roof plug

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roof plug

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winty	winty posted 11 Years Ago HOT Topic Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 14, Visits: 592	Hi My plan is to replace my car roof with a glass/carbon fibre version mainly for strength and to replace the current damaged metal one. For costs, the plug I'm thinking polyester csm but I want it as good as I can get as the donor car will be a one off, so not quite sure yet. I'm in the marine trade and polyester resin and gel coat is the norm. I'm looking for experienced answers on whether to go for poly or epoxy? What do you think? Epoxy without gelcoat, is this a good bad option? How many layers do you think for a roof plug? I'm thinking 6 layers if using poly csm. What would everyone go for? Also like to hear about amount of layers using epoxies and various cloths. Thanks
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BlackNDecker	BlackNDecker posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 92, Visits: 251	winty (16/06/2014) HiMy plan is to replace my car roof with a glass/carbon fibre version mainly for strength and to replace the current damaged metal one.For costs, the plug I'm thinking polyester csm but I want it as good as I can get as the donor car will be a one off, so not quite sure yet. I'm in the marine trade and polyester resin and gel coat is the norm. I'm looking for experienced answers on whether to go for poly or epoxy? What do you think? Epoxy without gelcoat, is this a good bad option?How many layers do you think for a roof plug? I'm thinking 6 layers if using poly csm. What would everyone go for? Also like to hear about amount of layers using epoxies and various cloths. Thanks I want to make sure I understand you...you want to remove the steel roof and replace with a cf roof? I have looked into this in the past and became discouraged for several reasons. Without a roll cage welded into the car, a uni-body constructed (or even steel frame) car has a lot of chassis flex. Cf will not flex...it will crack. Also, cf will not hold up to hail (or other projectiles) or a roll over - this may be less of a concern for you. Lastly, bonding the cf to the chassis will also take some planning...and lots of clamps
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winty	winty posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 14, Visits: 592	This particular car has no roof reinforcements and the roof is just a thin sheet of steel and with the roof liner removed it makes a loud noise just closing the door. The car has a roll cage, the idea was to make one from glass/carbon fibre and add reinforcements to make it more ridgid. I can only see improvements over the original one
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winty	winty posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 14, Visits: 592	Bonding I'm thinking rivets and something like sikaflex
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kidpaint	kidpaint posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 99, Visits: 676	This is something I'm going to watch. Pretty interested in doing this myself
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ajb100	ajb100 posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 346, Visits: 4.4K	To make a mould that size, you would be much better off using a designated tooling resin to build the mould to minimise shrinkage and any warping. When I built my roof mould, I used EC Uni mould system and it came out great. I used 5 layers of 600gsm for the main part and found this to be a little whippy along the length so ended up fibreglassing a few planks on it to give it more rigidity
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winty	winty posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 14, Visits: 592	ajb100 (17/06/2014) To make a mould that size, you would be much better off using a designated tooling resin to build the mould to minimise shrinkage and any warping.When I built my roof mould, I used EC Uni mould system and it came out great. I used 5 layers of 600gsm for the main part and found this to be a little whippy along the length so ended up fibreglassing a few planks on it to give it more rigidity Good info. I like the look of EC uni mould system, but I can see it being quite expensive to do this. I have found 20 litres of epoxy that is almost out of date so this could be a good option in conjunction with ec epoxy compatible gelcoat and maybe power bound csm , but I've not used this setup for a plug before. But I can see it being good for minimum shrinkage Edited 11 Years Ago by winty
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winty	winty posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 14, Visits: 592	Ok so talking with somebody, epoxy compatible gel coat is probably not the best route to go. I'm finding the whole epoxy compatibility thing a bit annoying. I actually like to work with polyester but on a project this size shrinking could be a big issue. So I continue to research. I've just completed a project, it a blanking panel made all from polyester for a friend, he's happy with it.
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ajb100	ajb100 posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 346, Visits: 4.4K	The Uni mould is expensive but it's also very good. A very good alternative I use for smaller parts is optimould which is polyester and used with a tooling polyester gel coat
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winty	winty posted 11 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 14, Visits: 592	Uni mould does look good but beyond my funds for this project. I think I will create my own gel coat using epoxy resin and some fillers. By the way just like to say I used the fillet wax from Ec, works very well. Big improvement over what I have previously been using
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