With the supercharger oil change and volume testing done I've started a new project - a carbon fibre engine cover! The goal is to build a fibreglass mould of the existing cover, modify it slightly, and make ten carbon fibre copies to see if making carbon parts full time is a viable idea. These will have the same edge line as the original cover and match the mounting hardware on the engine so the install will be a thirty second click-out and click-in job. For this test batch I'll clean the look up by removing some of the smaller lines and bumps and the SUPERCHARGED badges, and filling the hole at the front; the Jaguar lettering, three stripes, and most of the major lines will remain.

The project started today with blanking out the features that I don't want in the mould using plasticine:




I've never done a part this big before, and I found some of the larger areas impossible to get smooth as the plasticine stays soft. I can sand the mould smooth, but it's a little bit annoying lol




Dams are just chunks of corflute signboard hot glued to the pattern. I'm not really happy with my work here but it's the first time I've had to use multiple pieces so it'll do. As long as it works, right?




It got three coats of release wax which is just a (probably low-quality) carnauba wax that's sold for this purpose. The scariest part was coating it in gelcoat, since this is the point of no return!!




Tomorrow it'll get another coat or two of gelcoat, ready for fibreglass on Friday

 

First layer of 220gsm fibreglass matting down today, and it was a learning experience... it went a bit slower than I thought, and I lost about half a pot of resin that suddenly went off before I could use it! Not a big deal, just a bit of a waste



Had a little trouble getting some of the edges to sit down on the gelcoat and spent a good hour stippling it down with a brush.. there's one particularly tricky spot where I think I'll need to cut a little hole and fill the void with some resin, but I don't think that'll be a huge issue.

Three or four more layers of fibreglass over the next few days then it'll be time to pull the cover from the mould and start working on the finish

 

The mould got three layers of 450gsm matting on top of the first 220gsm layer over the past few days, and after 24hrs of curing I got to the really exciting step of de-moulding!! I cut the ragged edges off and started trying to pull the part but it was stuck in there pretty good... I know ABS plastic and gelcoat will fuse together and I started getting worried that this part was ABS, but after a bit of wiggling and some creative insertion of wedges I finally got it out




Before I started, I debated removing the texture from the surface of the original engine cover but I decided to leave it as I'm trying not to damage or modify it during this process. In hindsight this was a bad decision - I have to remove this texture from the ENTIRE surface, it's freaking everywhere It would have been much easier to use a filler to smooth it out on the original first...



I've spent the last three hours sanding the texture out with 180 grit, it's working and I got most of the big areas done but it's going to be a looooong process to get all the way to 2000 grit before polishing.

There's a few areas where I had bubbles between the gelcoat and the first fibreglass layer, I've chipped all the unbonded gelcoat out ready to be filled. These look bad but they're easy to fix, I'll just fill them with gelcoat til they sit a little proud of the surface then sand them smooth and they'll be all good.



I'm about 80% done with the 180 grit sanding, so far it looks pretty good:




Will knock over the remaining day or two worth of sanding this week and I think I'll be laying up carbon next week

 

No photos since it looks the same as yesterday, but just thought I'd vent about how sick of sanding I am already haha! I thought I'd gotten the bulk of it but when I looked closely today I realised I'd missed heaps of little corners and crevasses, so I spent another half a day sanding with 180 grit then I filled most of the holes and features I want to remove with gelcoat. Will probably spend a few hours sanding the filled spots smooth tomorrow, then I'll likely need to add more gelcoat filling to any spots I missed, then more sanding, then more filling... I thought there was "a day or two worth of sanding" but I think this'll go into next week. Good thing I'm currently unemployed 😂😂

Just ordered a 1" backing plate, sanding discs, and polishing pads for the dremel... I'll be f#!%ed if I'm hand-sanding any more moulds!

 

More sanding, filling, sanding, filling... this is taking waaaay longer than I expected but my goal is to make 10 of these with the absolute best finish I can get, so the time investment is worth it.

The most difficult are these four large raised sections in one of the grooves... remember the mould is the opposite of how it looks, so the raised bits below are the groove and the flat depression is actually a rectangular raised section:



I tried just dribbling some gelcoat in but I realised that would need at least four or five applications with sanding in between so quickly ditched that. Instead I used plasticine to take an impression of the groove right next to one of the raised sections, fill the impression with gelcoat, then press it onto the gap. It worked really well, better than I expected.. here it is after pulling the plasticine off this morning:



After a loooooot of sanding:




More sanding:




The best I can do today, which is soooooooo close but not quite good enough:



Added a bit of fill and will have another go tomorrow.

I've been making little sanding blocks out of plywood and aluminium, some big ones around 50mm x 20mm x 10mm and some little ones about half as long. I'm finding the plywood forgiving and good for flattening large areas, whereas the harder the aluminium gives me really crisp square edges and makes it easy to get straight lines.

So far I've logged 26.5 hours on this mould, 13 of them sanding 😂 😂

 

Not a ton of progress over the past few days, my ADHD kicked in and I decided to start learning to polish cars as well 😂 As part of the business sale all the vehicles are being detailed, and I've decided to polish seven of them myself for experience.. once done I'm sure I'll be confident enough to polish the Jag, and maybe even wet sand the mild orange peel out. I'll be doing these two projects concurrently, and also have a house reno project on the go so updates may be a little sporadic.

Anyways I did manage to fill the remaining two spaces in the groove. These ones were more tricky than the others... for the others I could just copy the groove right next to the gap, but these are on the other side of a curve and they also bump up against the edge of the piece so I had two different moulds to make with the plasticine. I pressed it up against the side to match that but as soon as I pressed it over the groove I messed up the side bit, then as soon as I pressed it up against the side I messed up the groove. I basically moved the piece of plasticine back and forth from the two spots, each time needing a little less pressure to get it to shape... eventually it felt close so I filled the void and the plasticine with gelcoat and sent it:




24hrs later, scraped the plasticine off and this is what we got:






Both have a bit of a bow but that can be sanded out. It seems the plasticine gives a bit when I press it down and the resulting shape is a little too skinny, so I'll give them a quick scrub/sand to clean them then brush another layer or two onto the low spots before I start sanding.

I've made a mistake - I haven't yet made the second part of the mould that will locate the plug standoffs and, with the gaps in the groove filled, I can't get the original engine cover back in the mould. It's a mistake I can fix easily but so far my only two solutions are either grinding these back down then re-filling them, or cutting the raised bits out of the OEM cover

 

More sanding today - got most of it done, but the two bits I filled are taking some time. I trimmed them back and gave them their second fill, there'll be a lot of sanding to get them into shape but I think I can get them there.

Here they are after a rough shaping:



Filled again:



These are by far the most difficult part so far, I think there's going to be a few days' work just getting these right. If I'm being honest, I'm starting to regret the decision to extend this groove all the way around 😂😂

 

Took a bit of a break from this project to focus on something else, but got back into sanding this afternoon. The mould is now completely sanded apart from the two bits of the 'groove' that I filled, which now look like this:



I think I can get a good result here but it's going to take a ****load more time. This is by far the hardest part of the project and I'm regretting not just leaving them as they were 🤦

 

I REFUSE DEFEAT!



It's not absolutely perfect, but it's f***ing close and I don't think the very minor wobble will be visible in the finished part. The little hole near the curved bit was caused by me getting a bit excited with the dremel, but it's been filled and will be smoothed tomorrow. The same spot on the other side of the mould required a second fill but it's close and should be finished on Friday.

It only took me seven hours today to get this done... 46.75hrs all up so far, 33 of them sanding 😂

GO FOR CARBON NEXT WEEK