100% custom roadster build (with pics

[skuhleman1524]

Well that's gonna look awesome! Are you going to fiberglass over all the foam to form a rigid body?

[Brandell123]

Here's a rough cut of the grill and some more fine tuning of the fenders.

[Brandell123]

Yes already have, Il probably finish posting pictures of that by tomorrow.

[Brandell123]

The front end is shaping up as well as the rear fenders.

[Brandell123]

The rear fenders were much easier than the front. The only issue we had with the rear is how high off the tire to put them. We had to judge how much it would squat with the batteries and the people weight and allow for extra room in case.
For the windshield frame we originally left a channel for the actual windshield to sit in, but in a later post you will see we had trouble fiberglassing that channel and went with a different route. We also added a piece of round bar to the top of the windshield to give it that extra strength. we didn't want it to be weak in the middle.

[Brandell123]

The interior is pretty simple. We did a flat dash to give it that old school look and got rid of the glove boxes. The only thing on the whole cart that we kept original was the cup holders. You can kind of get an idea of how low the seats are going to sit based on the panel in front of the batteries.
Overall the body is starting to come together.

[Brandell123]

After we had the body carved out to the shape we wanted we coated it in sheetrock mud then sanded it until smooth. The foam didn't really sand smooth and sometimes chunks of it would come out with the grinder so the sheetrock mud helped cover those imperfections.

[Brandell123]

Fiberglass resin melts foam so we put a couple coats of latex paint on it and unfortunately still melted the hood with our first piece of fiberglass. We even tried painting several coats of redguard on it. Redgaurd is used to waterproof sheetrock when building a shower. After trial and error we finally coated the whole cart in packaging tape to make sure the resin won't reach the foam. Below are some pictures of the mishap of the hood. My brother ended up cutting out the hood and started again from scratch. After we got that taken care of we began the fiberglass.

[MILLERTIME]

Cool, I'm watching this build

[Brandell123]

There are four layers of fiberglass. We used 1.5 ounce chop strand for the first layer, roving woven for the second layer to give it some thickness, and then another two layers of the chop strand.