Those flares are definitely more to my liking than the off-the-shelf skirt types. You think we can make our own variant from scratch?

The car is currently at 94cobra69ss396's house getting caged. Though I'd be happy to roll out there with you if you'd like to take a look. We can also check in on how things are going and chat about other issues.

You're more than welcome to come by and check it out. Just let me know what day and time.

I can wait till the cage is done, no hurry on my end. I still need to tune the Vette and put it back together, just let me know when you want me to come by. It will need to be on a weekend obviously.

Laying out glass pieces is simply a matter of getting the shape that we want first. I have no experience working with foam but I imagine the way that we would need to do this would be with foam. We need to spray it out over the stock panels, and cut away at it till we get the shape that we want. From there we can cover the foam with wax, and lay out the mold. Then lay out the piece. After drying and trimming we will need to smooth it out with filler and lots of sanding, then more filler and more sanding, then primer and glaze and more sanding...

I would probably trace out the new panel over the stock fenders, cut away the stock fenders for weight and tire clearance, then glue and screw the panels in place. Then grind a groove, fill and blend. Primer, sand, glaze, sand... you get the drift.

For the front bumper, since it will be a simple nascar style nose, we can just screw sheet metal right into the factory bumper, and lay out our mold.



I'm up for whatever you want to do, but keep in mind this will take a LOT of time and a LOT of resin/ matte. Remember we're not just making new panels, but for this sort of thing we'll be making molds which will take 2 or 3 times as much glass as the panles themselves will. And to make it worse, I will only be in OC on the weekends. But since we'll have multiple people working on this it shouldn't take forever like my Vette did. We can try to use plaster to make these molds to save money but I have no experience with plaster, and I'm not sure that they'd be strong enough being as large as they would need to be. Any kindergarden teachers in the house?

To recap, this can be done, but it ain't no Saturday afternoon project using only Adam's left over resin.

Thank you for your realistic assessment. My brother will have a lot more time from February and is very interested in getting involved with the body & paint. Maybe he's learned some tricks from industrial design for how to do molds and stuff.

What are we planning on doing with the inside of the doors? Re-installing the originals or making a cover plate out of aluminum or something?

We won't be reinstalling much of anything. Probably sheet metal.

Aluminum covers are easy to make and clean up the look inside. I made some for the Chevelle and it made it look a lot better inside.

I would love to learn how to work with glass. I have been wanting to make the front fenders on my truck "fit" better with the body panels or even make my own. Let me know when and where and I will be there.

This too is going to be a serious part of the project. We're making whole new parts. I've been chatting with my brother about how to do this correctly. It ain't trivial.

Some months back they had a show on Spike's Muscle Car where they were making flared fenders for a street track 60's mustang and they kind of did a watch and learn on the fiberglass fenders and making your own. I will try and see if I can track that episode down. They used some type of foam to get the shape they wanted and they glassed over that. The foam was easily shaped the way they wanted it.

You can mix your own high density foam. There various release agents. What the body kit guys do is the get the part to the shape they want on the car by adding and carving. Then make a mold of that. Then make the new part from that mold.

That is exactly what they did. I have been know to shape some sand in my day. I would love to help with the shaping.

Ah, how cute. Adam wants to leave the sand box and play with the big kids.:rolling:

Actually when I was playing in the sand it was at the beach and I was "scultpting" a female sunbathing on the beach (was in college). I was not good enough to do hands, feet, or the head but the rest of the body I think I did well. A guy came up to me and asked if I was doing pornography when I was almost finished with the bust of the female. I said no I was doing a whole girl and I was an art student (graphic design is close enough). I used seaweed for the bathing suite. Right after he was satisfied I was not trying to be pornographic he went back to his area and his kid (probably like 8 to 10) was like "nice tits!" I just laughed and kept doing my work.

Ya I'd hate to have a professional artist help form the body. :D

You didn't call this weekend Benny, I waited up all night by the phone and everything. If you want to buy the foam and have some stuff ready, we can actually get this bitch rolling when we do get together. Depending on how cheap the foam is, I may want to use it for the front bumper too. Also, don't know much about foam, but from what I've read, laytex foam would be preferable to urethane foam.

Don't you read every single post on this project! If so, you would have known tat Ron was unavailable on Saturday. The next two Saturdays are out for me. Probably it'll wait til it comes back to me in a couple/few weeks. Then you, me, Adam and my brother can discuss method, technique and design and form a game plan. My brother has studied some of this molding stuff in industrial design and is eager to try it out in a real world application.

