When you say it had to be a split mould is that because the shape sort of curves over itself? and is there any flex in a finished part when you pull it from the mould? 

This is quite common for VX/elises.  Mirror covers, binnacle covers etc are all available.  Just stick them over the top.  Seems a waste of lightweight carbon composite to me though, perhaps black diolen might be the way forwards to reduce cost?

Diolen does look slightly different next to carbon. 

The fiesta ST (mk 7) has the potential to be a very popular car with lots of performance modifications hitting the market.

Something like this should do well as I imagine it wont be too expensive and being easy to fit and remove will make it more popular amongst regular folk.

You might want to forward pictures and a description to FastFord and Performance Ford magazines as they both have "new products" sections showing the latest "cool" and peformance products.

Out of autoclave prepreg would probably be the best way to go for quantity manufacture as once youve got decent templates and had a couple of practices, you will be able to lay them up and bag them dead quick and just chuck them in the oven.  Often with such parts, the money saved in your time well offsets the increased raw material cost.

If it looks like its a seller, then maybe look at a couple of other trims/vents or grills to do so you can offer a matching package.

Coming from the "ford" scene myself, be aware there is always tons of interest in gucci parts for the cars but with most fords being cheaper cars, in many cases they dont actually have the money to spend so make sure you get firm orders before making any as you dont want to be left with stock you have to sell off cheap.  Youll find the top spec cars like the RS and ST's will when new have a fair following for such parts but like any ford, they quickly devalue and as such once they move onto thier second or third owners people want nice things but struggle to justify the cost of carbon bits on a dirt cheap car.  So the lifespan will likely be limited for the product.  The bigger the part the bigger the problem obviously.

Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

Deffinitely do this!  I made a batch of pinto and x-flow turbo manifolds but struggled to get rid of them.