Following on from when I made my new duratec footwell, and playing to my new found carbon fibre fetish, I have remade the steel access panel and saved 500g in the process.

There is a lot more detail about how I did this part in my blog (click me) and not all of it formats easily to the forum, so I have some of the pictures here:

Here is the original access hatch. Some of you will remember my liking for 25mm spacings.


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Here is the back of the part - ribbed for your pleasure:


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And here is the front of the part, all shiny.


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Overall cost in materials - about £30 if bought in bulk. Overall time - about 6 hours for the one-off.

top job looks realy good nice to have the skills pal well done

Very cool!

more to come - laminated side panel mould making tonight. brace yourself for some 3mm closed cell foam action.

Jesus, there must be more weight in the total number of fasteners than the panel!

Great point. Washers and screws: 150g. Panel 190g

However, the panel is 3mm thicker than the panel where the soric hard points are, so I will need longer socket headed cap screws to be really happy with how secure it will be, so I reckon you may be right in the long run ha ha ha hhhaaaa haaaaaaaaa.

What do you use to draw the vacume and how mutch does it cost to make your first part all in?

Hi ceebmoj

that's a very good question. My starter into this cost be about £700 to get going. I went for the easy composites resin infusion starter kit which includes a full on vacuum pump which is the major part of the cost. They're a great team over there and very keen on getting people moving. On top of that, I bought a lot of resin and fabric (heavy carbon, 200 gsm carbon, aramid, soric, closed cell foam) to give me a good solid push at things.

my blog here keeps all the details of the parts, how I laid them up and what the cost was for each part. this one cost me about £28 if I have my sums right. Of course, it doesn't include my time, and I'm getting quicker every part I do.

The results you are getting look realy good.

Thanks for the link. The set up to get you going is not as bad as I had imagined. As I could do with making a bunch of pannels, a difuser and floor it is very tempting, however its still a bit expencive for me.

Ps still strugaling to get the spell checker going sorry.

no problem, ceebmoj. You're coming over loud and clear.

Flat panels are probably the easiest and cheapest parts to make - no moulds involved.

It may be worth while giving carbonman (on the LCB) a u2u. He has his own company making custom and repeat composite parts; it may be that he already has something you can use, or can sort you a diffuser cheaper than you could make the entry into composites for.

Also, he's a great bloke.

Cheers
Mark