1974 ALPINA 2002 Gruppe 2 Front Fender

[Guest Anonymous]

Over the past few weeks I have been chipping away at completing the front fender (plug mold) for my ALPINA Gruppe 2 car. I have spent countless hours studying every photo I have (blown up, shrunken down, etc.,) to get to this point. While it is not the original part, it is I believe as close as you can come - based on what I see. I have shared with a few others who do this type of work for a living and they agree. The plug is 99% complete at this point - I found a couple of dips last night that I will straighten out, then the plug will be painted, color sanded, polished and waxed. After that I will make the mold off of the plug and then the part. All the time spent on making the plug as perfect as possible will save time later on having to work on a finished part (plus additional added weight of adding body filler into the finished part).

[Hammer03]

That looks amazing! Nice work!

How much more tire room do you end up with? What tire are you planning on running under there?

[Guest Anonymous]

www.picturetrail.com

user name: 74fuely

for more......

[rover1]

Looks like a bad ass vehicle! I really enjoyed the pictures however towards the bottom of the page on pictureTrail I could not access the last 8 files for example New Stuff, Alpina 2002 Clutch and Flywheel, Alpina hood pin repair. etc. etc. I got a message that states "this album is password protected" So what is the password? Also how much did you pay for that vehicle?

[Guest Anonymous]

Sorry, some of the albums are still password protected until I finish updating them. I will re-launch them so-to-speak in the next few weeks. No comment on what I paid for the car. I will tell you that it was essentially a "barn find".....the seller did not know what the car was (as far as being the lost ALPINA 2002 race car from 1974/75) and quite honestly I didn't either until 2007. Not many true ALPINA race cars out there any more, in museums or otherwise - this one probably one of the best well known and recognized to the be the most advanced BMW constructed in its day.

[beast02er]

Mark,

Not sure the process you are going through to make your plugs, but if you are not, I would suggest covering your foam layer in a layer of fiberglass matt to add some strength and hardness to protect the shape when you sand.

Probably too late now, work looks great though, i'm sure you are doing lots of sand, apply, cure, sand, apply, cure......fun stuff!

-Bryan

red73

[Guest Anonymous]

Thanks for the note. The one step I didn't show (in any of my website photos) is that after the foam shape is essentially finalized, it gets skim coated with polyester finishing resin with micro spheres mixed in. The microspheres help with the sanding and make thicken the resin up to a slurry like consistancy. Once the resin is on the foam, it basically locks in the shape and creates a hard shell. From there you sand that surface down, and then use finishing compound (bondo) to get the final perfect finish (so much freaking work I can't even say). This front fender will get the once over one more time, then painted, a whole bunch more work wet sanding etc., the ready for the mold making process.

[JonErwin]

Awesome unique 02! What kind of foam are you using that is polyester resin proof? How many hours do you think you have in the plug? The group 2 doors were metal with plexi side windows? Keep the pictures coming! Inspiring work!

[Guest Anonymous]

I am using 2lb polyurethane expanding foam (from Tap Plastics). It is soft and easy to shape/carve. If I were to do it all over again, I would probably use 4lb foam (a little more dense and allows you to keep sharper edges). Hard to say how many hours I have in it (ALOT), I would definitely be broke if I tried to do this for a living. It has really been an experiment for me given I had no previous experience making something like this. I was encouraged by a number of folks that are "professionals" in that the worst case scenario is that I would be out some time and a nominal amount in materials. I have learned alot along the way, made alot of mistakes for sure and have a great appreciation for those that do this sort of thing for a living. The challenge of course now is to be able to make the left side a mirror image of the right. I have some ideas on how to do this - we'll see if it works out.

[Guest Anonymous]

I wanted to add that the FIA Gruppe 2 rules did not allow for (GRP or Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastic as the Germans refer to it) fiberglass to be used in the hood, deck lid, doors or Plex to be used for any of the windows. Steel or OE decklid, hood doors and standard glass was only allowed. The wings (or flares) and front spoiler could be made of fiberglass or (GRP) in certain dimensions (If I remember correctly 6" maximum). I have heard that some of the teams actually acid dipped complete chassis to try and get some of the weight off by theoretically removing metal material in the dipping process. Zakspeed supposedly did this as well with some of the Escorts and Capri's I'm not sure when the rule change came that allowed for the use of the fiberglass parts - definitely by 1977 for Gruppe 5 as Schnitzer was using all of that stuff in their 2002 Turbo Cars.

[Guest Anonymous]

We finally had a break in the weather here in Norcal after nealy 5 weeks of non-stop rain, beautiful sunny weekend (NICE). With that I was able to do some work on my front fender. Since my last post, I have filled about ten more spots, sanded, primed etc., I "thought" I had it 99% perfect (NOT). I wet sanded with 400 and basically got the whole surface super smooth. From there I painted with a high gloss white paint. Going from material to material....that is foam, to resin, to filler (bondo), to primer, to paint you are able to pick up more flawsw with the subsequent finish of each surface. Once you put it in paint (albeit rattle can white gloss), you can really pick up every wave, every single flaw. I can't even say how many times I went over that fender and to find as many spots as I did once I painted it was a little discouraging. At this point I would guess a few more hours taking care of those items, priming, sanding, painting. Once the white paint is back on I will use 1200 wet paper and then polish to a high gloss. I am using white paint for two reasons - 1) least important - white is the color that car will painted so at least I can see one corner in what it will look like and 2) I will be using an orange or black tooling gel coat which will contrast well with the white so that when the gel coat is applied to either the plug or the mold (black or orange) it will be easy to see where the gel coat might be thin. Today I set up sort of a jig using a saw horse and some wood scraps so that I can start to dial in the other fender (left side) to become the mirror image of the others - this is going to be a time consuming effort but I feel pretty confident that I can get it done (just time, lots of time). It would be very difficult at this point to work on the left side without being able to look at the right side at the same time. By the way, the blue tape allows me to see the contour of the fender.