The Roadie’s main body construction! (Part 1)

First stage: the skeleton and the skin

We just passed through a red-letter week. After lots of preparation, the main body of our car starts to look decent!

First, to make the body properly, we had to design the pattern of the entire body to shape it.
The first stage in this project was to model the roadie, with 3D CAD design software and thanks to the specifications. When finished, we were able to get a 3D representation of the whole car.

Our job was then to build the car’s skeleton in raw wood, to be able to make the main body!
On the picture below, you can see a transversal view of the car with orthogonal boards of wood that will act as the ribs of the body to give the three dimensional outline.
Here is what we got: the main silhouette and several ribs!

Roadie’s skeleton

We were then able to stick polystyrene foam at the nose, and began to shape it roughly, waiting for the rest of the body to be built.

Nose shaping

In fact, in order to finish the shaping of the nose, we first made the important ribs of the car to support the transversal rods that will stand for the frame in the middle (see picture behind).
This is supposed to help us when finalizing the shaping of the nose by using the body curves to have the most accurate nose curves in extension.
It also allowed us to make the first fiberglass skin of the main body.

Main body

At this stage, it really looks more like a boat than a car !

Next stage : The real shaping!!!