Fiberglass bonnet?

[Colza]

I am strongly considering making a completely custom fibergalss bonnet for my civic-cityT and before i get started and make a mess of it i was wondering if anyone has tried anything like this before. I was planning on combining my current bonnet (size hinges etc) with the main features of a '79 civic (vents etc) and then working on a nice big Legacy style scoop. Is there anyone one here who has any experience with major fiberglass constructions? hints? tips? suggestions?

[PGNUTA]

Myself and Qiklude have done quite a bit of fibreglassing in the past.  Qiklude has made a complete custom body kit for his Honda prelude.



The best advice we could give you is to start with a basic mold.  What i would do is to take off your factory bonnet and start by spraying ados all over it.  Then stick some tin foil all over it.

Get some fibreglass fine woven cloth and spread it over the bonnet and trying to keep it flat as brush the resin overtop making sure that you saturate it completely.  No point being stingy with the resin because you will regret it later when you have dry strands that are bloody useless for anything.

Basically the general rule of thumb for ease of finishing is that you want to get it as flat and straight as possible at the start or else be prepared for days worth of sanding.

A couple of layers of fibreglass should do the trick and ideally you want to do it when it's cool so that the resin soesn't dry when you are working with it.  Leave it for 24 hours to completely dry and carefully take the fibreglass layer off the bonnet.  You should now have a complete mold of you factory bonnet and the tin foil will peal off easily from both the bonnet and the fibreglass.  Solvent will get the ados off the bonnet too.

Starting with a complete mold like this makes it so much easier to custom mold things later.  If you want to cut and mold in some vents or scoops or ducts.  You name it, it's easy this way.

Remember of course to wear a mask when sanding and gloves when dealing with fibreglass matting or resin.  This stuff is a bastard.

Well that's my $2.75 let me know if you need any more help

[Colza]

Thankyou very much. That will be very useful. That body kit is REALLY impressive. I LIKE!!!!

[Turbo3]

Hey really nice work Qiklude!! ;D

Colza, have a really good think about what the scoop is going to do and where the air is going to flow. It may look cool, but there's all sorts of strange things that can happen if you're not very aware of pressure areas and stuff. You can easily create a scoop that has totally the opposite effect to what you want. Instead of sucking cold air in, you can stop the hot from getting to where it would normally go and have a real problem on your hands. I did mine so it would extract air out before the low pressure eddy between the bonnet and windscreen. Check it out.


Pete

[Henry]

Would recommend that you retain as much of the original bonnet as you can and blend your mods into that. If you can retain the framework you will be less likely to have your windscreen fill up with bonnet one day when you least expect it.  Henry

[QikLude]

Hey fellas!

Thanks for the comments on the prelude guys
gives you an idea of what can be done with some time and effort.

I agree with tim on the glassing thing, its pretty simple once you get going, and haveing a basic shape to mold makes life MUCH simpler.
Even if you make polystrien shapes and mold them.
Always remember the better the preperation the less sanding you have to do!

Hey PETE! Im in chch this weekend you around at all?
Care to catch up and compare city notes

Cheers

Jw

[Turbo3]

Yo JW,

Hey dude, sorry I missed the post about you coming down to Chch!  :-/
My home PC is out of action so I've been using my work PC. Would have been real keen to catch up!!

Move into my own house with double garage late June, so I'll be able to do a bit more on the car then. It's currently in my Dad's garage. Not easy when you've got to travel a bit to get to it!! :-[
Anyway, give me a call if you're down this way again.
021 375 908

Pete

[QikLude]

No worries pete, will catch up some other time perhaps?
If you ever up nelson way, just yell  :)

Both me and tim are up here.
(and the cityturbo.com website

Cheers!

Jw

[murray_is_]

hey dudes

i am looking at doing a fibreglass bonet for my honda city with a subaru style air intake on it any ideas or tutorials on how i can add the shape to the orginal bonet.

[QikLude]

[quote author=murray_is_ link=board=GEN;num=1050316238;start=0#8 date=04/28/03 at 16:04:02]hey dudes

i am looking at doing a fibreglass bonet for my honda city with a subaru style air intake on it any ideas or tutorials on how i can add the shape to the orginal bonet.[/quote]

1: take the factory turbo one, cut the hole for subby unit, glass it in , bog it smooth.
2: weld plate back into the old factory " airbox cover" hole, grind flatish... sand, sand some more, bog some more....sand some more.....
decide getting a NA city bonnet was a better idea cause it was flat to begin with, start process again missing step 2:  ;D

Jw