Nothing to exciting to report. I've been chipping away at the rear bumper mold as I have time. So far the driver side is done and ready to demold. The passenger side got its first layer of fiberglass yesterday and I'll pick up some more resin at lunch to get some more on it today.

4 coats of partall wax, 3 coats of PVA, two coats of tooling gelcoat, then around 4-5 layers of fiberglass. So far I'm pretty happy with this being my first go at this. I learned to trim the fiberglass after each coat or it builds up and doesn't let the edges lay flat with the next layer.

Sooooo....I'm gonna be the first one to ask now that you have a mold. When can you make me one?

I've already though about it and sell them as a builder series type deal where you have to build brackets and trim the extra carbon from the edges. There is only two major issues that make it not a bolt on deal. 1. I narrowed the bumper to recess into pockets so you'd have to cut the body on each side to tuck it in. 2. I modified the tail panel of my car so my bumper brackets are different than stock. The bumper its self fits like stock though. My plan was to bolt them to the car then epoxy them to the bumper and carbon in the brackets on the back side once I get it fit up.

That said, if you're ok with cutting up your car and able to make your own brackets then I'd be open to laying up a few extra bumpers as it would also help me fund some other car parts.

Nicely done!!

That sounds like a lot of man hours...

Thank you

I mean, $775 for an Anvil bumper or $400 for one you have to make work yourself thats a tucked in custom fit?

Right, but I was referencing the custom basketry and the pockets that needed to be cut for it to be tucked. Very nice and it's something to think about. I may have to sacrifice and keep the stock bumper look since my plan is to go with a set custom wheels from EVOD. At least that's the plan.

I'm not sure how much of custom the bracket will need to be honestly. What I had to to was make them shorter because of the tail panel mods. The bumper side fit the stock couture of the steel bumper and bolted to the body in the stock locations. My brackets are in storage right now so I can't show you what I mean and its going to be a long time before I get them out again.

That's a great skill to have, very impressive what you're doing with all the CF parts.

Cf
 

:king:

Steve

Pulled the mold apart yesterday. Some minor touch up sanding to the gelcoat and its ready for some carbon! Now I need to order it so I can do some infusing next week.

Looks great AJ! Smoooooth....will reflect in the part!
Maybe you have already thought of this or have tested and it won't be a problem.....When we did glass off road car bumpers, we also broke the mold in the middle for release, like you did. However, we built a truss structure to keep the molds perfectly straight, i.e. didn't rely just on the flange to support the mold from flexing. Since you're going to bag it, I wonder if your mold might flex, even if just a little and your bumper wouldn't be dead straight?
My thought would be to bolt the mold together and if you can make it move even a little, I would clamp it down to something while it was perfectly straight and then laminate a truss structure to the mold. Of course the truss would have to also bolt together in the middle but it would triangulate the mold and it keep it from moving when you pull the vacuum.
Hope that is good advice and isn't redundant.

I've though about that already when I bolted it back together to check fitment. I don't know if I'll build a fixture to hold everything in place or just clamp it to the bench when I get ready to bag it. Yes it does flex otherwise. I have some left over steel from my frame build that I though about using to clamp it to.

It looks good!

So I made my first carbon fiber infuse part. It is one layer 2x2 then two layers of 12k plain weave. It's pretty strong, but flimsy so I won't be using it. The weave laid down almost perfect so I got that part figured out. I'm going to be laying up another one once I get the mold prepped and the carbon gets here. This time I'm adding a 2mm core and another layer of 12k to it to stiffen it up. As it is right now my iPhone 6 weighs more than this part.

I also chased a vacuum leak for a long time and never got it perfect, which caused some fixable problems in the outer layer. This second part I'm going to envelope the whole mold and that will take care of any leaks I had in the joint. Hopefully more updates on it in the next week or so with a perfect usable part.

That’s so awesome!! Good for you for tackling a project like this!

Bumper 2.0 turned out much stronger. I used a high quality 12k fabric and a 2mm core material along with adding an additional layer of 12k. So it's 1 outer layer of 3k 2x2, 2 layers of 12k 1x1, 2mm honeycomb core, 1 layer of 12k 1x1. it eliminated a lot of the flimsy feel and made it a lot stronger. It has a few blems on the ends, but this is getting painted black anyways so I'm not worried about it. Now that I have my rear bumper done I'm going to move back to the tail lamp housings. In full carbon.

Awesome!!!!

Very cool and inspiring!

Aye, that bumper looks like s#!t. Ugly too!! Send that one to me and go back to the drawing board....start over. :sarcasm_smiley:

Thanks guys, I'm liking how this carbon stuff is working out for me. Good thing too since I have a lot more of it to make on this car.

