Body of Work

This Side UP

So with the help of family and friendly neighbors, the body shell has been restored to its proper right-side-up attitude. This was a nice chance to see the results of some of the bodywork projects I've been engaged in lately.

The badge recesses turned out nice.

Another recess for the fuel filler cap. This is probably more of a Shelby Cobra thing than a British AC Cobra thing but to my eye it looks more finished this way.

Body Mod Process

In an earlier installment I showed the process of 3d printing modified body parts and using epoxy filler to temporarily mount them in the bodywork, then pull a mold. The next step is to cut out the temporary 3d printed part, leaving a big hole, wax and PVA the mold so it can be removed instead of permanently glued on to the bodywork, and then fix the mold in place. I just use regular wood screws to hold the mold on. 

The Replicar / LMR141 bodwork comes from England, where registration plates are long and skinny. Above, I have affixed the mold I created to accommodate a US style plate. The next step, below, is to brush or paint gel coat onto the mold from the inside of the bodywork.

The next step is to lay up the composite onto the mold, again from the inside of the bodywork. Below: for reasons too stupid to recount, the first attempted layup on this mold was a Colossal Fail and resulted only in a hideous mess of expensive products.

Below: attempt number two, looking a lot more promising. Layup details: I used one layer of light fiberglass cloth, then two layers of medium fiberglass cloth and finished it off with a layer of Kevlar (the yellow stuff).

It is certainly a good idea use Kevlar as reinforcement wherever fasteners or hardware are going to be. Fasteners will tend to wear a hole in fiberglass larger over time and these kind of stress areas are prone to cracking. I could have met this need simply by Kevlar-ing the wedge shape recess area (protruding as seen here from the inside) where there will be license plate bolts and lights. But cutting a big hole in the bodywork like this could potentially weaken the bodywork structure, so I have laid Kevlar down over the entire area of this and all my other cut-outs. Particularly along the bottom, you can see the ridge where my composite of epoxy, fiberglass cloth, and Kevlar cloth is thinner than the original chopped strand fiberglass / polyester resin combo. But, assuming I've done this correctly, my composite of epoxy and cloth should be stronger than the original (bold assumption, I know)

At the risk of repeating myself, I put this video together showing the final results of all the bodywork modifications