Building A Fiber Glass Body

O_O LOL... Very ambitious

Well to start, you will have a LOT of work ahead of you. Depending on complexity and design, be prepared to put in at LEAST 1000-4000 hours (not a typo, one to four thousand) and about $1,500-$2,000 into the project if you want to make your own body from scratch. Now this is just an estimate, but your first 200 or so hours will be planning in detail on how the body will look and come together.

Look for books made by a guy named Clarence Waliki (spelling?) He wrote a couple of books that will help guide you for making the body specifically. Our resident "librarian" is pretty sure he also wrote a book that will tell you how to make a body for less than $1500 but it is for expert level glassers.

We do know that if many of your parts (such as the hood, fenders, etc) are essentially upgrades from vehicle's parts available on the market, you might be able to get away with about $1,000 and about 750 hours for a full body to be made.

One part that you will have to do extra research on will be to ask your state's laws on your plans for the vehicle. If you are building a body for a uni-body vehicle (such as honda, volkswagon, etc) you may not be able to cut into some areas without having to rebuild the frame somehow to stay legal. If your vehicle is chassis rail based, the laws will be a lot easier to work with.

We are not trying to discourage you from doing the project, (off the record, we're rooting you on) but being that this is a project that will be heavily be exposed to the elements, driving conditions, etc., much of what will happen to the kit will all depend on preperation and framing, not in the glassing itself. Applying the glass is the easiest part. The engineering and planning of the body kit will be your determining factor.

It sounds like you have a vehicle already planned for this project. (We're assuming that this is for your Neon) For a custom body, the best technique we find to build a body from scratch would be to build a mold from AB foam. If it is the neon, you'll be able to make the hood, ,cowling, front fenders, side skirts, door skins (not the frame), rear bumper and the deck lid. The rest of the vehicle is all part of the unibody frame. Do NOT modify any of those areas. (Roof, Pillars, Rear Quarter Panels, Clip, The rest of the trunk areas) Most states that inspect unibody vehicles that have modified structure zones without compensations will not liscence/register the vehicle.

On the record, we recommend that you wait until you have much more experience (you claimed to be new to fiberglassing in another thread you made) Off the record, we're rooting you on and hoping that you create a great clean project. Take lots of pictures

Good Luck!

it would really be a task and a half, i dont know of any videos or step by setps but chcek out this link to a guys car domain site, and to a thread about it

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/191331/1

https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=80227&PN=3

Hi brbman2002,

This is a link to a related post you may find helpful.  Its full of links and other fabricators ideas that may help you grow your mind, or just see whats involved.

https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=80863&KW=body+kit&PN=0&tpn=1