That will save me some cash.. Thanks..

It has been a while.. I do plan on sticking to this thread and post picture of all progress and steps I make and hopefully with your help I will have a finished roof installed on my race car in the end.

I have bought a water fan heater coil and I am about to place it in may garage roof.. That way I can raise the temperature when I need to paint or doing carbon etc.. I can´t use electric stuff for heating because it makes my house and workshop heating system turn down the heating and the rest of the house gets cold..

Mounting the hot water fan I have then fixed my work shop temp.. But after seeing pictures of exterior carbon parts being destroyed in the hot sun I am convinced I need to cure the roof in a higher temperature some how. I have no oven but I few electrical heating fans in a smaller room should get it to around 50 deg anyway.. Anyone else have any other suggestions?

I made a big order of fabric resins, mold materials and consumables from Easy composites and I am looking forward of using everything and hopefully be successful making car parts with infusion.  

Back to mold making.. I got another roof.. I started leveling out dents and adding flanges. I made the long sides of the roof flat so they could be used as flanges and it also got rid of one more 90 deg angel making layup a bit easier. I also filled the front edge of the roof and the sides of the places where the roof moldings go. That way I hope the mold wont be mechanicaly locked by "negative" shapes to the roof plug.
After that I reminded myself why I hate sanding body filler.. It takes skill by experience and I have lost some of it.

Today I left the roof plug by a paint shop so it will be covered by 2k paint before making the mold.

Got a call from the paint shop. The got some questions and I got a price for the paint job at 1500 Swedish crowns which is about 140 euros or 140 brittish pounds. It would be done around the weekend.. 

All looking good mate.

To avoid heart ache, I would recommend getting them to spray a small piece of scrap metal with the same paint they are using on your roof so that you can do a test to see if the paint is compatible with the moulding materials you are using. Dont assume that just because it is 2k that it will be ok, there are more 2k's that arent compatible than ones that are. Always do a test, and if in doubt - stick to using PVA release agent.

Thanks for the tip mate.. 
 Maybe I can use a corner on a flange to test on or something.. But I will try call the paint shop today and see if they already have painted it or not and if they can paint a scrap pice for me..

The roof plug is painted.. I picked it up all dusty and stuff from the painter and when I dust it of at home I can see some of the body filler as "ilands" so I guess they didn´t use this thick sandable primer I was just assuming.. (don´t know it in English) I think it will be ok if I wetsand and polish both the roof plug and the mold.. I will try to get a picture of it but it will be hard to get a picture of it I bet..



One thing.. If I use polish on the roof plug what do I use to clean it off before I use Easy lease? I don´t think I bought the cleaner.. I will check but I don´t think I did.. Any suggestions?

I installed my heating fan in the workshop roof today anyway,,



I will not be able to do any work in 4 weeks so It will take a while before I can start making the mold.. Can´t wait though.

So.. Back at it..

The roof was far from perfect from the painter. I didn´t feel like bring it back for him to do it all over.. But I guess it depends on how picky you are. My thought was that I can wet sand it and polish it to fix the worst parts..

I wet sanded it lightly with 2000grit. I´d hate to be to hard on it and ruin it so I was a bit careful. I will probely do it again on the mold surfice if I find it necissery. Wi´ll see how it looks.. As of now I can see sanding marks that I did with a orbit sander and 240 grit before the painter got it..



I polished it and waxed it and then I discovered that it is not suposed to be wax under easy lease so I cleand the plug with acetone 2 times.
I added 7 coats of easy lease with 20 min between each coat or more. The surfice looked a bit "clowdy" or greasy like this after the easy lease... Is that normal? The surfice is dry though.


I let it sit for 12 hours or so and after that I will add 2 coats of wax.
I have a small pice I can test some gelcoat on to see if everything works.

I also made a  oven of 100mm isolation bords. I had a 2000 W air heater laying around that hade a mecanical bimetal thermostat that was easy to manipulate for a higher heat range.. I also had to bypass the heat protaction. During testing it held 82-87 deg Celsius and that is god enough I think.I used a 4 chanel type k thermocouple digital temp gauge I bought from Ebay a long time ago to look for uneven exhaust temps on a 4 cyl engine. I only used one chanel high in the oven but will add one more just beside the actual thermostat controling the heater and see if it differs.. I think it will be pretty even temps because of the fan.  I will start the post curing at 60 deg and work my way up to 90 deg for the unimold  and later on for the finished parts.Inside dimensions are about 2000cm deep, 115cm wide and 55cm high. I googled abit and found other doing abit more serius bulds.. I don´t have room for a oven of this size so it will be taken down later so I tryed keeping it simple. I saw someone is using a ebay router speed controler for adjusting the heat and that is a good ide i guess. Since I have taken out the safty fetures of the heater fan I will not leave it alone though. i´d hate to burn down my house..

Just to clairify..  I didn´t just tape the isolation blocks together.. I uset 200mm long screws for it. The wheels as weight and tape is just to make everything a bit more air tight.. 

I read in another post that it looks a bit messy with easy lease when you use the same cloth with the different coats.. It shouldnt be any problems though.. So next time I will use new clean cloths when applying eatch coat.. I was also kind of suppriced of how much of the easy lease it took.. To get an even coat the rag has to be pretty wet.. With all the coats and wax and clean and all the waiting times in between and so on I guess PVA would have been faster and easyer.. I have not discovered the benifit of a cemical release agent yet but time will tell.. 
Yesterday I applyed the second coat of wax over the easy lease and to night I will mix up a bit of gelcoat to test with before I apply everything for the mold to the whole roof.

One question I got..

When doing the post cure of the mold.. My impression is that it cures in room temp for about 24h and then demold from the plug and after that I put it in the oven for the post cure process.. Is that correct?

I was serching around on ebay for temperature controllers and found the mecanical ones in the fan heater I am using.. I just bent it a little and it alters the temperature range.. thought I would chair to all the DIY:ers..

Found it here on Ebay

I also found very cheap PID controled digital ones and rely controllers..

PID controller

Relay controller


Also i used this 4 channel k type thermocouple meter to monitor the temps.. It just shows 4 differnet temps with 4 different probes.

Here on Ebay

You will probably be fine for post curing or curing a resin infused part with that temperature control.  However for pre-pregs you really need a nice and accurate method of controlling the temperature for the various cure stages.


Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant