ManwithSupra

Cheers, Ha cool where abouts you moving too? Of course you can come and have a look

Cheers, Hopefully I will get the split mould method right otherwise it will be a right mess

Quick update, Final machine polish of the Intake pipe is now completed, I can start putting the barriers onto it ready for adding the mould making materials.. (sorry for the quality of the pics) I have also applied the first coat of gloss black onto the scuttle panel so this should be ready in the next couple of days to take a mould from as well. One stage closer to getting these into carbon fibre :d

Ah yeah good point, the current exhaust I have does contact with the flat floor already on the car, while the flat floor takes the brunt of the abuse I have never liked the way the current exhaust is positioned. There is plenty of room to bring it up say a cm or so... something that I will have to remember to mention.

Yeah, any system I had made would need to be kept to under 100db really. I cant believe your mate got sent home for Tyre noise.. thats crazy... must have been some loud squeals, or was his driving too exuberant for their liking I know some tracks are funny about tyre squeal and driving style.. I suppose the alternative to Ti is to use Iconel, which if a full Turbo back Ti system was Stuuuupidly expensive then I was going to use an Inconel downpipe - however even using Iconel would not bring the overall price down by much.. The thing is I am not after a "cheap" solution here but really a more cost effective one, as soon as you mention Ti and custom in the UK you usually get a "teeth drying" sound and then the calculators go mental..I don't mind spending the money on a Ti system and to put it bluntly the car is getting to the point of running out on what can be stripped out while still keeping it safe. I know Ti systems will cost lots and I am fine with that but I want a more cost effective solution rather than paying over inflated silly UK prices.

Cheers mate, thats useful to know.

While the scuttle panel and intake pipe are now drying with their final coats of paint.. I thought lets change the subject a little. Lets talk Titanium... I was helping one of my mates the other day with fitting out His Evo 9 with a full Ti System... I have never handled a full Ti system before and was simply blown away by how light it was. Getting a Ti Exhaust is high on the list of things I want to do with the car as it will save a huge amount of weight over the heavy Stainless system I have now but as with everything on this car... it has to be custom made I was thinking of replacing the entire system from the Turbo back. I know that Whifbitz also have a Custom Ti exhaust site but having things made in the UK is A LOT more expensive then the likes of the USA/Japan/China etc. Now I know that having an exhaust made out of Ti is going to be ££££'s but has anyone had dealings with getting a Ti Part made outside of the UK for instance maybe not for a Supra but their GTR's Porsches etc (I know a few of you have these )?

Look forward to the updates

Cheers guys The Tube is now in gloss black and tonight I will be flatting it down and hopefully polishing it up to a mirror shine (all depends if it needs more work). Once that is done, I will need to add the mould barriers and then its on to making the mould The scuttle panel is almost ready too, there are a couple of imperfections still, I have also made the holes for the securing screws now as well. It just needs another coat of primer, then its onto the gloss coats and then onto polishing, this also should be ready this weekend for making a mould from.

Some pics of preparing the turbo intake, had to grind down the welds, fill the dents, level the sections and sand it all flat, now it's nice and smooth and looks like a single piece, now just need to flat the primer back and add the final layers of paint (black and clear coat) ready for making a two piece mould for producing a carbon fibre version

That looks lovely.. as in really nice. Makes me want to get another Road Supra.... must resist....I must....

Did a bit more scuttle panel prep last night. This time in filler primer to help with the surface finish. Wont be long until I can get make this into a mould, its taking a while but then the better this plug is the better the end result will be. Again this will be a carbon part with no fiberglass backing it will have a 2mm lantor honeycomb core as with the standard panels so it be interesting to know the weight difference between this and the plastic part. I will be using ultra light 90g/m² carbon for this to maximize the weight difference. I am also doing the Carbon Turbo intake tube at the moment but as the original tube is pretty messy its also taking an age to smooth it out and make it suitable for a plug, I figured that a picture of the scuttle panel would be more interesting than that of a tube :d

Didn't get a chance to do too much this weekend with the carbon work as ended up helping a fellow track nut, corner weight and setup his geo on his car https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0397.jpg The only thing I did manage to do is progress with the preparation of the mould plug for the Scuttle panel. It still needs a bit of work to get it ready for paint but I will continue with that during this week. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0405.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0403.jpg

Cheers mate I am using Lantor Soric SF 2mm core in the panel work I have been doing, this has a honeycomb core and is designed for resin infusion. It makes the panels very rigid and also reduces the amount of consumables needed when infusing the part as it acts as a transport layer for the resin as well. http://www.easycomposites.co.uk/Images/products/large/lantor-soric-2m.jpg There is also Aluminum honeycomb core however this is for things like Carbon monocoque http://www.easycomposites.co.uk/images/products/large/aluminium-honeycomb-064.jpg

There isn't much of a difference to be honest between the strength of this and the smaller weave. The strength of a carbon part is down to a number of things such as how you lay multiple layers of different type of carbon weave in different directions, the method you use to apply pressure and heat and the type of core if any you will use. As these panels are not structural parts therefore the strength of the part is not critical, that said the carbon panels are stronger and stiffer than the aluminum panels they are replacing. This type of carbon is actually slightly more expensive than the 2/2 twill.

