4 inches of goodness... also, body questions

[jalopi]

Sup bros,

So I'm attempting a DIY widebody for my car. Here's what I've got so far:





So my question is this - do I have to weld all the gaps? Stitch welding this bitch is seriously taking forever. I don't plan on turning this into a fiberglass mold or anything, it'll be metal and some bodyfiller. So does it have to be 100% welded or just mostly welded?

[rhE-30]

lol.

What type of welding process are you using?

[jalopi]

yeah... i know it looks like shit. at best, even after i clean it up, it might be a 10 footr'. unfortunately the local track now requires all body panels for their drift events, which really ruined my plans to just rock no fenders.

solid wire MIG, .030. i've got some .023 wire laying around, which would make the job a lot easier, but no .023 tips.

[TheTacoMan]

Check this out.

I like the idea of metal but FB is super easy to work with.

[Northern]

kevlar/aramid however, not as easy due to how it fluffs when cut or sanded. I would honestly stick with fiberglass (cloth, not flock/mat) due to price alone, and figure out some sort of homebrew vacuum bagging setup to draw it out properly.

That link does have lots of good info. My favorite part was the roof skin(I think it is the same guy)

[Northern]

also, how are you cutting those crescent inserts? are they as jagged as they look in that last pic?

The smoother that the curve on that piece, the better the finished flare is going to look. (I know, I know, driftcar.)

[jalopi]

I wish it came out looking good (hopefully it'll look alright with some filler).

Before I did some more welding I hammered out the real indented part in the measuring tape pic, so it's not *quite* as wavy as it was. Still kinda bad, but I think the indent is about 1/8" deep so it should be OK to fill.

As far as cutting goes, I used my air hammer with a sheet metal cutter bit (ran out of good cutoff wheels 1/4 of the way through). It's kinda inefficient as far as preserving material while cutting goes but goddamn does it do it fast.



Also, thanks for the link... came out pretty good. Might look into fiberglassing over it and making a fender from scratch later, but for now I'm rushing to get this done by July 6th. Mechanically, I'm ready to rock'n'roll, just have to get the car ready for the 'showcar' portion of tech.

[LJ851]

so i'm attempting a diy widebody for my car. Here's what i've got so far:



...it'll be bodyfiller and some metal.

ftfy

[jalopi]

damn... come on bro... that's harsh. can we settle at 50/50 metal and bodyfiller? ;)

[Northern]

:rofl:

[jalopi]

Thoughts on the mostly finished product? Ended up doing a lot more hammering on the sheet metal. Still took a lot of filler and still doesn't look perfect, but at least now the fenders look good (in my opinion anyway) from 20ft. Still needs to be wet sanded as I'm sure you can tell.

[econti]

They are reeeeally wide. Do like.
20ft is all you need, how much detail are they going to see when you're sideways?

[TheTacoMan]

Looks pretty cool, function>form. But holy orange peel batman.

[jalopi]

Hahaha yeah, it's my second time using a spraygun and I was shooting rustoleum with a 25% mix of mineral spirits... lol. First job came out like SHIT. Super runny/patchy/awful/orangepeely. Watched a youtube video on how to adjust/tune your gun each time you use it, wow what a difference it made.

Orange peel comes from not letting the previous coats dry enough, right? Fucking rustolem+thinner takes forever to dry... like a few hours per coat. I'm not that patient. Gave it about 30mins per coat. Whatevs. Gonna wait like, a week to make sure the paint is nice & hard/cured, give it a wetsand with 1k/2k paper and a little buff. Hopefully comes out OK as a temporary paintjob.

[TheTacoMan]

What wheels size and offset are you going to be running ?