Afterhours Automotive's Carbon BMW 850 Roof!
MotoIQ Staff Report
Afterhours Automotive is one of the shops MotoIQ uses when we have a special project. Master fabricator Brian Kono, owner of Afterhours is a very capable guy, Brian has built race cars from a pile of tubes and can do anything from paint to custom one off composite parts. We frequently visit his shop and during one of our last visits we spotted a project so cool, we just had to share it with our readers!
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| The first step was to obtain a roof repair panel from BMW as a basis of the mold. The stock sunroof panel was splashed with fiberglass and a fiberglass patch panel was made to fill the stock sunroof hole. The patch panel was bonded in place and the top surface smoothed with body filler, primered and painted. |
The BMW 850 was the super coupe of the late 90's. With its big V12 engine, it was a one of a kind car that has not really been replicated since. Some feel that the 850 is the best looking classic BMW ever produced. A devoted 850 owner approached Brian for a most unusual project, he wanted a sunroof less 850.
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| Here is the fiberglass sunroof splash. |
The 850 was not imported into the USA without the sunroof and this owner did not want his car to be burdened with the discoish and never used roof. Not only did the owner want to ditch the sunroof but he also wanted a functional lightweight carbon roof like the late model M3 and M6 models. He also wanted OEM fit, finish and functionality.
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| The roof panel with the sunroof patched and finished becomes the positive piece for what is called a plug. The mold is made from the plug. First a layer of beeswax or some other mold release compound is applied over the plug. A special hard and dense resin called tooling resin is poured over the plug and fiberglass reinforcement is built up over the base of tooling resin. This makes up the mold. |
