ssweetbro

Ok, so I decided to do a little something more than just tape over my headlight for the upcoming trackday I am doing. I decided to make a carbon fiber replacement instead. I got this idea from a friend. He had wrapped his tank on his supermoto in carbon. I did all this work at his shop. Thanks Stinkyfab.com. So anyway, this is how it goes: (BTW, this thread might take a while to load, there are lots of pics)


First, I took the headlight off the bike and cleaned it just as clean as I could get it. Then I waxed it. It is good to wax it a few times. The better the wax job, the better the carbon will come off the headlight. So after waxing it up, I mounted it to a table. I did this on a metal work table. I welded a rod to the table. Then I welded a bolt to the rod at just the right height so I could fit it thru one of the many mounting holes on the headlight and hold it to the table.



Then, I applied a layer of fiberglass resin to the headlight. I did this just to the area I wanted to copy, not the entire headlight. Then, I laid the carbon fibre sheet that was cut to roughly the headlight shape, but bigger, on the headlight and applied a coat of resin to the outside.



I let this dry for a day. Then, I very carefully peeled the carbon shell off the headlight. I was very careful and went around the outside edge lifting very slightly. It took a while. In the second pic you can actually see the carbon flexing!



After I removed it, I cut a piece of fiberglass in the shape of the inner surface to reinforce the carbon.



I then coated thin inner surface with resin and laid the piece in and applied resin over it.



While it was still wet and soft we taped it into the fairing from the front so it would dry in the proper shape. I let it dry for about 3 hours.



So this next step took a while. After letting the resin dry, I cut out some aluminum strips. Then, I bent them so they would fit against some of the stock headlight mount points. I also bent them so they would reach down to the surface of the carbon and lay flat. I drilled holes in the tabs so the fiberglass and resin would have more room to attach itself. It was not easy getting the tabs flat on the back of the carbon. (ANd yes, I know they look ghetto, but they work)



After finishing the tabs I cut more fiber glass to go over them. I did a total of 2 layers. Here it is after they have been applied.



After applying those layers, I let it dry for a day. Here are some pics of it on the bike. I am not totally done, gonna sand, clearcoat and polish it so it will be all nice and shiny but I wanted to get something up tonight. What do you guys think???





PS- I am very tired, I will look at this tomorrow and probably fix a bunch of errors and add some stuff!

-Josh[image][/image]

SPEED

Very cool!!

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yellowduc748

It looks really good, dude...

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extremejoebob

wow, so the carbon fiber wasn't too thick over the head lamp not fit in the fairing ? <- did that make sense? Ive never made anything out of carbon, was there any damage to the head light assembly ? from the resin

ssweetbro

Well first off, here are finished pics, this is after it has been sanded and clearcoated. It is SUPER clean. It is sooooo clean, you can see the posters on the wall of my buddies shop reflecting in it!

As for the carbon, no, it wasn't too think. This may very on some bikes. For those bikes, I would say to make a mold of your headlight, and then make a part from that. And no, it didnt hurt the light at all, I had to clean off a little extra resin, but that is all. Actually, it cleaned the headlight a bit.

extremejoebob

that looks great, what did you use to clean off your head lights and what do you think the cost was for the materials ?

yellowduc748

Turned out really good...congrats.

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Bad-mofo

Not really needed, but looks professional. Now get the front cowl and the windscreen from eBay cheap and at least you won't have to worry about those plastics.

And if you're so handy with fiberglass I'd fabricate the tank guard. I saw that on my friend's 999 years ago: the CF tank guard that protects the edges of the tank. How it attaches... I have no idea, but a handy person like you would figure out the right design.

I'd also do the same thing for the rear cowl: protect the edges that scrape the asphalt if you crash (even if you have frame sliders). As far as side and lower cowls frame sliders protect them well in lowsides.

StinkBug

Hehe, Josh paid less for the whole bike than most track plastics cost, and most of the plastics that are on it have been plastic welded, and glued back together. There is actually a large section of the upper that is from a piece of Gixxer he found on the side of the road. LMAO!

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Cyanide41

That's pretty impressive. I can only imagine how horrible it would have turned out if I tried it. Good Work!

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