olliehampton

Just testing the water to see if there's any interest in carbon/fibreglass parts for the mk1. Bumpers are no longer available as are wings and rear quarters. I already know of cars being total losses due to panel availability and can see this as being the only real option for the future of are cars if damage does happen. Any ideas or interest greatly rescieved.

Many thanks
Ollie

AlexRS2782

It's been looked into before by a couple of people on the RSOC forum.

Generally with regards to carbon fibre there is always masses of interest as everyone wants carbon fibre, but as soon as someone comes back with the proper price for decent top notch work, loads of people say it's too expensive, as they don't understand the time/work that goes into it. You'd also struggle to get enough people interested to even break even with the cost of making a large enough one-off batch.

With regards to fibreglass it's been looked at as well, and the person who did it was advised by the company willing to take the work on that they would only do it if said person(s) supplied, at their own cost, a full set of panels. The proviso was that the panels needed to be brand new and totally undamaged with no imperfections to ensure that a near perfect mould could be taken. Considering the price of the panels new each from Ford no-one can really afford to write off that amount of £££ on brand new panels, especially as the end result would not have enough interest (even from the trackday lovers) to generally break even - unless you were willing to sit on the parts and ££££ involved for a massive length of time.

Plus the fibreglass panels would never end up being insurance approved so any cars written off for panel damage would still be written off, and any car repaired outside of insurance with fibreglass panels would obviously stand out as an accident damaged car.

There is also a company on eBay that does an FRS replica kit but they don't tend to fit well and need a fair bit of work as they were taken from moulds of used panels so not entirely straight.

olliehampton

I have panels to mould from. Totally agree with you in regards to insurance not being approved. I'm far more interested in keeping damaged examples on the road rather than being broken up for very minor damage. I've seen bumpers advertised for over £800 which is far higher than the equivilant would be in another material. in my opinion I would far rather have carbon over no car at all. Ill fitting can be a massive problem and would work hard getting the very best fitting panel I could. Do you feel there's a market for a well engineered part.

AlexRS2782

Your main problem will be that most people dont want to pay the ££££ for the parts once they're done They also don't understand the costs involved in getting bits fabricated and you get told it's overpriced, etc

From my experience of doing some custom bits in carbon fibre for my Focus RS back in '07 and basically after i did them there was loads of "demand" from people who wanted the same bits done. I spoke to the company who did it and got prices for varying size production runs, but then got the usual forum response that it's overpriced and that they could get it done cheaper, etc.

Following that, to this day only Streamline Carbon have replicated a couple of the bits i did like mirror covers as i think other people found it wasn't as cheap/easy as they thought it would be. In some ways it's lucky i hadn't had a batch run done on some parts as i'd probably still have them now, or would have had to sell them at a loss.

No doubt there is demand for certain bits with the FRS, but as said the problem is finding the people who genuinely want to spend the £££ on decent quality work. Forums are awful anyway as you'll always get loads of interest in bits but very few will ever come up with the £££ when asked to pay the true value of the part