Thread: clay and fiberglassing

When we see your perfect glass project, then we'll stop trying to give him ideas and he can follow your methods.

these are all projects ive done using the method ive described:


this is a box done in a wrx, a full false floor. this panel here is to cover the wiring and mounting screws for the subwoofer.


you can see that you can get a large amount of contour and compond corner loading, something very difficult to do with chicken wire and make look good.


there it is primered and installed in the vehicle. it added 1/2 an inch to the stock floor height.


this is a carbon fiber panel I built because I had glare issues for awhile wiht my radio in the stock location. you can see no trim ring, its all been molded in. I later relocated the radio, you will once again see the lack of a trim ring:


carpet is a reocurring theme in many of my projects, it eliminated hte need for bondo. however, the addition of a little bondo or mud and you can easily paint.


volcano style box for a civic. you can see how simple and elegant it can look if you just take the baffle of a subwoofer (or a trim ring for a TV screen) and stretch cloth over it suspended above a simple rectangular base (or like a dash panel in yoru dashboard, so the TV fits flawlessly in place.)


instead of using a square flat base, just use a glassed backpanel that conforms to the car, or use an existing dash panel, and you can do the same thing. the technique does not neccesarily apply to only flat surfaces! these aprticular kickpanels replaced the stock kickpanels, But I could have easily cut holes in them and used the stock panels themselves as the backplate for these kicks.


last but not least, my trunk. the battery box is coverless in this picture, you can see that the entire trunk is just a facade over the ugly underside. but that is the case with everything, no? note the glassed in capacitor in the sidepanel. this was as simple as defining a boundary of where I wanted something to be (a hole for a cap, coudl have been a square hole fo ra tv screen in the trunk if i wanted) and jsut repositioning my stretchy cloth to conform to those boundaries. what happened between was up to the cloth, i didnt really give a darn.

welp, those are some pics I had lying around. maybe not perfect, but they do show how very good work can be done using this technique. it is also a technique that saves much time and work, which is probbaly why its the technique used by most installers out there, whether its audio, video, or building your own bodykit, anything.

now its your guys turn to show me work done just as well or way better (for this is stuff far from the best stuff out there) but using chicken wire or a similar product to micromanage the glass shape.

Looks good, I stand corrected!

Originally Posted by WhiteRabbit

My understanding of patching rust holes, is that its done by welding a plate in, not using wire. but your training for that kind of work is most likely far greater than my training. But I do know that fiberglass works great for patching holes in the *body*, but that it isnt done due to time restraints just not seen with welding.

welding would be the prefered method. but for the average backyarder with only an arch welder or nothing on hand then fiberglass and some wore and alot of bog is what ur gona do..
and if u are using chicken wire for fiberglassing you are the average backyarader..
but more to te point. we are talking about cars so no, nothing big isgona be made..
and btw nice work.. i wana do some more fiberglass work but its winder down here. and resin dont like drying in the cold i'll have to wait for it to warm up

Thank you for the compliment. maybe sometime in the future ill show all my miserable failures, the crap I put together and learned from to be able to do stuff like that. you wanna see some bad, bad stuff?

you can glass in alaska. it may take 3 months to cure per layer, but itll cure!

id probably wait till summer too

Damn WhiteRabbit got Skillz...

Thats like Silent Bob making a Cd player with his mom's dildo and chick wire.

WhiteRabbit: that def is impressive, looks great, i def was not planning on using chicken wire, i just wanted to build something about 8"x8"x8" box to house the TS on top of the dash, i would like to use foam, but not sure what is out there for it, like i said this is my first time fabricating something with Fiberglass so i am very new to this, if you can tell me what kind of foam i can get and where i can look for it, that will be great, and what is the best method you think i should go with for what i am going to do? thanks in advance...

the way Id do it, at 8x8x8, is to use either the stretch method or a bondo method. I could tell you the way id build it if I had a bit more information. like are you choosing to build on top of the dash because its a WRX and you have that panel you can build from? or are you trying ot graft it onto a dash with nothing up there? etc, etc.

the way I am starting to think, I might not use fiberglass at all, just foam and bondo, but that depends on what you are trying ot accomplish.

WhiteRabbit:

this is basically my idea: http://www.nitrousworld.com/pictures/carts.jpg prob thinking about doing one for the passenger side too.i wanna make sure it contours to the pillar, and just grab it, i think that will look a lot better. i prob wont need 8x8x8, need only about 4-6 inches depth i would say, even that might be too much... thanks..

ken