Fiberglass body panels

So say, one has a very heavy 90's thunderbird with a 60/40 weight distribution and wanted to cut a few lbs off the nose. 

how hard could it be to make a full front cowl for the front of the car. (hood/bumper/fenders.) out of fiberglass? 

Youtube says it's super easy just takes time!

Might not be as light as you think it will be by the time you are done.

If it has to look good it is going to be time consuming and expensive.

Everybody should make a fiberglass panel at least once in their life just for fun.

You can certainly do it in your garage at home.  I have done pieces like that a few times.  It doesn't take a huge amount of skill but it can be tiring, it stinks (literally) and it takes a lot of time.   To make it look decent, you'll have to start with making a mold.  To do that, you'll have to make the body look decent and have a shiny finish.  Since the body curves back on itself, you'll have to make the mold in multiple pieces so you can get it off the body when you're done.  Then you bolt the mold back together and make the piece.  It usually takes me all day to make a piece of the mold like the hood and my back really aches by the time I'm done.  That's just laying up the fiberglass after the other prep work is done.  I use a respirator to avoid the smell of the styrene in the resin.  It'll stink up the whole house if your garage is attached so do it with the garage door up and a fan on.  If you want this to survive much use, you'll end up making it fairly thick if you use polyester and mat.  So, as NOHOME suggests, the weight savings may not be that great.  You can make it lighter but it would be flimsy and best suited to a race car where a few cracks are not a big deal.  You could of course use the mold to make the part with epoxy, carbon and honeycomb so it would be light but that gets expensive pretty fast.

I've done it for custom pieces where I didn't have much choice.  I think there must be easier ways to save a few pounds if you're just doing it for weight.

You will probably find that those body panels are already rather light.

The internet LIES!

making GOOD LOOKING fiberglass parts from scratch is not easy. Making bad ones is though.

I can't help you make nice ones, but ugly and photograph well? Sure!

lol.

You guys really think it'll match the 50 lbs hood in weight? 

My flares went 10lb each after the bindo.

If you are ok with wrapping an imperfect surface, or bedliner, you can cut about half that weight.

I am thinking you can lose a lot more weight off the nose with a lot less effort. As the 'glass nose would already be unsafe in an accident, you can probably lose a lot of weight by swiss cheesing the bumper beam. After that, it depends on how comfortable you want to be by losing things like the Air-con.

There are other things that can go too. Underhood insulation, the heavy cast iron manifolds, mechanical fan, the list goes on and on

Follow how PACC Racing did it .......https://www.paccracing.com/datsun001010https://www.paccracing.com/datsun001010  

Mid-June is when the fiberglass stuff gets interesting.