Infra-Red Focus RS replica/conversion build!

[hurtinfocus]

Originally Posted by *Z3R0*

Awesome work dude! I soo badly want a RS wing but dont get them here in SA :(

I'll be making carbon fiber replicas.....I'd ship to SA if you'd pay the shipping charges....

[hurtinfocus]

Spend a couple hours today and got one fender laid up.

Assembled the mold for the passenger fender:





I forgot to take pictures after mold release and gel coat, so my apologies for that bur here's the final layup:

5 layers of 1.5oz chopped strand matt





Not a TON of progress, but I'm going to chip away a little at a time, I'm pretty burnt out from my cafe-racer CB550 build so I'm not exactly hyper-motivated to be in the garage a lot lol.

[hurtinfocus]

MOAR!

Popped it out of the mold today:



Trimmed it all up:





fitted the side marker:



it didn't lay out as perfect as I had hoped, there's some dead spots (air bubbles) along the lip of the wheel opening where the matt didn't lay all the way flat up to the gel coat, so I'll have to do some touch-up work with a little fiber reinforced body filler along the lip, but overall it didn't come out too bad.

I put together the mold for the other side and just layed the gel coat, gotta go back out in about 35mins to start laying fiberglass.



I figure if I can get the other side trimmed up and ready tomorrow after work, then lay up one of the quarterpanels tomorrow, pop that out & trim tuesday and then lay up the other quarterpanel afterwards.....by friday I can have a front clip on the car and start marking up the car for where to cut out the stock quarters on the rear.

stay tuned!

[Twenty]

That is great work, keep it up!

[pyroinsa]

Nice progress! Love what you have done so far. Are you fiberglassing the rear quarters? if so how do you plan on attaching them to the body?

[Djzx3]

Now this takes time and patients.

Great work man, can't wait to see what a RS looks like done in infra red.

[hurtinfocus]

Originally Posted by pyroinsa

Nice progress! Love what you have done so far. Are you fiberglassing the rear quarters? if so how do you plan on attaching them to the body?

yes I'll also be doing the rear quarters in fiberglass. I plan to attach them with fuser and counter-sunk rivets, then hide the rivets with fiber reinforced body filler.

[hurtinfocus]

Got the other fender laid up

[hurtinfocus]

Long story short......the fender molds are garbage. now that the parts are out of the mold and mocked up on the car, it's painfully obvious that the molds were made on damaged fenders. holding lamps a few feet away and examining from a few different angles you are able to see creases that had existed in the metal fender when the molds were made. What this resulted in is changing the angle of the nose of the fender where it meets the headlight and bumper.....rendering the molds and the fenders that were to come from them useless. (don't fret, I have a plan.....not excited about it, but I have a plan)

Pics of how bad fitment is:













as you can see, fitment around the headlight is NOWHERE NEAR CLOSE

my new gameplan is to cut about an inch above the flair on these fiberglass fenders, and then set them over the stock metal fenders I took off the car and trace the cut line. I'm going to utilize the entire top part of the stock fenders so that fitment/gaps along the hood line and headlight are OEM, and fuse/blend the RS flairs onto that piece to achieve a replica RS fender. Then I'm going to make a fresh mold from the corrected fenders. This really sucks because of what I spent on these molds.....but it's still cheaper than OEM focus RS sheetmetal parts and at least I can recoup losses by selling replicas after the molds are corrected. At least then I can rest assured that the parts I produce and sell will fit CORRECTLY.

I guess saturday morning is when I'll be tackling it....as I won't have the time until then.

[Rudel]

Oh no! All that work.... Looks good though.