Right Materials, Best Tools, Good People

The Challenge car uses almost the exact same body molds and parts as the Mk3 Roadster. 

Let’s talk about fiberglass and what we’ve learned in more than ten years making composite parts.  Since 1994 we’ve built and shipped more than 6,000 body shells, over 25,000 body panels and designed and built over 100 complex molds and tools.

The way we use fiberglass is appropriate for a race car.  The exterior body shell is composite, while the work is done by the chassis.  The body shell then becomes a cosmetic and aerodynamic (flying brick in this case that keep the wind out of your peepers). 

Manufacturing

From our very first molds in 1995, we have learned a great deal about the tools that molded parts need to be made right.  The quality of the part you get comes down to three simple things… 1) The quality of the raw material (resins/cloth),  2) The quality of the tooling (molds, trimming equipment, etc), and 3) The skill of the people who actually lay-up, cure, and trim the parts. 

To control our quality, we design, build and own all of our own tooling.  We use an Eastman M9000 CNC cloth cutting machine to ensure consistency of all composite fabrics and patterns.  Our 10 man molding department uses only hand-laid processes for every single part, and molded parts are trimmed on our RPT Technologies robotic trimming machine. 

Our molding technologies have grown tremendously over the years.  Today we put as much QC work into our fiberglass parts as we do our steel frames.  You’ll notice that the parts carry control numbers that correspond to the date of manufacture, mold number, and molding department member who made the part.

You can count on us to deliver a part that is engineered to be the correct strength and fits right.  The FFR Mk3 and challenge car body shells are shipped assembled to the frame.  The parts are unfinished (taken right out of the mold and require bodywork).  Recently we changed our process from molded edges on panels to a high speed router trimming method.  This eliminated air voids on tight radius areas and enabled us to make the parts match the openings better (the panels are actually made too big, enabling you to make really tight gaps on all hoods, doors and trunks).

Bottom line is that the parts we make are strong, designed to fit, and made right each time.