RUMCars Forum
General Category => Unusual Microcar Discussion => Topic started by: Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker) on July 02, 2012, 11:02:29 PM
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As you don't see a great deal of material on Tourettes, I thought I'd share this little snippet I happened across the other day in an old copy of Motorcycle Mechanics magazine from August 1959 on the letters page.
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Ouch! As fiberglass shatters it does effectively absorb the energy of the impact, but if the owner was in that at the time of the accident it could have been very serious.
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Hmmmm. Interesting and not at all surprising. Having been involved with the restoration of the Hammond collections Tourette body shell recently it is apparent that the quality of the fibre glassing on them was truly terrible! Although the definition of the moulding is very good its make up consists of plenty of fibre and hardly any resin! We first noticed something was wrong when Andrew decided to jet wash the inside of the shell and a big pile of loose fibreglass started to build up on his driveway, once repairs were carried out it was decided upon that large areas of the shell would be built up from the inside to give the somewhat droopy shell some rigidity. It must be remembered that this was very early days for fibreglass and this particular one must have been one of the first if not the very first as it featured in the road tests and adverts around the time of the cars launch. There car also suffer damage early on, Paul Merkelt, son of the designer rolled it but an examination of the shell reveals little damage other than to the screen surround and one of the areas where this was attached.
I have to agree with the editor of this magazine, I remember my dad had a prang once in his Reliant and a large area of front wing came off in the road, he discreetly shoved it inside the car, got home and it was grafted back on and painted by tea time!
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Yep, Fibre Glass wasn't the best those days, but Nobels seem to have good bodies! My one, since its early, was originally split along the middle (in the mold) then bonded together. All of my fibreglass seems good for the age, nothing peeling aweay! however, some of thge parts, like the bonnet/nose neded to be a lot thicker, I can probably make the window fall out if I pushed on the bonnet/nose !
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Yep, Fibre Glass wasn't the best those days...
Actually, old fibreglass is usually very good. The older it is, usually, the higher were the manual skill levels used to make it and micros were made before isophthalic polyester resin came along so mouldings from that era tend to have an indefinite lifespan.
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Yep, Fibre Glass wasn't the best those days, but Nobels seem to have good bodies! My one, since its early, was originally split along the middle (in the mold) then bonded together. All of my fibreglass seems good for the age, nothing peeling aweay! however, some of thge parts, like the bonnet/nose neded to be a lot thicker, I can probably make the window fall out if I pushed on the bonnet/nose !
Look who made the main run of bodies for Nobs though. Quality engineering rather than a couple of geezers under the arches.
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The Smashing Tourettes were a backing band for someone. Not to be confused with the more modern Smashing Pumpkins even though the shape is very similar. I longed to have a Villiers powered pumpkin for Halloween. We had to make do with Scalextric turnips. Was it Buster Carr?
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I rolled a Bond Bug and it had similar damage Think it was repaired lost interest after I crashed it
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Hehe well yesterday I continued stripping the paint of the door, and realised it has been repaired (for some reason they also covered the door lock handle hole!). The repairs were really bad though, even I could have done better at the time! He must have run out of resin, because the inside repair was only solid about 10% of the area, the rest was dry tissue, you could tell there has never been resion on it!
JP
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Must have been repaired by the same guy that made the Tourette bodies! Ho Ho!!
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Must have been repaired by the same guy that made the Tourette bodies! Ho Ho!!
Hehe you never know!
EDIT: All of that was a repair, I didn't hack any original fibreglass off.
I first of all chizelled one end (I could see the "line/edge" of the repair) and it sort of came off on its own! It seems that I will have to completely remove the door skin and then re-bond it, because its already half split, and probably best to completely re-bond it.
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My Nobels's bodies seem over all pretty good also. However they could use some reinforcing around the apertures- particularly above and behind the door top's section of their roofs, and especially just ahead of their rear windows along st their sides, where it is particularly flexible and almost always marked by gel coat stress cracks. I may use carbon fiber reinforcement here to keep the panel from getting too thick for the weatherstipping window seal.
Does any body know where i can get this and the door aperture weatherstripping for my Nobels?
The other problems with the Nobel's fiberglass is caused by their use of an extremely coarsely braided weave of fiberglass strips that they routinely used to bond panels together. On the hinged spines of their doors, they apparently used preformed high density, and well finished pieces of flat molded fiberglass, but attached these to their convexly curved door skins with the aforementioned extremely coarse resin impregnated strips. In this location, they apparently bonded almost well enough, but due to the extremely coarse weave, the bonding strips necessarily gaped the right angle intersection of these perpendicular surfaces, leaving a hollow under the arch of the bridged structure thus formed. When repairing the inevitable door spine tragedies incurred by the combination of suicide doors, a wiggly latching mechanism, worn hinges, and a non elastic restraining strap- I take the opportunity to improve this structure.
Worst is where they used this same technique to attach the ply wood firewall and parcel tray to the body shell. I have had some of these completely detach.
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I am replying to my own post, as for some reason my computer won't let me see what i write beyond my immediately precedent post's last line of print.
Back to the detached firewall and parcel trays. These failures appear to have been caused by the attempted bonding occurring too long after the original body shell cured/ without preparing the surface of the glass bodies adequately prior to attempting bonding. The bonding to the wood was good, but to the glass body did not last. Repairs here were much more difficult to effect, as all the rough unfinished side of the fiberglass surfaces had been quite effectively impregnated witha thick coat of undercoating tar. A full week end with an air powered needle scaler and full face shield while laying on my back got it ready to be re bonded with new glassfiber glass of more usual mesh fiber density after I properly prepped/ peeled off the original bonding strips.
