Shortage of cf eh... riiiiiiiiiight.

I wish there would be, just so all the CF ****** could spend even more rediculous ammounts of $$ for it.

 

+1

 

Yes. Carbon sheets come in rolls secured in drums.

Much like anything, it's the labor cost and the mold cost. That's why I don't see why anyone would pay for a piece of shiet VIS hood that's basically a fiberglass hood with a sheet of carbon over it. Now, if you are speaking of a hand-laid, full carbon hood, that's a different story.

 

nah, no drums here, or sheets for that matter, as that'd make for completely odd shipping, and you'd tend to stuff them in. Just rolls of cloth.

They're shipped via normal boxes (suspended in the box via the cardboard roll, with cardboard holders).

and undoubtedly, you'd pay for quality, but a hand laid job is gonna give you a finish with less holes, esp if you use a small, tight weaved cloth, over the carbon, but it's gonna be a bit heavier. Where a prepreg is gonna make you fill in the holes with bodywork, or clearcoat, possibly nixing the excess resin advantage. Of course you need to vac bag both.

And mold/labor cost? it might cost 300-500 bucks to pull a mold off a stock hood. And if it takes a 20/hr guy more than an hr to layup a part like that, you're overpaying him.

You make it up on the first piece.

alas, what do i know

 

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

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=car...b-t&fl=0&x=wrt

 

your joking right??? to make a quality buck/mold for a carbon part that big will take WAY more then 500 dollars. for example... on our race car we have a multi thousand dollar CNCed MDF buck. hand sanded down to a smooth finish, primered, sanded, primered, sanded... etc etc. gel coated, fiberglas mold is then laid up over that. baked, sanded, finished to super smooth so that when the prepreg carbon is laid up it yeilds a excellent finish out of the autoclave. once the mold is made, making the parts is easy. i would estimate we spend a hundred man hours preparing every buck to a usuable mold to make carbon parts. granted our quality is far superior to most carbon hoods i have seen...

if your doing it out of your garage on your own (which i have done as well) 500 dollars in preparation will get you nothing usuable. you might as well just paypal the money to me because you'll just be throwing it away otherwise.

 

Material cost have doubled. Boeing and Airbus are making composite airliners now and many of the world's carbon mills have switched production over to do materials for them. That makes material for other uses scarce. Will it run out? I doubt that but it does drive prices up and even limits the kinds of weaves available to us. We have already seen pricing rise and we do have trouble finding plain weave now.

ROAD/RACE

 

I know that the CF companies I deal with have all raised there prices due to this supposed shortage

 

erm, no actually it won't.

did you read my post at all?

You're using the stock hood as a plug. Sand and tweak it if you like, or simply quick wetsand the mold.

Plug work = done. Making the mold = a decent amount of time, but nothing that couldn't be done in a days time with 2 people. Layer the mold up, even use high-temp resins if you'd like.

Release it, sand/repair any imperfections to the epoxy gelcoat, seal and release it, make a part!

I'll keep you updated, and when it's complete, show you some pictures of what we're working on, and no, it's not a hood, or an automotive body panel.

All i'm saying is the amount of time, and materials needed to do this, are not what it seems. Yet, some people still will purchase that $800 fiberglass, covered with carbon, hood.

 

I've heard what they're planning on doing, is to come to all the civic owners houses and take the carbon fiber parts off their cars since its basically a big waste, and giving them black hoods and reembursing them.

Yup, thats what I heard