I had planned to make a complete CF body a few years ago. Well, I say me, but it would have been done by Nick of Carbon Weezel fame. However, work and health issues scuppered this idea.
I had bought the carbon to make the body and this was lying around doing nothing, so I decided to make a few things; Hardtop, door skins. I then got into vacuum bagging and made new floors. After that it was a slippery slope
The front end is heavy so I have been thinking about making a CF one for a while. I looked into infusion, and even bought the materials and gear to do it.
Then I discovered prepreg and I am now hooked on this stuff. It is clean to work with and there is no rush, once the prepreg has thawed and you have cut your panels out and refrozen the unused prepreg, you have around 3 weeks before it goes off
So I decided to make a flip front. Lots of research and ear bending of Warren at Easy Composites and I am ready to go. My son, Alex, works for a racing car builder who has a contact at a prepreg carbon company so I get a good price - ?31/m2 for 210gm and ?38/m2 for 450gm. The bonnet will use around 3.5m2 of each (one layer of each) so around ?210.
I have built an oven big enough to take the front clip. I now just have to prepare the front by blending in the bonnet.
Bonnet held in place using a glue gun as it is quite floppy so had to be persuaded to line up with the wings. Rough filling done and a quick spray shows up the defects to be dealt with.
My son saw the wing vents for the first time today. His immediate thought was that there are too many vents. We discussed it for a while and settled on 5 which I think looks better.