[project] Nothing To Do With 205's, But Behold!

[M3Evo 0]

Just ordered 1sqm of twill carbon, 1.2kg of West System slow epoxy, some wax in styrene (apparently stops the outer layer being sticky so you can sand it back or something like that and some carbon cloth.

 

Wanna have a go at making some carbon plumbing for the air side just as an experiment if I've got any resin left over after the sunroof, also reckon it'll be useful for doing the stiffeners on the roof.

 

All very exciting! How sad is that?!

[Sandy 191]

If you have any issues using the West, SP Systems do a bigger range of more specific formulations that can be more suited.

[M3Evo 0]

Good news everyone! The carbon fibre has arrived!

 

Hoping the weather will be good this evening so I can go and have a play.

 

I've prepped the sunroof panel with release agent already for the carbony fun!

 

Fingers crossed that the West stuff works out well, but I've literally bought only slightly more than I should need this time around.

 

Will have a search for the SP systems stuff Sandy, also considered using an epoxy from Resin Research too, don't suppose you've any experience of them have you?

 

Cor blimey, carbon cloth doesn't half make your eyes go funny when it catches the light!

[Rippthrough 98]

Cor blimey, carbon cloth doesn't half make your eyes go funny when it catches the light!

 

Well, if the epoxy doesn't work out, you can always get sowing and make yourself some fancy trousers.

Might make you walk a bit funny though.

Edited June 25, 2008 by Rippthrough

[Sandy 191]

I'm not aware of Resin Research no, sorry! Martin Armstrong in technical services at SP is an absolute diamond and always worth a call, I haven't spoken to him in about a year, but if you do call him, say hi from me! 01983 828000 http://www.gurit.com/contact.asp?section=0...itle=Contact+Us etc

[M3Evo 0]

Just been out and put a skin of carbon on the sunroof, the fibre seemed to wet out really easily (although I'm probably blind to the masses of bubbles trapped in the weave with my rose tinted safety specs on!)

 

I've ordered some Resin Research epoxy to have a go at making a spoiler with, and some flowcoat stuff to finish all this stuff off as I'm just splash moulding the panels. Should probably take smaller steps, but what the heck

 

I carefully cut the corners so they'd fold reasonably well, then regretted that decision. Also, the fabric is understandably reluctant to move once it's been laid down in the resin so when you plonk it down off centre, it stays off centre

 

Anyway, got it wrapped around the edges reasonably well, tomorrow will tell if I've got a carbon fibred sunroof, or a carbon fibre sunroof

 

Looks absolutely beautiful though at the moment with the resin wet, distorted weave and all

 

 

Hopefully it can be persueded to part company with the panel underneath tomorrow!

Edited June 25, 2008 by M3Evo

[tom_m 0]

looks good from here!

Edited June 25, 2008 by tom_m

[pip470 61]

Fantastic work, its been great reading so far keep it up. Phill

[base-1 17]

Thread still epic, good show!

[M3Evo 0]

Cheers guys, released the CF from the sunroof this afternoon (phew!!)

 

Some bits of it are really well wetted out and have no air bubbles, whereas other bits are crap, so more attention needs paying to the whole area with the brush next time.

 

It's also very flexible so my plan of laying up another layer on the inside is out the window

 

So, we're back to mould making!

 

Need to find a way to get the fibreglass mould to faithfully follow the edge of the panel somehow I wondered about perhaps draping a bin liner over the panel with weighted edges so that the natural spring of the glass doesn't make it lift off. I'm pretty sure that bin liners don't stick to the resin so that should peel off fairly easily to allow the laying up of further layers.

 

Just to get my carbon fix this weekend, I'm gonna have a go at making a little spoiler by laying up some 100mm long cloth on a length of guttering to give it some curvature. Should be a laugh

[M3Evo 0]

Little more progress on the exhaust system today,

 

Have almost finished the silencer, just need to pack it and weld the botton half on:

 

 

 

 

 

Welded a little hanger on to bolt to the gearbox bit, rather suspect it will have to move though as I reckon the hanger is in a different place on the manual gearboxes.

 

 

 

And have generally been crawling around in the muck seeing what will fit

 

 

[M3Evo 0]

Got everything for the primary exhaust tacked together now!

 

Really chuffed with the way it's come together!

 

Started out by making a little hanger for the rear this morning:

 

 

 

 

Bunged another bend in it to point the last bit of pipe at the left hand tail pipe....ish:

 

 

 

Decided it might be an idea to make the silencer detachable this time so added a V-band (gotta remember to get another one!) and did the final swan-neck into the silencer:

 

 

 

 

Looks like ground clearance should be fairly reasonable with the pipe being probably 1.5" lower than the lowest point on the car:

 

 

 

 

 

And here it all is

 

[miamistu 1]

That gonna fit on our drive?

[M3Evo 0]

Hmm, first test will be whether or not it can roll of my parent's drive

[M3Evo 0]

Ah haaaa!

 

Looks a lot better this time around!

 

Lesson one learned today are that if you give the pattern reasonably large margins (40mm in this case) you can get Chopped Strand Mat (CSM) to make a sharp bend and stay down in the surface tension of the resin.

 

Second lesson is to keep a pair of scissors handy so that once you've laid down a sheet of CSM, you can cut and overlap bits which need to make tight compound curves. For example the corners of the sunroof can be made with two cuts each.

 

Lastly, I think due to the stiffness of the 300g/sqm CSM I used for the second layer, it was trying to lift just a little at the edges where it didn't really want to make the 90degree bend.

