Post #315
Carbon Fiber anyone?
A few of you might have heard I was going to try carbon skinning, this will be updated regularly with my progress. Absolutely no plans to do this for anyone other than myself until i'm happy with the process, the costs involved and the time it takes to finish a product.
For those that don't know, skinning is somewhere between a full on mould-made carbon part and a vinyl covering. It's 100% real carbon fibre, i'm using 2x2 twill, but one sheet skinned over the original part. Sure, it won't give the weight loss of real CF but it gives a near enough identical finish to a full CF product at a fraction of the cost. I have no previous composite experience so these are my trials and tribulations
So yeah, day 1 - mirror caps, nice and simple.
Started off rubbing the caps down with 400 grit to key the surface, much like when you're planning on painting. This gives the epoxy base coat something to bind to, if you try using a polished part it just slides off again
Then comes the black base coat. This is used as, with only one layer of CF, some colour can be seen through the fabric when you lay it. Trusty pound shop kitchen scales, resin and hardener...
And coat your parts
Next up is to lay the CF cloth, taking care not to distort the weave pattern. The base coat is sticky as hell, rush the job and you'll twist the weave, ruining the looks
Cover them both, like so
Then it's time to move on to the resin clear coat. The benefit of CF skinning instead of wrapping means you can get an authentic deep sheen to the CF, vinyl can end up looking matte and fake. I've ordered both normal epoxy resin and high temp stuff for engine parts and such
So that's layer 1. Leaving to fully cure tonight, flattening back tomorrow to remove high spots then applying more resin. Once another couple of layers are nicely cured I have a choice, UV resistant lacquer or polished resin. For interior parts i'll probably end up polishing the resin up to 1500 grit then using the old Farecla G3 I have in the garage, exterior parts I have some UV resistant clear coat rattle cans, should be suitable for small parts as there was no orange peel when I did my SP spoiler.
Made a start on the lower part of the centre dash, that's just been laid with a thin coat of resin. Couldn't get the weave to sit properly in the holes for the switches so i'll be trimming the holes out and painting them black. Won't really see them anyway with the switches being there.
Also laid up the final coats of resin on the mirror caps, ready for trimming, flattening and polishing up tomorrow. Test fitted one today though and noticed i'd broken a clip so one of these is going to be scrap unfortunately
All part of the learning curve though ay?
Ehh.. yasss. Happy with my first attempt. Edges aren't as neat as i'd like but that's what practice is for ay?
Here's the bits being trial fitted before finishing
After a few coats of lacquer
And fitted to the car..
God damn carbon looks good on an anally clean car! Speaking of clean, I have more pics of the car properly cleaned for the first time of the year
>>>here<<<.The centre console and interior wing mirror covers are under way, should be done in a couple of days. It's officially an addiction now....
Hmm, who's the ugly ****er?
One production line. Spot anything else being done? The main part of the centre console is an absolute c*nt to do btw, spent about 4 hours on it today and can't get the carbon lined up right until the resin is super tacky, even then gonna have to go back to it every hour to make sure it's all sat neatly...
And of course, some more parts nearly ready for finishing
Starting to get the hang of this now
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Bye bye Sundance Kid
musclebeach
Posted 23rd Feb 2011 at 23:50
Gti6 
i thought because my username was in the quote 
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just a bit to go then. Will feel much better about the car when it's all done though 
