Celica Forums General Discussion Exterior making fiberglass engine plastics?

i'm thinking of making the engine plastic and some other stuff out of fiberglass and i want to know if the heat from the engine will mess up the fiberglass or will nothing happen? any tips are welcome. thanks

Yeah man you're cool. Don't worry about it. Fiberglass is mad strong. (It's also non-flamable!) Show pictures when you're done.

Fiberglass is not fireproof, it will burn, but so will the plastic pieces. Do not have the glass in a major bind because it will try to warp under heat to relieve its stress, thats how I made fitment modifications to the last kit I installed. Mix your resin a little on the cold side and it will not be so prone to crack due to vibration, and be EXTREMELY careful drilling it, use a small pilot bit and stage larger in small steps. My 2 cents.

your engine bay shouldnt be hot enough to damage fiberglass--it's more resistant than plastic when exoposed to heat (so the obvious lesson here is that since your plastics didn't melt, your fiberglass will be a-ok)

as already somewhat mentioned in the post above me, just be sure to try and get the mixture as even as possible so prevent warping (in any case--fiberglass is VERY hard to warp anyway--urethane is more prone to warping as anyone with a body kit already knows).

Why would you wanna make your engine plastics from fiberglass...????? If you paint your stock engine plastics you will not see any difference as if you paint fiberglass engine plastics...
Why don't you try to make some CARBON FIBER ENGINE PLASICS...

i want try something new that you don't see everyday and make it more smoother than the plastics. i also don't know how to work with carbon fiber yet. thanks for the info you guys.

Um... Fiberglass burns like crazy actually. The engine heat should not be enough to bother it but make no mistake the resin burns like crazy.
As for making them go for it. If you have not worked with fiberglsss much before i can recomend buying a book to help you get started. Also be prepared to not get it right the first time. Probably start with cheaper resin and glass for a practice run or two. Then after that move to better materials. (west systems is great stuff found in marine stores) The difference between cheap and expensive resins will be expensive stuff usually cures more evenly and at a specific rate. As for glass the tighter the weave (the lower the weight ie 4oz cloth vs 10 oz) the easier it is to make it lay at angles. As for color you can either use gelcoat dye or you can mix graphite powder into the resin. (makes it look sort of like carbon) Or a better idea is to just use carbon fiber instead of glass weave. Or if you really wanted to be a badass interweave carbon fiber and kevlar. If you have ever been around high performance sailboats then you would understand there is no end to the cool colorations and patterns made by mixing fibers.

I'm in the process of making my own carbon engine plastics. Since I'm not vacuum bagging and not using a mold, likely to look something like the TRD version. ie: mask off the orginal covers and carbon over. However, I handled it at the Toronto Car Show and it seems thin, so I'm on my second layer.

I'll post some pics asap.

also, ipt motorsports already makes very high quality carbon fiber engine plastics for a lower price than most people can do on their own

IPT makes some good stuff, believe me it's quality

cool dude, post pics when finished

Fiberglass IS NOT flammable, the resin and the hardending compound and the cloth, IS flammable, but when you complete the mixture, the chemical compound changes, and is no longer flammable.

I cannot find properties of fiberglass on the net, if anyone can please confirm this for me, thank you!

i can confirm that resin, before it cures is EXTREMELY flammable. After it cures, however, it is very heat resistant (given good quality resin). It will still burn, but at a much much higher temperature.

I'm really curious about this now! I'm going to start a new thread.

I didn't know that you may have wanted to go Carbon Fiber. You can find the cloth and the resin on the internet. The weave comes in many widths of the pattern and can be had in different colors. The colors that I have seen are white/black, red/black, yellow/black. To mold, paste wax your mold then spray 3m contact adhesive on the mold then lay the Carbon Fiber, glass. The 3m holds the Carbon Fiber in p;ace, the wax lets it go. Sounds easy, the hardest part is because the Carbon Fiber has a pattern you have to be careful how you lay it.