raw carbon fiber ??

[jdmaccordbo!916]

does anyone know were to buy raw carbon fiber material at... i wanna know were to find it at for sale, in a raw form (as in not yet molded) an i will obviously need the resin as well... ive looked online, but i cant find anything on it.. besides products already made... i wanna make my own line of stuff for the accord out of CF but i dont know were to get the matterials at... any info on this.... anybody...

[matts]

last year my school used it for the formula SAE car, and i think they cut each strand seperatly. it was a real pain in the ass, so this year we are getting the pre-preg stuff to make it easier. it should also be a little stronger, and lighter.

[jdmaccordbo!916]

this year we are getting the pre-preg stuff to make it easier. it should also be a little stronger, and lighter. what do you mean pre-preg... im not knowing this term... is that the pre woven carbon fiber, if so that is what im trying to find... but i dont know were to buy anything like this anywere around here, an nobody seems to know at the shops either... maybe you can find out from your school some of this info for me.. like price by yards an all that stuff.. that would be cool if you could..

[jdmaccordbo!916]

also, has anyone heard of or personaly seen this new carbon carbon hood that they came out with supposidly.. it is carbon fiber on both sides, instead of only on one side an fiberglass on the other... one of my freinds was telling me about it a while back, yet i still have to see anything on it.. has anyone else heard of it yet... ??

[matts]

pre-preg is short for preimpregnated carbon fiber. if you were to buy just a sheet of fibers, you would have to lay them all, and then vacuum bag the resin into the carbon. i'm not really sure how this process works, but it's apparently a pain, and easy to screw up. the pre-preg comes frozen with the carbon already laid in the resin. so all you need to do is form it out of the freezer, and let it harden. i'll try to get a name of where we purchase it from.

[jdmaccordbo!916]

ah i got it.. that does sound a hole lot easyer then having to try an vacume it an all that crap.... i want the easyist stuff to use, but you know the most effective at the same time... i have a few plans i wanna do with my car, an if all works out well, then ill probly start making products for sale... i think id be able to do it, an shit will not be rediculacly priced either..

[matts]

sounds good to me, i'll try to find out within the next week or so, i just got to talk to some people.

[TheFirstNutZo]

that sounds incredibly useful! I could make some cool shit with that stuff. :) hehe now I'm excited and want to know where to get this stuff.

[jdmaccordbo!916]

coo coo, thanks bro... ill be looking forward to hearing back from you soon... some of the things i was thinking of was interior an engine bay stuff, for now... an then maybe look into doing bigger things... so any bit of info will be great, at least it is a start... thanks again

[matts]

a custom valve cover for an h22 would lok really nice.

[TheFirstNutZo]

how strong is the carbon fiber material? I've never had the pleasure of using the stuff on anything.. the appeal of it is REALLY strong, and REALLY light? or just really light and sorta strong? or plyable and shapeable, followed by strong and light?

The stuff looks cool which is probably why I would design a custom dash/interior out of it... but what other properties/uses is it good for. Is it really heat resistant enough to be used for a valve cover? thats hella durable.

[matts]

ok, i mean't plug wire cover. i'm not sure that it would hold up the demands of a valve cover.
for our sae car, we are going to use carbon fiber for our suspension arms, rather that 1/2" aluminum rods. the saleen s7 has a 1" thick carbon fiber honeycomb lip on the front of the car that is able to support the entire weight of the car.

bad news accordbo!- i found out that we get our carbon fiber through our faculty sponsor, and there's not really any way i can find out where he gets it from.
but- more on the pre-preg. the working life is about 6 weeks, but you have to account for any time that it is out of the freezer.

[jaccord96]

i had a skateboard deck once made out of carbon fiber.. it was sold as indestructable with a lifestime garauntee not to snap....got a new one the same day, and shortly after they pulled em off the market.

[TheFirstNutZo]

So carbon fiber is REALLY strong stuff then?

[matts]

uhhh yea, but it really depends on how you form it.

[jdmaccordbo!916]

well thanks for trying to find that out for me bro.. i realy apprectiate it... i guess ill have to reserch it out alot more... as for the carbon fiber valve cover, the only way it would work is if it was just made as a sheilding of some sort to cover over hte stock one.. unless there is a way to do it without the cover under it.. that i dont know... but i was thinking of doing stuff like seats an door pannels an dash, center consol an all the other little things in the car... if you catch my drift.... but that cant happen untile i find out were i can get the materials at, an how much it realy is... so only time will tell...