All the materials needed to make the mould of the Intake pipe have arrived as well as the kit to do the scuttle panel Should be a fun but messy weekend I am also going to change all the flat floor panels under the car and the rear diffuser with carbon except the center panel which will be kept Aluminum due to the amount of abuse it gets and the fact it gets really ... really hot with it being a blown diffuser design. All the under body work will be spread tow carbon... its pretty resistant to high impact and it looks pretty funky too... not to mention nice and light. http://www.easycomposites.co.uk/images/products/large/Spread-tow-carbon-fibre-plain-weave-25mm-in-hand.jpg

Yeah its a learning curve for sure, however preparation is the key here, just like spraying a car the end result is only as good as the amount of preparation first. It is time intensive but the more time you put in to preparation the better the result and the easier the process will be.

With regards the more complex shapes like tubes you have to use a split mould method and then bonding the two parts together. There are other ways of doing tubes but the finish is never very good unless you spend serious money on milled metal bladder tooling moulds. I will be using the existing pipe yes, however its got to undergo a fair amount of prep before it is good enough to use as a mould as there are a lot of surface imperfections which would be transferred to the new part which is never good. The oven is only there to increase the working temp of the carbon fibre, if you have not post cured the part then the resin will start to sag if it get exposed to heat which will make the part deform, this only happens once as this kind of post cures the part. If you post cure a part at 80'c for 4 hours it will increase the resins resistance to heat dramatically and will not sag when it gets hot. Once you have pulled a vacuum on a mould then you clamp off the vacuum lines so the composite remains in vacuum, then once the mould has cured for around 24-36 hours you put the mould into the oven and increase the temp to around 60-100'c depending on what the application will be. The materials, moulds, bagging film, gum tape, lines etc are all high temp items so can be used in temps of plus 100'c if need be.

Cheers I don't have any background with CF production no but got a lot of help and advice from people in the know, also bought a number of books on competition car composites so have done a lot of research. So far it seems to be working well

Right so today I cut out and made the Air filter heat shield out of carbon fibre. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0362.jpg I didnt get any of me cutting the parts out but here is one of the new cover vs the old cover. At this point I had not added the mounting tabs but had just bonded the two parts together using permabond ET500 structural adhesive, this is what I will be using on all the carbon panels in the car rather than having them rivet https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0366.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0367.jpg This is a test fit for the oil breather catch pot mounting. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0368.jpg This is it fitted https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0372.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0374.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0376.jpg Now that's done I will be moving on and making the Intake Tube out of Carbon fibre as well. With regards to the major interior carbon work, once I have all the panels made and cut ready to go I will show the pictures of the interior being converted over

Yeah the CNC will be free to use as my dad owns a small company specializing in prototyping. He has a CNC Lathe and a 4 axis CNC router which is pretty handy for doing the more complicated parts which need more precision. I will keep the water cutting thing in mind though in case I don't have access to the machine in the future.

Cheers mate it should equate to a descent weight saving, so far parts have been between 50-80% lighter then the originals. The cutting side of things can be done two ways. For manual cutting I use a dremal with a Perma-Grit cutting disc, this has a edge kind of like a tile cutting blade, this stops any fraying or chipping. For manual drilling, well its a bit harder, I drill a smaller hole first (which does chip and splinter slightly) and then get a small rotary sanding wheel (on the end of the dremal) to enlarge the hole to the desired size. I have not seen a drill bit with a perma grit stile tip... that would be awesome... The second method I have at my disposal is using a High speed cutting head on a CNC machine that I have access to. CNC would be better, but for these hand cut panels its easier and quicker to do it manually. When I start to make more precise items (like door hinges) these will be CNC'd

I use specific low viscosity Infusion resin and a slow reacting catalyst. It has to be slow as it can take a while to infuse the resin into the part and the resin has to be useable for more than an hour in some cases, If you use a fast catalyst then you have a useable time of around 15 mins which is ok for small parts but no good for large items. It takes up to 24 hours to cure enough to demould in normal temps, but up to 7 days to fully harden. I am building an oven which will fully cure and harden the resin between 3-6 hours (100'c/60'c) which will be nice.

Another panel made https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0360.jpg Nice mirror finish again https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0361.jpg Started making stencils for some obscure panels. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79394850/IMAG0362.jpg

Looking much better