After two years of working on this on and off, I finally put the clear coat on and re-installed my grills. I added a little bit to fit the "parking sensor" into the grill and make it look like factory. It's not perfect, but I like the way they turned out...





I really like using CF.

 

I wish I had the skill/patience to work with stuff like that. I have an itch to do do a new style of grills and lip for the car.. well, that and time.

Looks good!

 

looks good...stupid question...was it hard to do?

 

Yes... After working on it for a few months I realized while there aren't any CF vendors selling this particular set of exterior trim. Each fin had to be covered individually with CF, resin added then hand sanded, more resin, sand - repeat. There are a lot of little nooks that are hard to get to.

Working with CF is really nice though - it is very pliable and forgiving - not at all like fiberglass.

 

I wonder if vac bagging might have made the job easier? CF seems like a really neat material and I love the look!

 

Wow very nice. I would think the water transfer process + clearcoat could be faster but not create the same detail.

 

Pre-preg and vacuum bagging would make things extremely simple but... Pre-Preg CF has a very short shelf life and needs to be purchased in quantity. You then have to activate it by heating in an oven - which could be difficult for the center grill - I don't think it would fit in my oven, so special equipment would be required.

Vacuum bagging without pre-preg would be a nightmare because all the individual CF pieces wouldn't stay still when bagging. This process works best for pieces that you can make out of one piece of CF.