Guys, I have a Seibon CF hood on my Z that it's having some clearance issues that I need to resolve. I added sometime back a 5/8 Motordyne plenum spacer on my car that brought up the intake. The first thing I had to eliminate because of the clearance issues was the strut bar. Then I had to trim some of the backbone on the CF hood because I still was having issues. I wonder if I could use fiberglass resin to reinforced the areas of the hood that I had to cut away. On a nutshell, How hard is working with fiberglass and an specific suggestions and helpful hints. Thanks in advance guys for your help.

 

Fiberglass is easy to work with and cheap. If you are just going to reinforce, I would do a layer of matte followed by a few layers of chopped. Make sure you get the right oz. fiberglass.

 

bear with me whitecel, help me with the terminology a little bit cause I'm a total rookie on fiberglass. What means the term "Matte" and "Layer" in the fiberglass lingo. And also you said that it's very critical the "oz. of fiberglass", are you referring to what on this comment. I'm sorry, I don't know nothing about fiberglass as you can see.

 

fiberglass "matte"= just the actual form it comes in on a roll

ounce= the thickness of the matte

layer= uhhh, you layer them on top of eachother to make 2 or more "layers"

i suggest a quick how to online. just do a search. it is pretty easy stuff to work with really.

 

youtube!! :-)

 

Fiberglass is not hard to use... But it is sticky/messy/troublesome, especially if you're new to it.

Fiberglass comes in two main types: Cloth and Shredded Mat.

You can even buy some fiberglass resin that has the fiberglass strands mixed in, so all you need is a brush/squeegee to apply it



If you want to reinforce areas under your hood, you must scuff/sand the existing resin underneath the hood, so the new resin has something to hold on to. Of course, you'll want to remove your hood and lay it on a thick blanket inside a garage or outside in the grass on a sunny day with little or no wind (unless you don't live around trees, etc that can blow debris into the wet resin).

Hints/Tips:

1) Buy a box of the blue gloves at Wal-Mart, etc. Relatively cheap and worth every penny.
2) Buy a few cheap combo plastic measuring cup sets from Wal-Mart.
3) Buy a couple paint brushes, about 1"-1.5" wide.
4) Buy a gallon of laquer thinner to clean the brushes with.
5) Be patient.

 

if you are doing repair on a composite part, be sure to use the same resin system that the part is made with. 99% of carbon fiber parts use an epoxy resin. most fiberglass parts use polyester, some even use vinylester.

 

i'm sorry about that it wasn't matte. I meant cloth.

As for the oz. If you use say....2 oz cloth. That's not sufficient. When you go to the store, you'll see the difference in the thickness for various oz.

O yea don't forget. Buy laytex gloves and a paint brush. Also to make things easier, prewet the part so you don't have the cloth sliding all over the place