Sounds good benni hanna, I'm excited to get started on this though, she's gonna be a bad motha fu(k@!

I'll be busy next weekend too... Very busy. :D:D:D

FYI I have midterms in the beginning of March, so the weeks before... praaabably aint gonna work. But I have Spring break March 23-27... and my main squeeze is working that week, so that could be the monster body week for me. I can show up at noon and leave at midnight.

All right, if you can handle commiting to that week, I'll even plan to take it as vacation. In the meantime I'll push ahead on as many other fronts as I can. Maybe by the end of that week we can have something ready to drop and fire.

I never claimed to be a professional artist. :sm_laughing:

Don't you dare take time off of work for this, I'm not very good delegating work and I don't work well with people looking over my shoulder. If you don't need to be there, I don't need you there, if you trust me not to fornicate with your air compressor again I can do this alone or with a few others. But really don't take time off of work. Someone needs to bring the bread for RX Snake, and it ain't this in debt law skool student.

And if you're uncomfortable leaving your garage open during the day I can even work in the driveway, that's where I did my Vette.

...This car is gonna be sooo mean. I'm excited. I wanna work on it now!

I'm going to work on it too numb nuts not just watch you and say . . . "wow, I wouldn't have done it that way." There is tons in the way of just body prep, even I know that, that is simply labor intensive. I also want to weld up all the holes in the engine compartment and make it smooth as I have no intention of returning it to street use. Or at least that's what I think at the moment and that alone is probably a couple days of labor.

PS I'm looking at possibly using a sequential shifter mechanism for the Top Loader. That outta get you excited . . . banging straight through the gears.

Weld up the holes in the engine compartment? Ha! If we set a rough timeline for completion, we will have stuff like that on our list, but come the night before we have it scheduled for paint, we won't be worrying about stuff like little holes here and there, we'll be saying to ourselves "sh*t! we still need to sand the door jambs and remove the windows!" At 2am!

This ain't a show car, set realistic goals. We're making custom panels, I don't even want to think about the hundreds of man hours and bloody sand paper that it's going to take to get them somewhat straight. (I don't mean bloody in the British sense, I mean bloody like my type A and that aids infested fluid that leaks slowly out of a dead hooker.)

But really don't take time off of work. I'm sure I'll spend the first half of the day scratching my head and getting setup, by the time you get home from work I should be ready to hammer shome shtuff out.

Also, not sure if I mentioned this, but if you intend for the front bumper to be Daytona like and kiss the ground. It might be wise to have the engine (or at least shortblock) installed along with the front springs.

:popcorn:

No I don't think so. While I'd like to attempt a ghetto all arounder (for shits and giggles AutoX), it's obviously more of a straight line car in any. Therefore a bunch of drag/downforce on the nose isn't so ideal.

Leedom, enkeivette, DeathCult, how's Saturday March 21 for a first meeting of the minds on body and paint, as well as starting the actual work. Anybody can come and check it out, but I want to maintain some focus on doing actual work (Sean) and 3 to 4 people hovering around a car and tossing around ideas is about the max before clusterfuckation starts to set in.

Aaron, how about the materials list yo?

Saturday late morningish will be good for me son. Give me a call Friday if you remember, my mind is consumed with law skool stuff and girlfriend stuff. Remembering my name and things of that sort have become difficult.

Will do.

BTW, there are these things called calendars you can set up with appointments and reminders . . . just an idea. :smack:

I have the pleasure of working a day shift on Saturday. I can meet early evening. 6ish....

The offroad cruise is the 21st so I won't be there anyway.

That's right. I'm able to do this because a gig just got rescheduled which is I wasn't able to make that. I'd still like to focus on the project car though. You can get the camera though.

I think we'll be going a bit into the evening, according to enkei if he wants.

Anywho, how bout that materials list. . .

Well if you guys go into the night I can make it after work...

So I've been asked to provide the basic info for fiberglass and body work.

For Fiberglass we'll need.
1) Mold release wax.
2) PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) It's a barrier coat for the mold.
3) Gel coat.
4) Fiberglass in both fabric and chopped.
5) Resin
6) Polyester Fleece for for form building.

