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MotoIQ posted on January 19, 2011 15:05 
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. |
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 5:50 PM
Holy shit that is a cool project.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 6:24 PM
Having worked with carbon fiber and CF/aramid mix I can't tell you how amazing it is to see something like this come out so gorgeously. Then again we were using 30 minute set epoxy-resin with a malfunctioning vacuum bag, so that could have been part of the problem. Even then, to lay carbon without stretching the cloth is difficult if you're not used to it. Looks great!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 6:32 PM
Seems like a waste of time and money for a car like a BMW 850. It is a nice job, and cool write up, wrong car.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 6:33 PM
I bet that roof costs more than my entire Civic! It looks wonderful!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 6:37 PM
We totally need more information on that 850! I bet the rest of the car is just as awesome! on that note, now do the rest of the body in CF!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 8:06 PM
That's great! I want one for my race car! lol
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 8:16 PM
Should have got a video or some in-process pics during the resin infusion. That's such a fun thing to watch, and it's a nail biter when you're doing a one-off part and don't know if the resin is going to infuse properly or if you've unintentionally created a trap point. That's not too much of a problem with a flat piece like that though. I've never thought of the sheet cork trick, that's pretty clever. I've always used structural core materials that can handle the compressive and shear loads and make the part very stiff (cork isn't very good at any of those things) but cork would definitely do a lot better job of sound damping. I don't think that roof is going to do good things for the chassis stiffness, but I obviously don't know how much the original steel roof was contributing anyway..
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 10:44 PM
850s are awesome. I was thinking to buy one as daily driver, but then somebody talked some sense into me. While a 5.0L V12 with a 6 speed Getrag manual would be an awesome daily driver, it is a German car. And when that window switch goes bad, or the defrost never turns off, or you get the inconsistent misfire and you're spending all your time trying to fix the shit, then you are going to wish that you just bought an SC400. 850s are cool, but too bad they don't have Japanese reliability. They are slowly creeping up in price now. Cool carbon work too.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 11:22 PM
Awesome
Thursday, January 20, 2011 5:16 AM
That's cool, but something tells me the cost of that project is more than my daily driver is worth.
Thursday, January 20, 2011 6:46 AM
@Eric Hsu I too have been scared away from the 850's because of the repair bills. I looked at the MkII Supra which had similar looks but alot more reliable (just not winter friendly here.)
Thursday, January 20, 2011 6:49 AM
(killjoy) i would have saved my money for the next inevitable repair, but to each their own!
Thursday, January 20, 2011 7:07 AM
Great shop. Great work. Great mod. Great car. You can feel the BMW owner's insistence on getting the same carbon fiber weave used on the M3s oozing through the article. Silly BMW owners. I was hoping to see the thing pained black to match the rest of the car at the end, but you can't have it all I guess.
Thursday, January 20, 2011 8:01 AM
Haha, Eric has a MKII Supra rotting somewhere that he needs to get rid of!
Thursday, January 20, 2011 8:54 AM
Sunroofs have to be my least favorite option (if you want to call it that) on cars. If you want all the other bells and whistles the sunroof is almost always forced with the other desirables. I remember driving these 850's when I was detailing cars in the 90's. Big heavy GT cruiser, glorious v12 and everyone would stop and look. It wasn't as fast as I thought it should be but I thought that about most of the supercars of the 80's and 90's I had the priveledge of driving.
Thursday, January 20, 2011 11:32 AM
The MA70 MKIII Supra is not rotting. It is coming alive again with new paint and with all the old school JDM electronics (HKS VPC, GCC, Apexi S-AFC, Super ITC, etc.) removed and replaced with a Pectel SQ6M ECU. I'm building a new engine harness now when free time is available. Engine control has come a long way since 1994 (when I put all that JDM shit in it). I am thinking that I might remove the 550hp 7M and replace it with a VQ35. I've tried to get the license plate "2JZ KILR", but the DMV wouldn't approve it.
Thursday, January 20, 2011 1:32 PM
@Eric Hsu Darn and here I was going to volunteer to take it off your hands lol.
Thursday, January 20, 2011 8:10 PM
Makes me want to build a roof for my Evo. Eric, your Supra should be a Moto IQ project!
Friday, January 21, 2011 1:28 AM
Fucking A....awesome stuff. Once I move to LA, I gotta pay visit to Brian's shop.
Saturday, January 22, 2011 6:07 AM
good stuff!
Saturday, January 22, 2011 7:38 AM
@ Eric- Having worked on BMW's I couldn't agree more with you on the finicky nature of the cars (especially the electrical systems). As nice as they are to drive they are ridiculously expensive to maintain and repair. @ Wrecked- Check out http://www.lancerregister.com/showthread.php?t=268523 for an awesome build of an Evo VI. I highly recommend reading the whole thread (53 pages so far), but if you want to skip ahead, the carbon roof install starts on page 9.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011 10:48 PM
Varis makes a carbon EVO roof and AMS has them too I htink.
Friday, January 28, 2011 1:40 AM
AMS produces Kevlar roof, not carbon. Actually AMS gets their carbon stuff and kevlar roofs from a company in Milwakee called Prototype Composites. http://www.prototypecomposites.com/
 
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