The rear spoiler

The rear spoiler is the piece on the car that is the easiest to see that it's modified. We have built it from "extrerad cellplast (cell-plastic)", which is more compact than regular cell-plastic. (For those who don't know what cell-plastic is, it's more known, in Sweden, as frigolit). What we have done is to sculpture the cell-plastic to the form we wanted and then puttied it. The car has been on the road for many miles, but no signs of damage in form of raptures or cracks have been seen. On the picture below you can see what the spoiler looked like before we started fine-puttying it.

Below you can see a picture of what the cell-plastic looks just after it has been formed into the shape we want. This will be the piece that can be seen at the side of the rear-spoiler. It would seem from the picture, that the material seems quite soft and fragile, but I can assure you that this is not the case. Since it's as compact as it is, it's very strong, to my suprice, even in thinn slices. Even though the material has this property we managed to break one part, and it should be added that a lot more pieces then the ones on the car today have been made.

In order to make the cell-plastic even stronger, we started with puttying it with glass-fiber. It behaves rather differently from regular putty, since it's structure is quite different. It's not as soft or as easy to work with as normal putty, and if you are planning to use some, here are some advice. First of all, get some sort of gas-mask or just a regular mask. The fumes from the putty are quite strong, and they make you dizzy if you work with them for longer periods. Second, the putty gets hard quicker then one would expect, so keep up a steady pase when you apply it. Also, when you apply it, you will notice that threads appear. Just leave them be, cause the more you try to fix them, the more of them will form. My advice is to apply the putty as good as possible, and then remove the threads with sand-paper or a file. Remeber the fact that the glass-fiber is only there to make the cell-plastic hard, you can make the surface better later with the help of the fine putty.

On the picture below you can see what the rear spoiler looked like just after we had puttied it with glass-fiber. What remained after this was to putty the whole thing with fine putty. Unfortunatly we failed to take any pictures of this. After the surface had been fine puttied, we sprayed it with fluid putty which covered up all small holes and such, but unfortunatly it has another effect. It brings out all the small dents and such that you have added to the thing you have puttied. To make the surface real good, you should use a fine water sand-paper, dimensions 600-800, on the plaster. This will make the surface turn into something I can only compare to glass.

As I mentioned I didn't get any pictures on the car when it was fine puttied, I am sorry about this, instead you will have to live with a picture of the result. Here you can also see the dual-exhaust muffles in red aluminium mounted on the car.

On the picture above you can see what happened to the back end of the car when we had mounted the new spoiler. I don't know what you think, but I think the transformation is something compared to larva to butterfly. To wrap this up, here is a picture of what the car looked like when I bought it, and it looks now when the rear spoiler is done. The rims do a lot for the whole look of the car, but if you ignore that, I think the back end looks a lot more aggressive now then it did before. Since this was what we were trying to achieve, I think we did a good job, and I hope you think the same.

The information on this site might help some, and others not at all. But to wrap this section up, I just want to say that a project like this takes a lot more time then you expect. This was our first project, and we saw the rear spoiler as a learning experience of what is to come. We will continue to build on this car, but now we have a lot more information on how the putty and such works, and how it is to work with. My dad had worked with putty before this project, but I had never even touched it before in my life. I was under the impression that you just slobbed it onto the car, and then worked it over with some sand-paper untill it had the right shape. I couldn't have been more misstaken!

The summer after I finnished this project I started working with the front end of the car. To see how that project went, just click into the project section of the site and check it out. If you have any questions or other, contact us. We have managed to get some experience on how to make this work, so might be able to help you.

Picture of the rear spoiler as it's being puttied.

Newly formed cell-plastic

Rear spoiler puttied on the car

Spoiler done with the dual red aluminium mufflers.

Left: What the car looked like. Right: What the car looked like when the rear was done.