So I quit my job at the Cadillac dealer and started back at a Chevy dealer and I got clearance from the top of the food chain to work on my car in the shop. So progress on the car is back after about a year and a half mothballing. Saturday was the first time the cars been out of the trailer in all that time. I've been bringing some of my big tools to work throughout the week getting stuff ready.

So after weeks of thinking where do I start back since I have so much metal work do get done to finish grafting the C5 chassis to the '69 body I decided to first make it steer by hooking up the steering column, which was a quick job. Now that I had that important part handled I went to work in the back of the car. I just bought an english wheel and wanted to play with it so I figured the wheel tubs are the best place to start. I have the passenger side about 90%. I need to make a box cutout so I can get the rear upper control arm bolt out and a close out panel in the wheel side to match up to the C5 fuel tank close out. I also ran the back of the tub long down to the body line to seal off the bottom and give me another attachment point for the rear defuser.

With the passenger side mostly complete and not having a lot of time left in the day before the shop closed I got the driver side cut out, a flange bent and all of the shrinker/stretcher work done so it will take less time to finish up next time. I haven't decided how I want to attach the tubs to the frame yet so I didn't put a flange on it. I'm thinking I'll just weld it to the floor pan which will weld to the frame and that should all fit nice and be easy to seal up then coat with raptor liner.

Progress is a good thing and good luck with the new job!

Glad to see this one moving forward. Awesome work as always.

Don

Thanks guy, I'm real excited to be working on the car again. Need to get this thing on the road sooner than later.

Nice progress can't wait to see the tubs done. Love this build!

Wow it looks amazing.

So I've been messing with the most important part of my firewall this week here and there after work for a few. Since I'm running a C5 frame and pedal assembly the most logical step for me was to use the C5 firewall to locate all of the holes correctly. Seeing as the C5 firewall is fiberglass and I'm joining the steel frame to the steel body I decided to copy it into steel.

My first steps in this was I need a template, so I covered the whole fiberglass section in tape, marked lines and transferred that to poster board. I then had a buddy cut out in 18g sheet what ended up being a rather rough cut so it left my gaps a little bigger than I wanted, but thats ok as I could fill them with the mig.

I still have to weld the inside corners, and cut the holes out, but I'll save that for another slow work day.

Also, the top, bottom, and sides are all over sized to I can trim them down to fit the car.

Hoping to keep the progress rolling and get a lot done this summer. So far, so good. This past weekend I got the driver tub fit up. My welding helmet took a crap on me so I wasn't able to get both tube welded up and finished out like I had hoped. Since my welding was done for the day I moved into the trunk and got the side filler pieces fit up and the template for the center section done. didn't have a big enough piece of metal to get the center done so that will have to be next weekends project.

Since I was at kinda a stand still in the back of the car I started hacking the firewall apart to get my pedal bracket fit up. :superhack: I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to do and think it will work out nicely.

Awesome!

AJ great job, I like how you used as many bend as you could instead of pieces. really nice.

Thank you.

Less welding and grinding lol.

You have skills sir! Nice work!

Saturday I got to get more done on the car. It didn’t feel like much got done, but It was still progress and stuff that needed done.

Out back I got the tubs welded, ground, and metal finished so that took some time. After that was done I got the template done for the trunk floor done, but didn’t have a big enough piece of metal to get it done.

With the back at a stand still I moved to cutting out the firewall. After most of it was cut back I got the firewall starter piece lined up and made the first official firewall weld done. Since I need to know where to put the actual firewall I wend ahead put the engine in. Hopefully going to get the trunk floor done next Saturday.

It's great to see structure coming together on this car. That car-joining sheetmetal process is a mother, but it does provide a bit of perverse enjoyment in a puzzle-solving kind of way. I recall spending like four hours on a 4" x 5" inch chunk of sheet when I got near the end of my mess . . .

I found that using some tubes in the front and rear firewalls really helped to cheat the process along. The extra structure doesn't hurt, either. Keep up the good work!

Lots done Saturday. I have two small panels to build and then fitting the rear metal by the tail panel and all the rear tin work will be ready for some epoxy and then welding in.

I went with a bead layout that looked like stock first gen trunk pan after a lot of though and trying to figure out what designs I wanted to put in the metal. At the end though simple is best. I also made a support that goes on the bottom to add some strength to the metal. I also had to built end caps on the floor pan and cut the back parts of the tubs out so I can take the rear upper control arm bolt out. I think it finished off nicely. I'm undecided as to if I'm going to lizard skin everything then factory splatter paint it or just shoot it all with raptor liner and be done with it.

Wow!

Great that you are doing what couldn’t be done. Awesome.

Don

Thanks guys, I'm really happy with the progress I've been able to get done. If I can keep it up then hopefully by the end of the year I'll be about done with all the metal work and can have a fully assembled car so I can start on some of the other small projects and get them done as well.

Amazing job AJ.