This all started out with a phone call to Marc. I was talking about making protective covers for the engine. After a long conversation he steered me towards making them out of carbon fiber. He talked me through the steps and then we decided to start doing it over the holiday break. He went and bought all the kit and proceeding to educate me in the ways of making moulds. After a few failed attempts I had sorta got it going right and then began making bits for Angie. Heel guards, covers, radiator protectors etc...
I really wanted to make a cf rear hugger for my bike, but left it until last week as it's a pretty complex piece full of radius' and angles. I decided to 'document' the event with my cell phone cam and well... here it is.
Here's the original, erm... unwashed ahem, hugger:
The underside:
I wrapped the orignal in tinfoil some duct tape and clingwrap. I do NOT want any liquid foam welding itself to my original:
This is a small can of the liquid foam, normally used for insulating pipes in walls and cavities around window frames. Use gloves!!!! It's worse than hot bubble gum:
Dumped the whole can into the protected upside down hugger:
In hindsight I should have rather used several 1 inch layers, it took forever to go hard. Note how much it expanded:
Okay I missed out a step here. I've pulled the hugger off of the foam, unwrapped and waxed it lots of times. The yellow stuff is a wax putty that I've used to blend the hugger into the foam base:
This is when your mind screams 'NO!'. I've thinly painted sticky gel coat over the whole thing. This will harden and copy the finest detail from the original, even wax buffing marks show up:
Once the gel coat has more or less cured, I added some epoxy resin with cotton flock and black dye to the corners. This is to make sure that I have no air bubbles and to support the thin gel coating. I use black instead of clear to make sure I don't miss any spots. The cotton flock strengthens the resin against cracking:
I've layered the whole shebang in fiberglass. First a fine then a heavy weave. About 8 layers in total:
Left to harden overnight. Flipped over you can see the original black hugger:
Hugger and most of the wax removed:
Cleaned, degreased and trimmed:
I've waxed the mould lots of times to stop the resin sticking to it. The cf has been layed up, 4 layers, and a final fiberglass fine weave to protect my hands during future work:
Pulled the part out and rough shaping it:
Cleaned and degreased:
Spray painting with clear coat for UV protection. Nothing uglier that yellow carbon fiber:
Now I'm just waiting for it to dry, then I can buff it and stick it on my bike. :wink:
It took me a weekend and an evening of 4 work days to finish it.
This was the most complicated one I've done this far. Still enjoying it thoroughly though.
...
I really wanted to make a cf rear hugger for my bike, but left it until last week as it's a pretty complex piece full of radius' and angles. I decided to 'document' the event with my cell phone cam and well... here it is.
Here's the original, erm... unwashed ahem, hugger:
The underside:
I wrapped the orignal in tinfoil some duct tape and clingwrap. I do NOT want any liquid foam welding itself to my original:
This is a small can of the liquid foam, normally used for insulating pipes in walls and cavities around window frames. Use gloves!!!! It's worse than hot bubble gum:
Dumped the whole can into the protected upside down hugger:
In hindsight I should have rather used several 1 inch layers, it took forever to go hard. Note how much it expanded:
Okay I missed out a step here. I've pulled the hugger off of the foam, unwrapped and waxed it lots of times. The yellow stuff is a wax putty that I've used to blend the hugger into the foam base:
This is when your mind screams 'NO!'. I've thinly painted sticky gel coat over the whole thing. This will harden and copy the finest detail from the original, even wax buffing marks show up:
Once the gel coat has more or less cured, I added some epoxy resin with cotton flock and black dye to the corners. This is to make sure that I have no air bubbles and to support the thin gel coating. I use black instead of clear to make sure I don't miss any spots. The cotton flock strengthens the resin against cracking:
I've layered the whole shebang in fiberglass. First a fine then a heavy weave. About 8 layers in total:
Left to harden overnight. Flipped over you can see the original black hugger:
Hugger and most of the wax removed:
Cleaned, degreased and trimmed:
I've waxed the mould lots of times to stop the resin sticking to it. The cf has been layed up, 4 layers, and a final fiberglass fine weave to protect my hands during future work:
Pulled the part out and rough shaping it:
Cleaned and degreased:
Spray painting with clear coat for UV protection. Nothing uglier that yellow carbon fiber:
Now I'm just waiting for it to dry, then I can buff it and stick it on my bike. :wink:
It took me a weekend and an evening of 4 work days to finish it.
This was the most complicated one I've done this far. Still enjoying it thoroughly though.
...
! I'm impressed!
