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FLD
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Nice work! I'm currently trying to build up my level of arsedness to do clams for the opel speedster. Did you bag in an envelope type bag?
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Brian2fast
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Brilliant! This is what we want to see!  Was that sprayed with Sunshield?
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Hanaldo
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FLD, no, this mould is far too big for envelope bagging. I could have made it work by joining multiple bags, but then it weighs 90kg, so would have ripped the bag to shreds getting it on. This was done in the usual way. Brian, no, there's no coatings on this piece. Raw resin finish, straight from the mould.
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MarkMK
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Fantastic work Hanaldo That mould looks great and Ive no doubt that a great deal of thought went into it. Not nearly as much as the lay-up, though and there must have been a massive sense of satisfaction seeing that pop out when cured! That said, I imagine that prepping the original panel was probably the toughest challenge, given the 'quality' of Lotus grp panels? I've recently done a quarter panel for a chap who's fitted an Exige-type bodykit to his Elise and now have the other side to do |
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Hanaldo
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The greatest challenge was definitely laying up the mould. Not sure if you guys in the Northern hemisphere have ever had to layup 85kg of fibreglass over a week where the minimum temperature was 38 degrees at night... It was getting up to 47 degrees during the day, so I ended up building the bulk of this mould between midnight and 6am. 6 hour layup sessions in 38-40 degrees and no sleep does not make for a good time... Definitely the most punishment I've had making a mould. But yes, it was a good feeling pulling this part. Especially as I was using a new resin and stupidly decided I didn't need to do a test... The pot-life at 35 degrees ended up being significantly shorter than I had anticipated, and I ended up with 2kg of resin gelling in the bucket and nearly starting a fire. Luckily I had over-estimated how much resin I needed so everything worked out, but I was very nearly caught out. Nice job with your quarter panel there. These Lotus' require significantly more thought than they first appear, as they like to put in tricky little angles and traps that make the moulds far more difficult than they ought to be. There is a solid 18 hours in the layup of the surface layer on this piece... The rest was much less, only took me around 2 hours to complete the layup and get it bagged. The surface has a lot of attention in it, and again it's probably in little details that no one will ever notice. That spread tow stripe crossed 2 pieces of the mould, and is very precisely measured to match up exactly and continue around the lip of the front grill area. The headlights and indicators have a 0.5" wide strip of carbon where the fibres have been rotated 45 degrees to the rest of the layup to make them a bit of a feature. I took care ensuring the fibres lined up well at each mould junction, which is harder than one would expect.
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MarkMK
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Hanaldo
I'm guessing from your lay-up method that it wasn't possible to apply any sort of in-mould coating, so just wondered how you finished the part off?
How did you take care of the flash lines and is it/has it been clear-coated, as I'm thinking that you must have been busy with the spray tack to get all that fabric in the right places so might have had to deal with some surface blemishes
One more question...did it all come out perfectly infused or did you have any little recesses with air pockets to fix afterwards?
Thanks
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Hanaldo
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Mark, It's certainly would have been possible to use an in-mould coating. The main reason I didn't is because with an in-mould coating if anything goes wrong then the part is junked. And due to this being a very large split mould, I knew it was likely that I would have a leak and wouldn't be able to envelope/double bag to get around it. So given this was the first pull out of the mould, I didn't want to be committed to having to rush the infusion. There is no coatings at all here, this is the raw resin straight from the mould. The flash lines are easy to clean up just with a blade. They haven't been rubbed and polished out as I would with a coating, just taken down as far as possible. So they are visible still. Spray tack was used, and this is the reason the surface isnt a brilliant shine like the mould is. The mould was finished to the same standard as my 57 dash, so had I used a coating it would have had the same standard of finish. The spray adhesive is what leaves the sort of 'semi-gloss' finish. As for the surface quality, it isn't 100%. I had a small amount of bridging around the headlights which lead to some air bubbles being trapped in that area. Luckily this is hidden by the headlight when mounted.
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Biggerbigben
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Images don't seem to be working in the first post.. any chance these can be sorted as would love to see your exige. Have a wide body s1 myself and I'm thinking of going CF body!
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MarkMK
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As Hanaldo posted the pics up some time ago now, they've probably become unavailable feom the source. Some fine and meticulous work involved there, though Not certain if the pics will load up okay from my phone, but I've recently made a couple of S1 bits too. They felt tricky enough, but nowhere near as much as a full clam
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ChrisP
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Those parts look good Mark, did you make them with one piece of cloth (without any joins)?
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