Update!!
First of all, thank you all for the kind words. She looks like dad's, which annoys my wife. Speaking of wifey, that cash cow is back in the money pasture: read went back to work after maternity leave. In order to accommodate our schedules, we have our daughter in daycare, which lends itself to dad getting some time in on the car.
I decided to do more bracing on the mold. Last thing I want to do is correct a bunch of warpage with expensive, and relatively heavy epoxy filler when a few carefully placed pieces of plywood will prevent that.
Last week I collected the fiberglass cloth and some phoshoric and chromic acid from the local fiberglass shop. Turns out no one knows or want to carry metal prep cleaners and treatments, the fiberglass place was able to track some down. Its for the headlight buckets which are for the most part are complete, just need to be trimmed/finished, disassembled, treated and riveted up. I wont be painting them so they'll turn out a light golden color once treated. The body work was designed around the headlights at 56cm to meet BC reg's, hence the lowest profile DOT headlights were used, and necessitating, custom buckets. I was dreading this, for some reason I distinctly recall reading on KB58's mini site, that head light buckets were no fun for him, I guess I put that though through my head prior to starting, and differed it till this point. The only reason I dove into it now, was I didn't need to go out and buy anything. My wife and I need to be discretionary with our spending as day care is expensive. However, Ive been able to fund the recent progress by selling some surplus/duplicate tooling I see no need to keep. A clear thermoformed acrylic lens will cover up the headlights and act as an aero fairing to clean up the air flow. I'm using the front of the fender to act as a dive plane so the lens is beneficial to aid its function.
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As for the layup of the upper side pods, its pretty straight forward with only 5 patterns and can be done in one session. Again back to my local supply of materials, I am only able to get plain weave cloths, which is fine for the simple curves in this part, but 2x2 twill weave is preferred for the corners. I used 10oz plain weave which wets out ease, but can barely take a compound curve with out relieving the cloth or having it bunch up, hence the need for 5 patterns.
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For cutting out the patterns, I laid out the patterns on some aluminum faced sign board and cut the cloth out using a rotary knife. This keeps the pattern flat and reduces fraying of the ends. the layup it self is a constant controlled juggle of mix 5 ounces of resin, apply to cloth in mold, stipple in with brush, roll it out with de-airing roller, use heat gun to raise viscosity of resin to further wet cloth, roll, let it tack up slightly, apply next plies of cloth and press into wet resin infused cloth, stipple with heat gun, roll in..... and repeat, the whole show was about 2.5 hours. After the last layer of cloth is in, the entire lay up is rolled with a 5 inch foam roller for urethane paints. All this does is remove excess resin keeps the cloth to resin content high. All said and done the part weighs 2.9 lbs and has a uniform thickness of about .050 and hopefully stiff enough to not require additional plies or core material. It's too early to tell now as the resin really takes over a week to reach a full cure.
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Not sure if you can see it here,but the roller is smoking. It absorbs excess resin to the point the thing is saturated and releases heat as it cure, expediting the curing and releasing more heat, sort of thermal runaway, just dont throw it it the garbage after your done.
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Looks like I have another few days off in a row to get the other side laid up. Till then.
Andrew
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