[TheFirstNutZo]

damn, I was getting excited too :-/ . How about fiberglass? Is that stuff easy to mold and work with, or is it a royal pain in the ass? You could make something in fiberglass and then coat it in a thin layer of plastic to make it smooth, and depending on the plastic, colored too.

[jdmaccordbo!916]

ya i can do fiberglass prety easily, but the carbon fiber looks so much sexyer then a painted peice... that an the fiberglass is alot heavyer then carbon fiber... but that was my next salution if i could not find any CF materials...

if you have never done it before, then it would be a litle diff the first few times you do it... i think for now im going to do fiberglass on my center consol, an once it is done with, then that will be the mold if i ever get the CF stuff...

[TheFirstNutZo]

I guess I'll have to get some sometime and see what I can do with it. I really want to make my center console/ radio / temperature controls to be more like the 300ZX's interior, more curvy and angled and I think it'd look sweet and I've wanted to fashion something for quite a while now. I'll have to give it a try one of these days.

[matts]

ya i can do fiberglass prety easily

i was thinking about trying to do a little fiberglass work. i have my subs facing the front seats when you flip down the rear seat, and i was thinking about removing the rear seat, and trying to mold a fiberglass piece that kinda matches the other interior panels to give it a one piece finished look. i'll try to photoshop a pic together to describe what i'm talking about, but what do you think?

[TheFirstNutZo]

that sounds pretty cool. If you did it nicely enough, you could make the entire trunk a sealed enclosure for the subs, then get subs that match the cubic ft of the trunk for sealed enclosures, that way from inside the car (front seats) looking back you have a badass fiberglass molding around the subs and replacing the seat, and from within the trunk you have all sorts of extra space (since the sub box can go), plus you could do some matching molding so it would have an incredible stock-looking setup.

[matts]

thats more or less what i was going for, i was just not sure how well it would work out, since i have not worked with fiberglass ever.

[jdmaccordbo!916]

hum if im thinking of it looking like you are wanting it to come out, then it should look preety dope... but i would suggest that you buy a small can of fiberglass resin, an the cloth an mess with it on something small.. (to practice an get a little knowledg from) it is realy not that much harder than doing bondo, if you have ever messed with that... it just gets alot hotter then bondo does when it is all mixed together... so i dont recamend mixing it into a coffe can or a glass container at all.. you will regret it latter if you did...heheheh

[matts]

i'm not too worried about it right now, this prob. won't happen for a while. i wanna get some performance gains first.

*by performance gains i mean h22 swap

[jdmaccordbo!916]

ya im the same way.. i wanna get the f20b for my gains, but im broke, so ill be doing little things like that with the fiberglass...

[TheFirstNutZo]

sounds like an awesome plan, you will HAVE to give us pics when its done.

[jdmaccordbo!916]

sounds like an awesome plan, you will HAVE to give us pics when its done.
oh for shure.. ill be taking lots of pics here pretty soon...

[TheFirstNutZo]

Nice. Once you get good, do a write-up on how to do the fiberglass work; I'd really like to do some I just haven't had time yet and haven't had the patience to try and figure it out.

[jdmaccordbo!916]

i will definalty do that for you guys.. when ever i get around to actualy doing it... an doing fiberglass is realy not hard as ppl say it is.. i used to think it wa shard, but after i did a couple of little projects, i found it was a little easyer than they were telling me..(ok it was not a little easyer, it was alot more easy)... if you have ever mixed together some jb weld or anything that requires mixing two things together to become one, then you are already a step up above the next guy in trying this....

[Chris]

http://www.selectproducts.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/page8.html

[jdmaccordbo!916]

chris.. im giving you the title of god right now.. thanks so much that is ecactly what i whanted to find... wwooo whhooo... an it was not realy nowhere as much as ppl are trying to tell me it was... so that is even better news... dam im so stocked right now... i think im going ot look into buying so materials here sometime in the next 5 months an start working on parts an such for the accord... thanks again bro.. your a great help...

[ACCLUDE]

If you plan to go all out like I think you do...then your best bet is to buy it in rolls. These places offer good quality stuff at very reasonable prices. If you want to find a place locally in your area that will be able to suply bulk fiber for a good price, go hit up any marine yards or boat repair shops. They'll have some guaranteed. Hope it helps.

http://www.fibreglast.com/showproducts-category-Carbon+Fiber+%28Graphite%29+Fabrics+%26+Tapes-15.html#19

http://www.carb.com/

http://www.shopmaninc.com/carbonpage.html

:)