Fibreglassing advice

[Coyote]

Just want to know how to get started making fairings out of fibreglass. I pretty much want to make all the fairings out of fibreglass on the RG and I'd like to be able to do so myself. I also want to make them my own shape instead of copying the originals. I've heard of making a wire frame in the shape you want then coating that with chopped strand mat and resin and sand it down. Is that easy enough for someone with practically no knowledge to do? What do I need and how much does everything I need cost?

[Brian d marge]

Good luck ..

I mean I can build and entire bike with no 8 fencing wire , feed the the kids and be home in time for tea

but I give up with fibre glass ,,,I end up with brushes, hands , Garagre looking like its been playing with a gorrillas arse ,,,chopped strands of mat and resin Everywhere

Others may find it easy ,,but i am quite happy to admit I failed big time at that stuff ,,and will quite happily pay others to do it

Kind regards
Stephen

[Hoon]

Sounds a little ambitious. Fibreglass fairings are usually made from rubber moulds which have been taken from the originals. Custom fairings you would probably design a prototype first using clay, wood or some other easily workable material, then take a mould of that.

If I were you I'd start small first. Try repairing some damaged fairings with fibreglass patches. Buy one of those kits from Mitre10 which has everything you need. Get an idea how to roll the stuff and prep it for painting.
Then move onto making a front mud guard or rear hugger.

I hate working with fibreglass....it sucks arse big time and I would gladly pay for someone else to do it too!!

[Racey Rider]

You better check the rules if you want to use them for streetstock. I think fibreglass flairings are not allowed in the streetstock class.

[Yokai]

One thing that you can do is get old T-shirts and paint them with Epoxy Resin. As this stuff hardens it will give you a good hard prototype.

to get a good mould for it, you want to get some Polystyrene blocks (doesn't matter if they are glued together) - there's a place on the link between the SH20 and Manukau that sells it wholesale - you'd have to find them in the yellowpages cos I can't remember their name at the moment.

So - Get the poly... Using a hot knife, polystyrene cutter and orbital sander, sculpt what you want the fairing on one side to look like (ignore the mountings, air holes etc at the moment). Cover it in T-Shirts and paint with epoxy resin
Lift off when dry and stiff. Tweak the sculpture to resent what you really want... repeat the whole process till satisfied...

It then becomes fairly trivial to figure out the mountings and holes. (use a dremel or something)
Once that is all done then get ANOTHER block of poly. Mount the proto fairing on the one side, and sculpt the other side as a mirror for it. Again - t-shirts and epoxy.

Then When Completely Satisfied (tm) start laying fibreglass - you can do this onto the Poly if you find something that will coat the Poly in resin-proofness - ask someone like EuroDave about that. This will give you a fibre prototype. When THAT is to your satisfaction, you should get a mould made of both sides....

Good Luck

[Motu]

As you can see from Yokai's simple instructions it's labour,labour,labour for small rewards.Some people love the medium and can do amaizing things with it - 99% of humans find it frustrating,messy and damn itchy....I stay away from it...

[Coyote]

You better check the rules if you want to use them for streetstock. I think fibreglass flairings are not allowed in the streetstock class.

Got a heads up from SVS that they will be allowing fibreglass fairings in the streetstock. The old rules said you were only allowed them as replacements

So how would I go about getting fibreglass fairings for the RG? The idea of doing it myself was it would be cheaper and I could make it how I wanted it to be. I'm also interested in aquiring the skill to make stuff out of fibreglass. I was in no rush to get them done and was interested in it as a project since I have the entire holidays and no job yet.

So should I just flag the idea or should I at least give it a shot?

[Coyote]

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Mo...n-41088406.htm

That's cheap enough to just have a go at it

[phoenixgtr]

I say give it a go. If you got time and $$ to spare it would be an awesome skill to learn. I'd love to be able to work with fibreglass. Only ever tried once and that was a mess. Oh well. Practice makes perfect

[Eurodave]

By all means, give it a go, but BE WARNED you are up for an incredable amount of work,& If youre not used to it, A LOT of discomfort, with the smell, the sticky goo & worst of all when sanding the shit & the itchy/burny that results!! For F@#ks sake at least get youself a pair of disposable overalls, a respirator[ not just a paper dust mask], & a several pairs of disposable rubber gloves.
Bear in mind, I speak from bitter experience & have been doing commercial 'glass/carbon work in my own business for over 15 years
Anyhoo, get youself some big bits of the BLUE [fine grained] insulation foam & start hacking, cover the resulting shapes with epoxy resin & 225 gsm chop strand matt NB: DO NOT USE POLYESTER RESIN on the foam, all that will happen is youll melt all your hard work away. Then slather them in bog & sand your brains out. Once everything is baby arse smooth, spray them with laquer primer to seal the bog.
Then coat them with wax/ release agent, then tooling gelcoat & glass up, [this time using polyester resin] some molds & repeat to get the finished article GOOD LUCK-YOULL NEED IT!!!!!

