How to Make a Carbon Fiber Car Bonnet/Hood - Part 1/3 : Making the Mould 

Calculating how much time this takes, price to be paid for ignoring wife and family. How many shifts of overtime it would take to buy this.......looks like I'll pick up a few shifts of overtime and have this delivered when my wife is gone to visit family.

Best quality video from 2012 I've ever seen! Great explanation. Clear, detailed. Spot on.

Worth saving 1,500 dollars to make my own

I have work due in an hour, and I’m watching this. Nice work self!

I really wish I'd watched this $200 (in materials) ago. :) Great series - thanks for taking the time to make these videos. I used hot glue to attach flange forms to my plug, but didn't put tape down beforehand. Because, hey, how hard can it be to remove hot glue? (ProTip: It's not difficult, but super time-consuming. Use the tape.) Also, filleting wax is freaking impossible to find in the US. I've found that a sulfur-free oil-based modeling clay works very well. It doesn't dry out, PVA will stick to it, and it's easy to remove from the plug once the mold is complete. (I'm not an expert - just making this stuff up as I go along.)

Knocked it out of the park! By far the most detailed, professional, well thought out and executed training video on producing (complex) parts I've seen on RU-vid to date.. Thoroughly inspiring. And this is from a "supplier"? Builders take note.. This is how you do it, IMHO. String a few of these vids together on DVD and the only question I would have is "where do I send the money?" :o) Companies like this deserve our business. I'm in the US but will be looking to Easy C. (in the UK) to "help" me get started. This is not the type of process where you want to skimp on price or talent. GR8T job guys (and gals). Really appreciate it. p.s. Thank God there was no music :o]

You're welcome. Please just spread the word about our company; we do these videos to share our passion for carbon fibre and composites and to raise our profile around the world. If the 100hrs+ we put into filming and editting this series helps a few people to make some really amazing parts (or even start a business) and gets us one or two links on forums and blogs then it's all worthwhile.

You’ve ruined me for watching other composite molding videos… All I could think was “have they not seen how to make a proper mold?!” 😅😹😸

I must say, I'm so impressed by the professional process used. I guess that's why you end up with the immaculate finish. Cant wait to see how the final product turns out!

19:30 When you hear that sound in a staff meeting don't move.

The mould making process (as shown in this video) does produce fumes, you need good ventilation and you could also wear a mask. At normal low levels it's not dangerous. Making the part itself (the resin infusion) is low risk; good ventilation should be adequate. Trimming the part requires (video 3) requires a good mask because you're generating lots of fine dust. Take a look at our new cutting safety video if you want to learn more about masks.

Who is here because it was recommended after watching b is for build 😜

When watched through our website, we have a shopping list of materials next to the video.

The human mind at its best, magic, I absolutely love it, wowwwww

I would like to do as much of my car as possible , I have a '67 Toronado - nearly 5000lbs ! This video series has really inspired me to Replicate all the front end metal -Hood Fenders in and out - Rad support and the valences , Doors deck lid and I even would like to attempt to do the Body Shell ..

Depends on the engine bay temperatures. A engine with good heat shielding will generally not be a problem as the air temp under the bonnet will not likely reach more than 60C. Some high powered cars may be higher so you need to check.

You're welcome! We're working on some more pretty exciting professional carbon fibre tutorials so keep an eye on our site and this channel!

Someone tag B is for build in this video

I love the video, it gives me a new appreciation into why carbon fiber parts are so bloody expensive. I wanted to make parts for my old 82 LeSabre, Buick, just to be different and improve it's economy but had to sell the car. I was slightly regretting it when I read the title to this video then I thought, holy hell you used up like 8 sheets of fiberglass matting, chopmat, and you haven't even made the part yet. I would have rather just stripped the parts off the car, sent them to you and have you do it because to quote another American, "ain't nobody got time fo dat (Kimberly "Sweet Brown" Wilkins)"

Yes, the mould can be reused dozens if not hundreds of times. We use Uni-Mould based moulds in our own workshop for some of our production parts and they wear very well. The more you look after them the better they will last. By having a good gelcoat finish you can also at occasional intervals re-polish the mould to take out any scratches or dulling that has occured with regular use.

