These books and videos I'll have to look up. Over the next few warm months, I hope to use my break time when not working to learn enough to make rear wheel skirts and an expanding foam/fiberglass grille block--both of which I hope will be near-factory in appearance. One quickie question out of impatient curiosity: the wheel covers would need a diff method because there s no part to mold from. Do I make a mold or shape it by hand and sand it? I guess the second one, eh? If you don't have time to answer, that's cool, you've given us a lot to look up and figure-out already. Thanks again.-California98Civic
It's no problem giving you guys info. Kind of a "give a man a fish teach a man to fish" thing
. Also the aid gets returned on this site.
here's thurston's book and for $20 bucks you can beat it. I've never bought from this site so no guarantees, the internet is full of scumbags.
Prop Builders Molding and Casting - Book
probably have to copy and paste
and here's chavant their catalog is PDF so I can't give you a direct link. Chavants is legit.
Chavant, Inc. Home Page
As far as your wheel arch covers. First you create the part you want then you pull a mold from it. This is the best way i can think of off the top of my head. Model on the vehicle. put it on jack stands and pull the wheel. Attach a piece of sturdy plywood to the inside of the fender.
Model it. For the back one i'm assuming straight across the fender lip. for the front you'll have to figure how much clearance you need to turn the wheels. When you get that distance mount dowels in the plywood at the correct distance and model up to it. I would probably cut plywood pieces and attach them to the original board until I was a bit under the finished distance then coat with layers of good bondo (autobody supply not part store/walmart). Shape it with power and hand sanding until I got what I wanted.
Then I would pull the main board off the car and model the flange with a sleight taperout to avoid lockin. I would need the flange to screw it into the fender lip. Then I would seal everything (including modeling board) with primer (rattle can works okay), let it dry and wet sand it smooth with fine grit paper. Clean it well, let it dry and wax it (well polished out). Then I would make a fiberglas mold from it ( 1 layer of 5oz cloth backed 3 of random mat possible some wood glassed in if I'm really worried about the mold flexing).
polyester resin/random mat is fine for mold making because you don't care about strength to weight ratio on a mold. Also it's cheap.
Then wait for your mold to setup and pulled it off. Polish with wax, PVA it and your ready to lay up a part. I would try 3 layers of cross-layed 5 oz with epoxy resin for my first part and test it to see if it would have the rigidity I needed.
I oversimplified the modeling part because you need 2 parts that are mirror images of each other. For the rear that not a big deal for the front it is. Chavants explains mirroring in their videos. I'm not gonna try to explain how it's done. I gave you the basic process. Do the back ones first walk before you try to run lol. Also I would model the parts a bit long in both directions, mold the part and trim to fit. I prefer the wood/bondo method to clay but that's a personal choice. cheers-GW