 

This was solved with a sheet of thin plastic, weighed down at the edges with old chair legs taped on

 

 

 

Plan tomorrow is to remove the plastic sheeting (I hope!) and then apply another two or three layers of 300g/sqm CSM.

 

Final lessons are that paddle rollers do an excellent job of getting air out of the laminate and that if you don't use a pot with a bloody hole in the bottom to clean brushes and things in, you won't end up with sticky hands

[tom_m 0]

lol you're going to so much effort, you might as well make the next step to vacuum bagging

[M3Evo 0]

Already preparing to vac bag the carbon fibre when the mould's done

[tom_m 0]

nice! i saw a good piece on vacuum bagging FG and CF on one of those 'How its made' programmes on discovery the other day. they made it look dead easy... i bet it isn't!

[Bonzai 2]

im doing a course on CF on july 14th, and lots of guys i work with are fully trained, so if you have any questions i might be able to help somehow......

[M3Evo 0]

The principal seems easy enough, but I can't get my head around how you'd lay up say a whole bonnet, and still have enough time to bag it and vac it!

 

Even the slow cure West System stuff goes off in half an hour which can't be enough to do a bonnet!

 

Would be great to be able to pick your brains Bonzai when I have a go at vaccing!

 

Just about to go out and finish off the sunroof mould with some bracing so next week will be crunch time

 

 

In my usual way of getting things mostly done and then starting something else, I started the actuators today.

 

Was originally going to use carb diaphragms but decided the head down by the exhaust would probably kill them off pretty quickly.

 

Instead, it seemed like a good idea (at the time!) to sleeve some ali pipe with stainless steel, then knock up a couple of pistons with ali rings.

 

 

 

Needless to say they don't seal particularly well, but I'm gonna press on with the remainder of the actuators and then test them in my mate's car.

 

The plan for testing is to connect the vac input to his throttle bodies, use one of the spare wires we left under the bonnet to control a boost solenoid and then have a fiddle around in the Emerald software to see how well these things work as position controllers.

 

Bit of a random pic of the charge cooler water pump and the vac pump which I reckon can both go where the air-con would've lived on the driver's side of the block

 

[Sandy 191]

For long job wet lay up, you really need to look into the proper professional resins like Ampreg 20 etc. West is ultimately a jack of all trades system, that has limitations, despite what the sellers claim. The limiting factor for a bonnet though will be post cure. Unless you can bake it properly (or basically make a Glass/polyester bonnet with a carbon skin!), post cure can cause the panel to distort badly and harden when exposed heat in use.

[M3Evo 0]

Now that I hadn't considered!

 

Presumably it'd be possible to make a CF bonnet using polyester though wouldn't it?

 

Ampreg is an SP product isn't it? Still playing around with different combinations at the moment, have got an epoxy on order from Seabase to see how I get on with that. It's a little cheaper than the West but I think it might be a quick cure so I'll try something simple like a spoiler before wadeing into something like a boot-lid

 

 

Wahey! That was easy!

 

Pulled the cardboard and sticky-tape margins off, had a very gentle lever at the old sunroof attachment points and out it popped!

 

Just gotta order up enough materials to get on with the business of CF sunroof making now

 

 

It's amazing how light and stiff the mould is! Despite the thickness of the layup it's still lighter than the standard panel!

[Sandy 191]

Ampreg is SP yes, I did technical sales of SP stuff for 8 years, so I know they're range pretty well and the negatives of most of the others! That's about it. They also do a UV stabilised resin (for the sail/surfboard market), which has a rather tasty blue tinge.

 

I haven't tried CF in Polyester, but as I say, it's the way alot of people cheat for the CF look. You can rig up your own oven relatively easily, going by what you've knocked up already, i'd say you'd manage it!! It does need to be bagged to succeed really, not just for consolidation, but also to keep the lay up secure during post cure.

Edited July 6, 2008 by Sandy

[Mandic 0]

Presumably it'd be possible to make a CF bonnet using polyester though wouldn't it?

 

Haven't tried it myself yet, but some say that it's hard to make large sheets using polyester as it shrinks a lot more than epoxy. Don't hold me on numbers but IIRC polyester shrinks about 3%.

 

Cheers

 

Ziga

[M3Evo 0]

It'd still be a full carbon laminate, just in the polyester matrix so it's not a total cheat

 

Will have to experiment with the boot lid and see what kind of shrinkage I get with the mould Ziga. 3% sounds like quite alot to me though

 

 

A guy on another forum made some very valid comments about the actuators I'd made last weekend so I had a good rethink during the week.

 

The ones I had made would've leaked like mad and probably barely moved, or at best have moved unpredictably.

 

I did consider piston type actuators, but I reckon the stiction would make very small movements of the actuators unpredictable soooooooo......

 

I went back to my very first idea which is to make properly sealed vacuum capsules with diaphragms. This eliminates unwanted air getting into the system and also elinimates stiction.

 

Been beavering away all day to get these done but I'm really happy that they're done! The first thing I can properly cross off the list as it happens

 

Here's the various bits which go together to make one actuator:

 

 

 

Was gonna thread the ends of these rods and use two nuts to hold them in position, but then it occured to me it'd take about two minutes to just machine a pair of SHC screws and weld them on instead

 

 

 

So the diaphragms go in like so:

 

 

 

And attach to the rods like this:

 

 

 

To give this which just needs four peripheral bolts to hold it together.

 

 

 

Did think about directly tapping the top covers for the little push-in connectors but thought better of it in the end and welded a little boss on instead:

 

 

 

These ones will of course need to be mounted well away from the exhaust manifold!