Lots of patience required to do this line of work. I could see why CF hoods and other parts are pricy because of the skill set and labor behind it. Good job dude! 👍🏽 keep up the good work you do. 😎

what carbon cloth you use as material pattern not losses. as we use simple 20gr and very hard to lay perfect.

I recently started working in composites after working with metallics the majority of my career and these videos are invaluable. I just wish I had a big enough garage to do this at home. Thanks

In this video we're using a 200g 2/2 twill 3k carbon fibre for the visible layers. We use a Lantor Soric SF2 core material on the top skin and for the inner skin we use the 2/2 twill 200g fibre again backed-up with a 650g 12k carbon. When you're laying reinforcement into the mould dry it should be quite easy to keep the weave nicely aligned. It normally gets distorted in a wet-lay process when you're pushing it around with a brush or roller. You don't have that problem with resin infusion.

Now I know where to buy my materials for boat building. ... perfect

loved the video and thanks for posting. good coverage of detail shots too. also, because I sometimes channel an ancestral spelling nazi, I gotta cringe when i see professional marketing that overlooks misspelled words. (on your marketing board behind you, under "buying made easy" the word competitive is misspelled.) makes your marketing team look sophomoric. seems a small complaint in light of the artistry in the molding work, but... devil in the details, i guess. thanks again for posting.

In total we used about 20kgs of the Uni-Mould resin, 7kgs of chopped strand mat, 5kgs of the coupling coat and 5kgs of the tooling gelcoat however this is a small part (a FIAT 500) and a larger part would require more resins and glass. Remember that we made an inside mould and an outside mould.

please do some difficult parts like front bumper.. thanks

You completely nail it! I wish I had someone like your company in my area...

man is this hard work . awesome instructional video!

Nice , my old work...i work long time ago with production yachts , spoilers for cars , sand box for winter time..🇵🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿👍

The four videos you have on your channel are BY FAR the most intelligent, concise and in-depth I've found on youtube for how to work with carbon fiber. Thank you very much for all the effort you put into this series.

So anyone can learn to make their own carbon fiber parts?? Beats buying seibon’s bullshit CF parts😂😂

Fascinating film, but I was totally confused when I saw him laying fibreglass sheets on the part until realised that they were only building the mold :-) Well, off to part 2 then...

@LoCoM4 we've got plenty more videos on the way. We'd love to do more (and quicker) but they take a long time and we're incredibly busy as a l

How much would all the parts used here (excluding the steel hood) cost?

При ремонте лицевого покрытия из гелькоута, используют топкоут .

You won't have to wait long, they're all uploading to RU-vid right now... Part 2 is already online!

Carbon fibre is not a suitable material for a novice (or pretty much anyone else) to make a rollcage with. I don't often say this but my advice would be to stay well away from that project.

"the most ambitious we are ever likely to take on" - After watching your recent videos! lol not likely... You guys are awesome!

@PatruDragos I'm not sure I understand the question, if you want to make a fibreglass copy of your bumper then you will need to make a mould first (like we do in this video) and then you can make your fibreglass bumper using traditional fibreglass materials. Lots of curves should not really make much difference.

That about sums it up! So long as you have the information in this video then every step is perfectly achievable and should work just like it does in the video, there are just a LOT of steps to make a top class carbon fibre bonnet/hood like this but it's an amazing project to undertake and the finished product would be better than almost any carbon fibre bonnet/hood on the market (bulk manufacturers cut LOTS of corners).

Hello, why do you aply coupling coat and not just resin, what are the advantages? If i Want to make the hood from fiberglass and not carbon fiber, should i do it without the coupling Coat?

Isn't this more like fiber glass though?

You can laminate a basalt woven material in the same way. There is no performance advantage and the ECO credentials promoted with basalt are dubius at best.

19:31 lovely

Wow, 10 year's ago we did not have blue tape?? Great vlog 👍

Excellent video, kept being drawn away by your sign maker's misspelling of "Highly competAtive pricing." I guess he's trying to make you stand out from your "competation".

@danthman123 if you're only making one and you need to make the moulds and buy all of the equipment (I.e. starting from scratch) then it will work out more expensive, not cheaper. The materials alone used in making this bonnet are around £450 and remember that's for a 100% carbon bonnet so once you have the equipment and moulds it will work out cheaper.

