Carbon Fibre - Making the Mould

Right its really time I wrote up some of the carbon fibre stuff because I'm desperate to move on to things like the brakes. The whole carbon idea started when I found an old plastic-undertray from a modern Ford Transit van at work. I thought it could help to fix where my front-undertray has snapped, but as I examined it I could see potential in the chunky design for greater things...

Rear Wind-Diffusers [like the one on the right] are common on race cars and are basically just a flat tray beneath the rear bumper with down-pointed fins for the air to flow past and give the car more downforce. They are almost exclusively made of all carbon-fibre and that means they aren't cheap either - any I can find for the Impreza start at £700 and go up, so considering they would have no real use for road driving except the style factor, they are out of reach of any sane modder.

Looking at this plastic Ford Transit undertray though I could see the beginnings of my own custom-built imitation diffuser, so I cut it into a flat piece and taped it under my back bumper. Its not quite as wide as I would have liked, but the edges do fit nicely within the number plate recess, so I thought what the hell, it can't hurt to have a crack at it.

With the main piece fitting OK and looking promising, I cut four equal sized fins from the off-cuts and just superglued them into place along the bottom of the tray, which conveniently has four vertical lines along it as a guide. I figured that whatever type of carbon wrapping I used later on would hold them in place properly and besides, this thing was never going to be an aerodynamic aid, so I'm not too bothered about structural integrity as long as it looks the part.

Its definately got that diffuser feel and I can't see it making the aero-dynamics of the car any worse [provided the leading edge is flush to the bottom of the car so it doesn't turn into an air-brake, of course!], so I decided to swot up on my carbon-fibre coverings...