carbon fiber radiator shroud any interest

temperacerguy

New member
Hello all,

I am going to be making a carbon fiber radiator shroud for my ST185.

If I make one, the mold will be cheap, flimsy and probably destroyed in the process with a cheap wet layup and gravity molding and the mold will cost like $20 in materials

If I build a strong mold, with the idea of making multiple copies of this, the mold will be reinforced, thick, and setup for vacuum bagging. This mold costs easily 10X the cheap mold. and quite a bit more time.

If I were to produce carbon fiber radiator shrouds for the 5th Gen, would people be interested in them?

To recoup costs/materials, and at the low low volume I am expecting, I would probably be charging $75 for these.

As these are a purely cosmetic item, they will be thin and light, with a top 2x2 carbon fiber twill with fiberglass cloth backing (fiberglass is not visable). They would be made with an epoxy resin (so no yellowing) and have a smooth glossy appearance.

Is there interest?
 

underscore

Well-known member
So I'm clear, this is the plate that can go across the back of the rad so that the fan sucks air through all the rad, not just where it's mounted?
 

temperacerguy

New member
No, it is the visable panel on the top of the core support

Here, circled in Red:

enginebay.jpg
 

WarTowels

Active member
^I think you should make replacement head light cf panels that exactly match our VIS Hoods first. =)

-Towels
 

temperacerguy

New member
Sorry, I am only making custom things I am going to do for me, and my headlights are going to be a little "unique" so no doors. but as I have said before, it's insanely easy to wrap those.

If you want me to do yours, I can do it for $75. It's not the difficulty, it's the time.
 

underscore

Well-known member
oh the diversion panel. I definitely want one, just gotta verify my front end is straight enough first. Would you be covering up that little bit for the ac on the right?

offtopic but sweet jesus what is going on in that picture, it looks beastly
 

temperacerguy

New member
I would not be covering up that port, I will make it factory (but without the texture), however If someone wanted one without the AC port, I could just not cut that out.

As for the picture, I just did a google search and it pulled up an image from this site and circled the pannel
 

celigts

New member
If only I was done fixing the problems I'm running in too I'd join this!

How long you think you'll need to build these. What time frame are you doing?
 

temperacerguy

New member
It's probably going to be 2 months till I start to make these (if I do). I was only going to make 10 or so, then move on to other projects
 

ALLensTRAC

New member
I already bought the aluminum one 2literturbo produced but I'm definetly in for a carbon one. Also I will be in touch with you about the headlamp wrap. Would you mind if I came up there and watched you do it so I could learn?
 

celigts

New member
dragstang86":2s8g99h2 said:
I would be in for one. As for the headlight covers, there is a company making them. They are for sale on ebay.


If I'm not mistaken it's cost some decent coin for them tho
 

RafaCalde

New member
Forget the shroud. Where can I get that radiator? :D
A shroud like that would be awesome. But anything the does the job similarly is just fine with me.
 

temperacerguy

New member
I'll hit on a few things:

-The TTE shroud would be for such a limited market, it's not worth doing. (small things like NOT cutting out the port for the AC doesn't change the overall design)

-Headlight doors, I have zero problem with you coming here for me to do them, but it really wouldn't help you much. The problem is that there's so much down time, that you wouldn't learn anything. There are 4 major steps, with 24 hours in between each step, so you would only see one step.

-full carbon doors. They are available, and if I were going to go to the burden of wrapping them for myself, I would just purchase them from the guy on E-bay. here's his link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Celica-Gen5...arParts_SM&hash=item35ad1a577e#ht_1796wt_1270 it's $150 plus shipping from UK.

-
 
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