Also one of my door skins appears to be sunken in towards a concove deflection, as opposed to a fully convex form. This was probably due to it being pulled out of its original mold too soon. Same problem on Porsche 917's, due to need for speed of production- although that's where the similarities end.
I also noticed that my Scootacar Mark one has an inadequately stiff upper edge to the rear windscreen molding- another opportunity for carbon fiber?
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A British Scootacar without a stiff upper lip? Something is wrong with the Empire!
Would the wood floor be bonded on during the assembly run after the raw bodyshells were delivered in bulk from construction? That would account for the cured GRP of the shell.
Cannot advise on composites but I can see the dilemma of thickness curing one problem to create another with trim/seal placement.
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I don't know much about the carbon fibre, but yes, the wood is poorly attached to the body! I basicly hacked one of the rotten wooden panels of my car a while back, and it came of very easily, leaving a bad layer o fibreglass, but on the other hand, it could have been a repair by whoever bodged my car ;)
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I didn't appreciate you could use carbon fibre on old fashion glass fibre, then again I cant think of any reason as to why not. Maybe Steven can share his expertise with us?
I guess its easy to criticize the standard of workmanship on these old car bodies but we have to remember that they are over 50 years old and that the use of fibre glass was very young when they were made. Also that they were made to a price and never intended to still be around 50/60 years later!
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I didn't appreciate you could use carbon fibre on old fashion glass fibre, then again I cant think of any reason as to why not. Maybe Steven can share his expertise with us?
I guess its easy to criticize the standard of workmanship on these old car bodies but we have to remember that they are over 50 years old and that the use of fibre glass was very young when they were made. Also that they were made to a price and never intended to still be around 50/60 years later!
Because of that, it would probably be best making them last even longer with carbon fibre :)
I will use fibreglass, because its a lot cheaper (especially for a kid!), and we already have some. Maybe not enough for my whole car, but still should cover mmost of the repairs!
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I think one of the first experimental uses of carbon fibre was on the Lola T70
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What I meant was can you patch old fibreglass with carbon fibre?
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What I meant was can you patch old fibreglass with carbon fibre?
Thanks to google :)
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_bond_carbon_fiber_to_fiber_glass
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Vacuum bagging can replace the need for compression and, squeeze out air bubbles and excess epoxy more effectively than autoclaving - especially if you are not in a hurry. But if you are, the judicious use of a heat lamp (don't melt the plastic bag), or at this time of year- just putting it out in the blazing sun while in compression from vacuum or fixture, can expedite matters appreciably. The autoclaving in a vacuum chamber techniques are required by aerospace applications where preimpregnated sheets, preforms, and many different layers incorperating alternating orientations of filament placement as well as different types of materials are chosen relative to the intended stress load for the finished part. In these applications virtually no cost or time constraints are imposed. This type of work does produce some "magical" part properties that we are not attempting here.
Any way you employ them, just the use of carbon fiber and epoxy is still going to be stronger than polyester and fiberglass/ volume or weight. It would be only worth considering employing additional other types of fibers such as kevlar, (to counter the extra brittleness that accompanies the extra stiffness) if you were not already overlaying some plenty flexible enough fiberglass. As far as incompatibility of materials goes- here in earth quake country (Los Angeles) they routinely wrap concrete bridge support columns with a carbon fiber/ epoxy composite layers to add strength to these structures. Alternatively S Glass enmeshed in epoxy is a cheaper but also stronger (but not as stiff) a combination of even grater compatibility. At any rate, the cost difference is not that substantial if carbon is just used to reinforce local areas of need.
I did not know that the Lola T70 was one of the first uses of carbon fiber in a car. I just got up and checked my T600's composite door (laying on the leather couch next to the Trident)- it appears to be very well consolidated fiberglass matt incorporating strategically shaped and placed foam/ tubing stiffeners. Can't tell as well for most of the rest of the car, as it is obviously constructed from cloth, but I'm not willing to scrape the paint off it or perform a biopsy.
I do remember, however that the GT 40 Mark 2's used carbon fiber in select areas to reinforce their fiberglass bodies. Also of note is the fact that Lola had a lot to do with the developement of the GT 40- so such a claim is at least reasonable. Could be worthwhile investigating how they accomplished this.
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"or at this time of year- just putting it out in the blazing sun " If you had been in the UK for the last few months Steve you would realize just what alien a concept that is to us!! :D :D :D
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Indeed. Just returned from the Bath rally where the event was held on the clubhouse car park since the grass was either waterlogged or under water. Remain to be seen if the MOC Rally is un touched by the inevitable increase in water coming down from the headwaters in Wales after last weeks deluge. Word is that the site is really only under threat is the Stour is in flood. Could be interesting.
Top thing of note in talking to chums is that a complete NSW Fulda S4 has entered the country to join a collection. Many interesting cars for sale if you wanted to make private treaty to negotiate. Also offered three caches of spares by chaps clearing out. Not sure I want to invest in any of this though... I enjoyed this Bath event more than for many a year, could it be because all were forced into a small space and interaction rather than hiding in portable sheds waiting for something to happen?