For paint and body.
1) Rage light weight body filler.
2) Glazing compound.
3) Self etching primer and poly primer.
4) Paint and clear coat.
5) Paint gun. I all ready own a good quality one but if someone has one of
those super fancy German ones and wants to let us use it then O.K.
6) Spray booth. I don't have one of those.

O.k. I'm pumped!!! Let's do this...

Word. I'm guessing the only thing we don't need is the self etching primer, sionce I think we'll be going the scuff and paint route. Taking it down to bear metal appears to be massively more work. :huh:

What about method and technique of creating molds? I think you once told me the way places like Veilside worked was to start with the stock. Build up off of that,then mold the result, then create the new part from the mold. Process?

Oh yeah I forgot were not going all the way down to metal route. So were good there.

Yeah, I think the build up method will work for most of what we want to do. We'll have to figure all that out as a group. It's gonna be a lot of work but if we do it right we should have a pretty awesome end result. I have a bunch of ideas all ready.

P.S. Your quote is awesome. Mainly cause our last name. So it's like we're droppin da bomb YO.

For Fiberglass we'll need.

1) Mold release wax.
2) PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) It's a barrier coat for the mold.

1 & 2 are the same thing. PVA is a bitch to locate, I've made my own in the past. I've also heard that you can use PAM.

3) Gel coat.

We can get away without gelcoat. We'd prob just end up sanding most of it off anyhow.

4) Fiberglass in both fabric and chopped.

The chopped stuff is much better. And if we're seriously going to make molds and not do it the ghetto way, then we don't really need the better shape holding fabric.

5) Resin
6) Polyester Fleece for for form building.

Don't forget the MEKP! Or the resin will be gooey... forever!


For paint and body.

1) Rage light weight body filler.

I hear this stuff is all the rage... :D We can use whatever's clever. But it might crack, I've used Fibertech and I'd feel safe using it again. The more lightweight stuff like Rage is going to be more prone to cracking... oh say like... where we mold the flares into the metal! Juuust a thought.

2) Glazing compound.

I should have enough left over. I know where we can get more if we run out, but I should have enough left over for this project.

3) Self etching primer and poly primer.

I don't know what self etching primer is, and get the thickest poly primer you can. With all this body work, it will be wavy, the thicker the primer, the more we can block and the less wavy it'll be. I used Slick Sand.

4) Paint and clear coat.
5) Paint gun. I all ready own a good quality one but if someone has one of
those super fancy German ones and wants to let us use it then O.K.
6) Spray booth. I don't have one of those.

I get mixed signals about the budget on this project. We can always spray down Ben's nice pretty garage with some water to trap the dust and get overspray all over his pretty tools. Or, Resurrection Rods spray booth rental = $150 a day.

P.S. We will be going to metal where we bond in the flares. Also, we need that metal to glass adhesive. I also know where we can get this stuff, but it's $40 a tube. So if Kameleon can hook it up...

On second thought, if you can score some gel coat for cheap, go for it. It should make life easier in the long run. Also, what is polyester fleece? Also also, we need foam.

Have no fear, I have sources for everything. I know where to locate everything we need for the fiberglass including PVA (we're not using Pam). We should defiantly use both chopped and cloth fiber for rigidity, unless we want finders that go all wobbly at speed. As far as the resin I thought I didn't need mention the catalyst seeing how it is commonly referred to as two part resin.

Foam, were still trying to figure out. The high density foam I typically use is very expensive and would cost a small fortune for the amount we're gonna use. That's where the fleece comes in. Yes, I'm talking fleece like the kind at Old Navy. You use polyester fleece to form around rigid frames. The fleece is made out of the same stuff as the resin (polyester).

As far as Rage is concerned, if we're doing anything that can't be accomplished with a good quality glazing compound (which I own) will want to use Rage. It's called light weight filler cause it's lighter then metal filler or lead, used in the olden times. If you want we can lead the body, I know how to do that to. Shock to any old timers, yes I have leaded a car before. I know weird, I'm so young.

Primer depends on the time line. There is no need to use a strong poly primer unless the car is gonna be in a primer state longer then a couple months.

Fiberglass to metal bonding shouldn't be necessary unless that's for the rear fenders. I'm under the impression we're making the front fenders.

Self etching primer. Believe it or not paint doesn't stick to raw metal all that well, so the surface has to be chemically etched. There are acid etching compounds but those add a whole extra step. I actually own some self etching primer that might still be good.

I think that covers everything.