seriously, I can have aluminum molds machined for a hood for only $5000, and that's hard tooling. You can also paint the crossfire colors in the molds first, the hoods will pop out of the mold with very little finishing and look oem quality if done correctly. once you have the molds made up, that is the hard part after that it's super easy to make parts.
If you need more help on composite fabrication feel free to post on the forum over here.
http://www.rcgroups.com/composites-fabrication-210/
also here is a molded wing being built, should give you a good idea of what's entailed as a DIY project.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...16%26t%3d98558
if you really want to save weight vacuum bag a composite sandwich with balsa wood or rohecell foam I could get the wetgh down to about 25 lbs on this hood if I could afford prepreg carbon.
Originally Posted by bobo54545
First off, thanks for all the responses. Second, it seems most people would want the hood to have the SL grills in it and retain the stock ribs/stakes on the thing, which honestly I wasn't a huge fan of the SL grills until I stopped by a Merc dealer today just to look at them. If I am going to continue on with this whole venture I think that the design will definately be the SL grills with the stock ribs (because I need the design that will sell the most), as for material I do have to research it a little bit more and would love to find a local shop to me to do it so I can have an easier time with it (so if anyone knows a chicagoland fabrication place please let me know). The goal is definately a carbon fiber hood because with almost all the options it would need paint afterwards, at least with carbon fiber it would be lightweight and wouldn't require painting right away.
So yeah for a "update" I am going to continue looking into the shop I was going to have do this project but I am also looking for a closer and more affordable shop. I am going to also be looking into the fiberglass option also because hopefully with that I would be able to have more than one design. I'd still really like to get this done so I'm going to keep looking for a way to make it happen and not lose thousands of dollars. Any more suggestions are welcome.
Thanks