You're very unlikely to get bubbles in your gelcoat; I can't think I've ever seen this. In this video we spray the gelcoat; if done right that can put it down very smoothly and bubble free. The time you wait before infusing the resin through would depend on the gelcoat you're using (remember, you can use NO gelcoat and it will work just fine). For the GC50 we used in this video the correct delay would be between 3 and 24hrs.

Can I use paper instead of chopped fibre mat?

Only job were the sound of something cracking is good.

@sosa921000 if you GOP on the Easy Composites website and watch this same video from inside our Learning Centre then you'll see a list of all the materials and pieces of equipment listed down the side of the video - I think you'll find this very handy.

why polish the wax if the purpose is just a release barrier?

I'm still looking for something to put over the bonnet to protect the paint before fiber glassing. It's a good bonnet so I don't want to mark the paint.

Do u guys ship to the US?

@LoCoM4 ...company. We are doing a video where we will show making a carbon fibre air box. It won't make much difference what car it's for because the technique would be the same. Keep an eye on this channel for more vids. In the meantime, get in touch through our website if you need anything.

@ 19:30

The series is over an hour long already so it wouldn't really be realistic to cover every single aspect in any more detail but I honestly don't think there is much missing. We have a video dedicated to resin infusion and through Carbon Mods (our other brand) videos dedicated to mould making, wet lay laminating and other topics. If you watch everything we have to offer then there should not be much knowledge missing. If you don't have a hood to copy then you'll need to make a 'pattern' first.

Thank you so much for creating this video series. I've always wanted to see a simple straight forward explanation of how this process is done. This has really got me excited to try this myself someday.

I wouldn't recommend spraying the resin during the tooling phase because it's very thick and would not spray well, by the time you've set up all the gear (and purchased it!) and then cleaned it all down after it would have been quicker and cheaper to just brush it on. The resin would still need to be stippled into the chopped strand mat and rollered after too anyway. If you're making something huge (like a boat hull) then spraying might be worth considering.

i like the English accent,might help with my IELTS exam :) but i agree great workmanship !thumbs up

may i ask you about the material you mix with gel-coat to stop being tacky ? do you have it ? what is the item number. Regards.

insane how an 8 (going on 9) year old video series can make me better than newer videos. Videos like this make me happy that i don't have to go to college.

Love from india

Looks like a new shape fiat 500 bonnet, probably wrong though

@sf200425997 yes, we spotted that straight away and it is annoying, still, this is a video about advanced composites, if there were any mistakes in the advanced processes or knowledge that we share for free then that would disturb me a lot more. Enjoy the vids, we'll get a new backdrop soon I'm sure.

Very informative and well presented.

If you use a gelcoat during the manufacturing process then you would not need to lacquer or clearcoat after. If you don't use a gelcoat then the part will look fantastic but it won't have much protection from UV/grit/dirt and so for everyday use we would then suggest a clearcoat/lacquer. For race use (where weight is more critical than appearance) then you would use neither a gelcoat or a clearcoat and you would just run with the bare carbon.

Very interesting, though I'd personally use vacuum forging to get the shape and would only make one mould, while creating my own structural reinforcement for the other side instead of using the stock one.

The mould making process would be almost exactly the same. If you're going to use polyester resin to make the fibreglass bonnet (which would be the usual practice) then it wouldn't be essential to use the Uni-Mould system, you could just use polyester gelcoat and polyester resin but you'd need to really take your time, putting down the reinforcement for the mould over a period of several days to reduce how much the polyester distorts. Or, just use Uni-Mould like we do here and finish in a day!

Who makes cf fenders for a b6 audi

The mould is made from fibreglass using our Uni-Mould system. Thanh Tran, it depends how much you want to pay for someone else to make you a bonnet. If the design is not already moulded then you will get a shock at the moulding cost if you ask a business to make it for you. The advantage of DIY making a carbon part is your overheads are much smaller and your time is free.

