Hanaldo's R34 Gt(T) Skyline Build

[Hanaldo]

Ahhh fair enough. Welcome to 1985! Definitely when your car is finished... Want to see!

[wedge_r34gtr]

Ahhh fair enough. Welcome to 1985! Definitely when your car is finished... Want to see!

1985?...does that mean i can buy a genuine ADM 32gtr from Northside nissan in a few years ? haha

WA is definatly the wait awhile state. I don't want to wait awhile...i want my pump e85 now!!!!!

[Hanaldo]

Guess I should update in here too. Took the car to the drags for the first time the other night to have some fun, but unfortunately it revealed the car still isn't running as it should. It also revealed how terrible a driver I am

First run I managed to miss 2nd and it took about 2 seconds to get it into gear:

Second run I missed 3rd:

Third run I hit limiter in every gear:

Fourth run I did ok but I just never got the hang of getting off the line:

And got my PB on my last run:

The 14's I could forgive as me just being utterly terrible. It's the best trap of 108mph that is frustrating.

[Hanaldo]

Got round to installing my carbon fibre headlight intake this morning, gotta say I'm pretty disappointed with the outcome. Unfortunately I have to say the fitment of the headlight intake is woeful. So much so that I don't think I will even bother reinstalling it for track days or Powercruise, it makes the whole car look cheap.

First I had to cut a bit of the intake section off to clear the charcoal canister. No big deal, but anyone that's worked with carbon fibre before will understand why I'd rather avoid having to cut it...

Then the mounting tabs were a fair way out, they only juuust line up enough to drill a hole and get a bolt in. You can also see in this picture how the whole thing sits about 2cm too far forward on the inside (left of picture), but only just lines up (and poorly) on the outside:

A clearer shot of how far forward it sits:

Here you can see how poor the fitment is on the outside edge:

And this is what puts me off reinstalling it. Massive gaps between the headlight and bonnet/front bar. Looks terrible:

A pity because I think it would have looked mighty tough if it wasn't for those gaps:

Also, because there is no mounting tab on the outside edge, the whole thing rattles around a fair bit once bolted in. Could be pretty easily fixed by drilling a whole in the front bar and cable tying it, but I wasn't willing to wreck my front bar considering the thing doesn't look good anyway. Good for the bin I think!

[sweefu]

You could fix those gaps pretty easily with some fibreglass and body filler, if you were keen on getting it to fit

[Hanaldo]

Yeh, but would look shit contrasting against the carbon fibre.

[Manuel Kasko]

Get a refund? That's a rip if it set you back a lot of cash

[Hanaldo]

Get a refund? That's a rip if it set you back a lot of cash

Got it through the group buy on here. It arrived like November last year, so no chance of a refund. Cost $140 or something, but oh well. Might make my own at some stage.

[34GeeTeeTee]

Got it through the group buy on here. It arrived like November last year, so no chance of a refund. Cost $140 or something, but oh well. Might make my own at some stage.

Boo!

It looked alright via MMS, looks shit on PC screen

[timmy_89]

you sure do love your carbon bits
whats next?

[34GeeTeeTee]

you sure do love your carbon bits

whats next?

I believe updates will be coming soon

[Manuel Kasko]

I believe updates will be coming soon

This guy has the inside scoop

[34GeeTeeTee]

This guy has the inside scoop

He just likes to tease and then have me wondering for ages what the fark he is up too

[Hanaldo]

you sure do love your carbon bits

whats next?

Ironic timing

Stay tuned, will hopefully have some updates maybe next week. Although I could find some required parts locally that I've had to order online, so that might delay me a bit

[Hanaldo]

Right! Updates were promised and are long overdue. Have been hard at work these past two weeks though, so hopefully all you bastards consider the wait worth it!

So, I have always been pretty hands on with my car, preferring to do work myself rather than pay others to do it for me. Sometimes this means putting a lot of time into learning a new skill, which is what I have been doing since I last posted. On this occasion, I wanted to create a few custom trim parts. I'll let the pictures do the talking and explain as I go. Some of the supplies:

20 meters of chopped strand mat fibreglass:

1kg polyester resin:

MEKP catalyst:

The all-important release gear:

So having never tried my hand a glassing before, this was all a big experiment. As a first effort, I had a go at replicating this end cap from my GTR rear wing:

All wrapped up in alfoil to protect the paint:

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the laying up stage due to limited working time with the resin and things, but this is how it turned out the next day after trimming:

And trial fitment:

So, I had myself a working mold. Me being my flashy self, I wanted to do the part in 100% carbon fibre. Again I didn't get any photos of the laying up process, but here is the product all wet-laid with epoxy and then vacuum bagged:

24 hours later, I had a cured part:

Mold removed, so now 100% carbon fibre. Part was made with roughly 8 layers of carbon, each laid at 45 degrees to the previous layer, so it's a very strong part.

