Fibre Glass

[Ntrprise]

I have designed and am building a 750 Formula Car with a friend. The chassis is pretty much complete. I now am starting on the fibreglass body.

I've just purchased 50kg of 2 part expanding foam. However, I am not sure of the best way to use it. I guess I have 2 options:

1: Build a wooden rectangular box, which the whole car could fit into. Then put more wood boxes in the inside to represent engine and chassis etc (to save on amount of foam required). Then put loads of foam in there and then sand back to the shape I require.
= 1 full size model of the car I can then fibreglass over.

2: Do the fibreglass in sections. I think I will have the total body consisting of 5 sections of Fibreglass; (front left, front middle, front right, middle and back). But then I worry about the sections fitting snugly together.

Anyone got any advice? I am based in Staines just in case anyone wants to earn a few beers or a curry and visiting us to give some proper advice!!! (Is there no end to my generosity)?

[shiny side up!]

A bit of experience in option 1: don't put too much foam in the box! Tried that once and had it explode all over the shop, not pretty!!!

[avsfan733]

the 5 parts is going to work a lot better!!

i made the mistake of making a one piece body on my kart...never again one little crack or major shunt and the whole thing is wrecked. The foam way is probably a good way of gong about it but be careful like shiny said about to much the stuff expands like you wouldn't believe. your also gonna need some bondo to smooth everything out. My other concerns are make sure whatever shae you end up with that you can remove it from the buck. Out of curiosity are you planning to make bodyparts from the buck or make a mold and do parts from that?

[StephenRae]

Throw the original buck together out of chipboard, foam or whatever.Take a mould off it and then mould your first panel. This will not be good enough, but will be fibreglass and can be made perfect with body filler, stopper and paint. Finally because this will be too heavy to use, make another mould from which you can make the final product. This sounds like a long way round, but you will never get it right the first time.
I would make the back first and start the process again using this as one edge of the next mould.

[avsfan733]

I beg to differ stephen, if he where to do a proper job of glassing and using bondo to smooth the plug then I am sure he could get it in one shot. the idea is to shape the plug, then glass over it and use bondo to get it absolutely smooth before laying up a nice strong mold off of that

[StephenRae]

avsfan... I'm sure you're right, but resigning oneself to making a second mold allows all the panels to be pre-fitted and perfected.......anyway, with my level of skill I could never have got it right first time!

[ss_collins]

why a F750 and not a S1000?

[Ntrprise]

Originally posted by ss_collins
why a F750 and not a S1000?

I have seriously looking at the S1000. In actual fact, I have designed the F750 so that it can easily be adapted for S1000.

My my reason for doing F750 is that this is my 1st experience of car design, build and racing. I had visited a few of the F750 races and the people are very very friendly and helpful and I also have a few that do not live too far from me. Once I can do a little better on my own 2 feet I might very well do the S1000.