Thank you for sharing this knowledge. I do alot of concreting and shuttering, this is mostly the same principles. I fully understand. Thank you very much👍👍👍👍👍👍

It all depends what resins and materials you use. Many of our international customers struggle to find products of the same quality in thier home countries so come to us.

Yes, that's what I was talking about. The original hood will certainly come out of the new mould no problem but because I ground off the latch and hinge-pins then the original steel part cannot be fitted back on the car (it was only £50 off eBay anyway!). If you want to keep the original in a condition where it can be put back on your car then you would have to work around any bolts or catches which is perfectly do-able but a little more awkward.

Doing gun metal chrome oem grills, would I need to Sand or just lay the resin? I am trying to skin these pieces

Generally, 'dry' carbon refers to prepreg carbon fibre (where the fibre has already had the resin impregnated into it when it's manufactured) and 'wet' carbon refers to more traditonal 'wet-lay' where wet resin is applied to the dry fibre (called laminating) when it's in the mould. Resin infusion is neither of these processes really so is better being called 'resin infused' rather than 'wet' or 'dry'. The 200g carbon is a 3k and the 650g is a 12k.

When you use the masking tape to make where you're cutting the lines and you put it on that board to cut it what kind of material is that? Thanks for all your help I'm just kind of picking your brain

We had buy a Fiat 500 Abart last week. Is it possible to get that mould two weeks? We want to build one just for ourself and pay for rent of course.

Thanks🇵🇷

How to make carbon fibre car body please make a video sir

Very nice video, pls,have a video for skateboard carbon deck . Lot of thanks

you must hear what's happen at 19:31

My friend all ready subscribe how to apply

The cost price for the materials used to make this (inlcuding things like the vacuum bagging consumables) is around £450. Remember that this is making a top-spec pure carbon fibre hood; there arn't too many of them around (they're usually fibreglass with a single layer of carbon and use low cost, but low performance, polyester resin). Also, if you buy the materials in larger quantities then of course you'll find the cost coming down.

@HansyPants184 Hi, yes, we've got asked this a lot (understandably) and so I've put together a full list of all the equipment and materials. It's much too long and complicated to post here on RU-vid but if you get in touch through our website I can send it to you.

@Fieldpaint haha! It is the same white polo, for the messy stuff (like the trimming at the end) I do the first bit then step out and let someone else finish it!. The rest is all pretty clean.

@samedwards884 That's a Plastic Finned Laminating Roller. They've sort of replaced the old metal rollers used for laminating because the reason doesn't stick to them (they're PTFE) and the plastic roller won't scratch the mould if you touch it accidentally.

Does cutting carbon fiber do damage to your lungs?

was any one else waiting for him to do a big Art Attack.....

damn thats a lot of work.. we need a 3d printer that makes good quality carbon fiber parts

I don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems like composite panels would affect crashworthiness. I mean, that hood has different material properties than the steel one, but the same dimensions, and it's right in the crumple zone. I know it's possible to make a crashworthy composite structure, but I wouldn't want to go replacing structural parts of a car with ones with which it was neither designed nor crash tested.

3;16/9:48 & comment 966 showing.

I hope your still in business as follows. I have an old car and a garage that was supposed to be looking after my pride and joy. Were leaning on the wings and knees, have cause bruising to the wings as they looked in the engine bay. Plus elbows on the rood as they no doubt had their pictures taken. The garage that subcontracted the work wanted nothing to do with it. I was almost in tears and told by those in the know. There was nothing I could do. With the final words of you brought it to us like that. Strange thing the car had won a concours event only weeks earlier. Plus folks sitting in my car with coveralls on and marked the leather. My word against theirs I was heart broken. Therefore I want to make moulds to put over the car if anyone ever works on her again. This car is my pride and joy and I could not believe that a garage could treat a clients car like this. So your video will save the day?? Thank you so much for posting this I'm immensely grateful to you.

fantastic thank you! please can you advise the weight difference? cheers and happy new year! :)

What chemicals are used for the pre-coating for making molds? the black one?

Which is why we use a specialist catalyst dispenser bottle which has accurate measurements on the pouring spout.

Helped me significantly with my IYRS capstone project!

You can in theory make most body panels using the same technique. More complicated parts may need multipart moulds or be made in several stages, but the principals are the same.