How to Fabricate Automotive Fiberglass & Carbon Fiber Parts

Author: Danel Burrill with Jeffrey Zurschmeide, ISBN: 9781934709986, B&W reprint

Fiberglass, carbon fiber, and composite materials can be used to construct a large variety of automotive parts. Hot rods, customs, sport compact cars, muscle cars, and many other cars readily accommodate fiberglass and composite components. Fabricated parts such as air dams, wings, side skirts, and hoods can create a one-of-kind style and function. These exterior parts can also deliver improved performance.

Hundreds of interior parts have been fabricated to create the interior environment, including dashes, gauge panels, door panels, consoles, and much more. And many owners of fiberglass and composite cars, such as Corvettes, need to repair a wide range of production parts, using custom fabricated parts.
Authors Daniel Burrill and Jeffrey Zurschmeide guide you through fabrication of popular exterior and interior parts as well as common repairs. They show you how to construct molds for simple and complex parts, how to lay up fiberglass parts, and complete a finished part. In addition, you see how to construct carbon fiber parts, including glass strand mat, woven fiberglass cloth, carbon fiber cloth, and hybrid fabrics, for a variety of applications. To add strength to various parts, core materials such as wood, foam, and honeycomb Nomex are often used, and these are covered in great detail. All the relevant tools, including mixing containers, holding containers, saws, scissors, files, and shaping tools, are discussed. The book also reveals how to construct wood patterns to exacting standards from wood, Formica, aluminum, and other materials.

A wide range of fabrication and repair projects are included, such as laying up basic fiberglass, repairing cracks and holes, creating a buck/mold, making molds for dashboards, repairing plastic spoilers, and much more. This is the one book to guide you through each critical stage of repairing or building many functional fiberglass parts for your collector or high-performance car.

About the Author

Introduced to fiberglass at the age of 10, Dan Burrill developed an interest in and affinity for working on fiberglass. Since his childhood years, Dan has helped build and repair hot rods, both metal and 'glass, and (much) later became involved in writing about (and working on) hot rods and kit cars, which are mostly fiberglass. Dan is a former editor of Kit Car Illustrated, and he specializes in technical articles.