[Coyote]

By all means, give it a go, but BE WARNED you are up for an incredable amount of work,& If youre not used to it, A LOT of discomfort, with the smell, the sticky goo & worst of all when sanding the shit & the itchy/burny that results!! For F@#ks sake at least get youself a pair of disposable overalls, a respirator[ not just a paper dust mask], & a several pairs of disposable rubber gloves.
Bear in mind, I speak from bitter experience & have been doing commercial 'glass/carbon work in my own business for over 15 years
Anyhoo, get youself some big bits of the BLUE [fine grained] insulation foam & start hacking, cover the resulting shapes with epoxy resin & 225 gsm chop strand matt NB: DO NOT USE POLYESTER RESIN on the foam, all that will happen is youll melt all your hard work away. Then slather them in bog & sand your brains out. Once everything is baby arse smooth, spray them with laquer primer to seal the bog.
Then coat them with wax/ release agent, then tooling gelcoat & glass up, [this time using polyester resin] some molds & repeat to get the finished article GOOD LUCK-YOULL NEED IT!!!!!

Great info, you actually put it into words I can understand, thanks

I knew it wasn't going to be easy but I still want to try it out for myself. It'll be really helpful if I can learn how to fibreglass as I want to do a lot of custom stuff on vehicles (try make a bodykit for our '84 Laser ). I'll spend the time learning to do it correctly, I don't expect to pick it up when I first try it.

[Macktheknife]

I was gonna go into a bit of detail but it appears you already have the best of it, just be aware that time is the big expense, if you have lots of it then you can create anything you want. and patience.... lots of patience.

[erik]

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Mo...n-41088406.htm

That's cheap enough to just have a go at it

Aside from that being polyester resin, I reckon you should do some phoning around of fibreglass supplies places before buying the stuff, it's expensive. And stuff on trademe isn't always cheaper than what you can get in the shops.

I've only done a tiny bit of fibreglassing, made a model airplane engine cowling. If you're making a small part and it's only a 1 off, you can sometimes get away with making a male mould out of polystyrene covered with something to stop the glue seeping in (brown packing tape works well and can be heated with a hot air gun to shrink it around curves but may be a nuisance on large parts). Then lay the fibreglass on top of that and use filler to get the finish smooth. To remove it from the mould you can either hack the polystyrene away and peel the tape off (epoxy doesn't stick to it too well) or I've heard of people melting it away with petrol.

But if you want a really nice fairing or think you mght want to make more than 1, you're probably better off doing it Eurodave's way.

[Dadpole]

I once made a fairing top using polystyrene and used water based paint to protect it from the resin. Worked out OK, but the time taken was about three times as long as I expected.
Have a go by all means, but get the mould right because the glass costs.
Also, use glass cloth rather than mat.

[swanman]

I have been tempted by this idea a few times. I have a fair bit of composite/glass experience (boatbuilders). The big issue is not really the laying up of the glass etc it is getting the shape right. Not only getting it right but getting it right with the minimum of hassle, sanding, shaping, rework, fucking about etc.

I reckon a way could be to use the original fairing as the start point, paint on gelcote and lay a chop layer or 2 over the top of them (obviously after being polished up and release agent applied), this should form an immediate female mould of the exact shape required. The moulds could be divided into sensible sections to aid release of finshed product, the produced sections being glassed back together afterwards.

If you are looking for cheap fabrics, go to any boat builders they have heaps of offcuts of all weights and styles even carbon and kevlar which they throw out. Resin is more of an issue. Epoxy is best but also the most expensive. But by the same token you proly don't need too much, generaly work on resin weight equal to the weight of fabric of fabric you use, for planning purposes.

If you are not too experienced with using fibreglass/ resins etc get someone to show you first. The stuff is easy to use, but there are some basic principles you have to follow otherwise you'll just get it wrong and lose interest and money.

The advantage of making fairings is that actualy it is not structural integrity that is important at all so the quality of them doesn't have to be that high, it is the shape and weight that is important.

Be tempting to make race fairings for common sports bikes on this basis as once the moulds are made, the finished product is quick and cheap to make.

Hey anyone want to start a business!!!