Unfortunately the mold didn't want to completely cooperate:

All trimmed and cleaned up:

Another trial fitment:

Final fitment:

Then polished up:

To give me my final product:

With the one side I completed and some valuable lessons learned, I am now in the process of making the end cap for the other side. This time I decided to use 6oz woven fibreglass cloth.

Again all laid up and bagged:

Have not yet completed the final carbon product for this side yet, so I'll get back to this one.

[Hanaldo]

The reason I haven't finished the other end cap is because I was full of confidence after making the first one, so got distracted undertaking a more complex object. Now years ago when I first got the car, one of the very first things I did to it was modify the rear parcel shelf to mount some speakers which resulted in this absolute abortion:

It was the best I could do with my skills at the time, but I was never happy with the final product and it has always been a part of the car I intended to do again. Cometh the time. With nothing but an idea of what I wanted in my head, I purchased some of these 6" speaker spacers:

And a hot glue gun:

Attached the spacers to the shelf:

To give me my final product. Isn't it beautiful!?

Just kidding. Awful huh? Well, not done yet. First I had to make sure the carpeted shelf was completed covered:

All sealed up

Then to give me my shape, I stretched some fabric over it:

Then applied resin:

24 hours later:

And this is the finished plug!

Time to start making the mold. Began with putting down a few layers of CSM to build up the core:

Then finished it off with two layers of the 6oz woven glass cloth:

Cured for 24 hours:

Now to remove the plug:

It's comin!

And the finished mold!

Plug is a one-time use...

Then time to clean up the mold:

Then a trial fitment:

Fits like a dream!

Then, I unfortunately forgot to take photos of the next stage BUT, again being my flashy self, you can probably imagine that a simple lick of paint on the fibreglass was never going to be enough for me. I had to go the whole hog!

Again, 100% carbon fibre part. 5 layers of carbon, plus extra layers where I thought the part needed extra strength. Final product is about 2mm thick, very very rigid!

This is where the part is now. Just need to wait until tomorrow to trim it all up and give it one final polish, then it's ready to have the speakers fitted and go back into the car!

With that almost finished, I've got a few more projects in mind. This is the start of the next one... Any guesses as to what it will be?

All this work has been a good experience with wet-laying, but I'm not 100% happy with how the parts are coming out. Wet-laying has inherent problems with air bubbles and a not-so-perfect surface finish in the carbon. I give each layer a blast with a hot air gun which gets rid of a lot of the small air bubbles, and vacuum bagging helps compress the carbon to give the parts strength, but I am currently looking into investing in a full resin infusion setup to produce higher quality parts.

Edited March 24, 2013 by Hanaldo

[34GeeTeeTee]

You sir are a nut!!!

Massive thumbs up

[Daleo]

Very impressive!

Do you think filling & sanding/smoothing the plug/mould to a higher standard would have produced a better surface finish on the parcel shelf?

[Hanaldo]

Very impressive!Do you think filling & sanding/smoothing the plug/mould to a higher standard would have produced a better surface finish on the parcel shelf?

Not so much with the parcel shelf. With the end caps I definitely should have spent more time getting a perfect time finish on the molds, but because the parcel shelf was a male mold, the imperfections didn't really come through the 5 layers of carbon. Where I it did get ruined a little bit is I bought the wrong type of carbon fabric. I needed the standard 2x2 twill weave fabric as the strands are loose and it therefore goes around corners better. I got the locked 2x2 twill so the fibres don't move, very good for flat objects but not so good around curves. You can see on the speaker mounts where the fabric pulled up a little bit. Possibly could have avoided this if I had a vacuum bag big enough for the shelf to fit in, but unfortunately I didn't

[Daleo]

Please don't take my question as any kind of criticism, that's a damn impressive result regardless.

Trial & error is all part of the process, that's a kick arse start on a pretty unforgiving material.