How bout carbon heatshields.. The ones that are under the car above the CAT??? I know that my drive shaft tunnel gets real hot.. It would be nice to cool it down a bit.. Also What about the carbon tubing... What about replacing some exhaust with that?? Wieght reducing and cooler.. On my R6 I have a carbon slip on, while driving [210* engine temp] I can HOLD my hand on the exhaust and it doesnt even burn

 

I've done so much research on the heat handling capabilities of Carbon fiber and it's resins that it's sickening. The reason it's sickening is because I've gotten almost nowhere

Here's what I've uncovered: CarbonFiber itself is a great insulator of heat. The problem isn't there. It's in the Resins used. I've gotten information from saying it cant be done to any resin will stand up. Both are incorrect as I've learned. Obviously it's been done, you've got carbon in a high heat situation right there in your post But not all resins can handle that kind of heat. It needs to be a HTC (high temp. cure) resin. Most likely Epoxy. Which means I would have to cook the parts to cure them. I don't know about you but my wife ain't about to let me stick a part in the oven I do however have a couple of extra ovens in the house I can no longer live in and once I find a new house I can take an extra oven and use it just for parts . And since things like heat shields and mufflers are so small they'll fit right into an oven. I can buy CF sleeving in dry form to be used to wrap around things and cured. I could manufacture a CF muffler that way approx. jack-crap. I could also manufacture heat shields that would way so little that they'd probably blow away if left laying around. I've heard the stories of being able to grab CF mufflers and stuff like that without discomfort. So it wouldn't be that tuff. The hardest part is resonating it for sound and having to make the cylindrical plug for a muffler. The heat shields would be cake and now that you mention it, I might as well make a few since I'm going to have some left over smaller material laying around. The heatshields in the engine compartment would make good prototype candidates. The heatshields under the car might prove a little more challenging as finding a useable set might prove difficult. Mine are rusted and rotted to the point where most of it's gone and what is left on the car is junk.

I'll check around for some super high temp epoxies. THere'r rumored to be some that can handle up to like 700deg. without compromise. But require a very high temp. curing process. I'll look into though s/c and let you know what I find.

 

I was thinking more just the pipes than the muffler but hey, what ever you can do I am sure I will buy

I just hop I dont have to start a post that says "Sorry J you took too long" Carbon parts for sale by S/C

 

a few extra ovens J? lol I'm not even gonna ask. Sounds cool man...anybody know the weight ratio of the 280zx's? that would tell us where the weight needs to be removed from. JfairladyZ, you were talking about a custom CF dash...what would you change on it, like what would it look like? I'd be real interested in that, the stock dash is ugly as hell.

 

s/c, I'd have to kill you I knew what you were talking about but in order for piping to be feasible, it have to be able to stand up to as a muffler first. I'm thinking maybe with a thin aluminum tubing as a core I could use a CF sleeve to add stiffness and that would make a very light section of pipe. It would have to be concentrated near the muffler though as it would be just too hot near the cat.

Rubber, the reason I 've got a couple of extra ovens is that the house I was supposed to move into we were going to replace the oven. We've got the old oven still in there, the new oven's still in there, and now we can't live in it and the house we end up buying is going to have an oven in it already too. So I'm going to snag atleast one of those extra ovens. A part cured at elevated temperatures will cure faster and be more resilient if it uses epoxy specifically designed for higher temp curing. Of course parts made that way would be limited in size but things like heatshields and other small underhood parts would easily fit in a regular oven. Eventually I hope to retrofit one of those big storage containers into a huge convection oven to cure any parts, even the hoods. I'm still working on some design ideas for a dash too. Right now I'm designing something for a RHD setup. That way I'll have more room for a turbo setup. So anyways the dash has a much more ergonomic design to it sweepint the center console toward you instead of just straight up and down. Puts everything at a very convienient location. I don't have an instrument cluster design yet but I intend to keep the 3 gauge setup, though slightly modified in design. That's all a ways away though. Stuff for my car is just designs for now. I have to concentrate on getting what you guys are going to buy made. I'm going to be designing a fresh airdam that's not like anything else on the market but it's still going to follow the lines of the rest of the body. Most likely first in Fiberglass then in CF if anyone want's it that way. My ultimate goal is to incorporate a roll cage that would provide enough stiffness and torsional rigidity to compensate for the removal of the entire top of the car. I plan to fabricate the entire car out of CF. Why? Just to say that I did (oh and cause CF don't rust ) Even the floors are going to be replaced The cage will provide most of the siffness and the front and rear members will remain steel. But the entire outer part of the car will be CF (and various core materials). And before anyone goes into saying oh it wont be stiff enough, know this: CF is far superior to ANY non-exotic metal in it's stiffness,strength and weight. And when combined with a core material such as Nomex the strenth the weight gets even better. Alls I have to do is have a suitable structure to bond all the panels too. The entire cockpit will be constructed of Composites (with the excetion of the cage). Even the firewall. I'll be incorporating ballistics grade Kevlar into the laminates to provide a level of safety though as the tensile modulus of CF isn't the greatest (it doesn't flex, it breaks). The Kevlar will not break, thus the safety feature This of course is quite a ways down the road as a lot of R&D will have to go into this. The design and layout of everything is paramount. And the amount of money involved in a project like this is nominal to say the least

If you gotta ask why then I won't have an answer to satisfy you. So don't even bother asking why

 

thinking real big aren't you J who's financing all these shenanigans anyways

good luck with your CF venture, just remember that making the parts is pretty hard until you get it down, and aquireing all the tools that you will need to make good qulity products is going to cost a pretty penny

here's a link to a thread oh Hybridz.org where a guy seasoned in manufacturing CF parts on a large scale has spent over a year working to produce a CF tailight panel for the original Z series cars... i encourage you to read the whole thing, it was very educational for me

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=95701

 

yeah I know the expense of this whole thing. Lets just say that making the actual parts is the cheap part. I've almost got everything I need to get started. I ran into some problems with my credit card and am waiting for them to send a replacement in the mail. Once that gets here I can finish my ordering. I've got everything but the resin and fiberglass for the mold. I had to do some searching to find a CF wide enough to make a hood out of. Most CF only comes in 50" widths. Well the 280zx hood measures in around 53" at it's widest point and 60" in length. The only place I found that sells 60" 2x2twill is in HAWAII, so I'm gonna get reamed on shipping. If you guys don't mind plain weave I can probably get that in the lower 48 which would save me on shipping. I've also been sourcing freight shipping and unless you guys want to pick these things up shipping is gonna add a bit to final purchase price. I've also estimated the final weight of the hoods to be considerably less than 10lbs.for the CF/Nomex(and I estimated high, closer to 7lbs without hardware is more like it) Hows that for a weight savings. And I also did some price comparison shopping and from what I saw at MSA you guys will be paying less than what they are offering their CF hoods for the other Z's for. The most expensive hoods will still be less than the 70-78 hoods offered by MSA (and far lighter ) On the lower side of things, look to be paying somewhere around $500.00 for something a little heavier than the CF/Nomex hoods. I know this is more than I originally quoted back when I got this thing started but for those that don't know there is a world wide carbon fiber shortage and it's really affecting where you can get this stuff and for how much. Prices have skyrocketed recently. I've done so much shopping around that it makes me sick to my stomach every night when I know I have to keep looking for the best prices to save every penny I can on supplies so you guys don't have to sell your children for this stuff. I'm already over a grand into this and I don't even have any CF in my inventory yet!!!!! I probably could've done it for far less of an investment but I have to get longevity out of this.
For those just looking for something cosmetic, I can do that for a very small amount of money compared to a full CF hood.

I've been keeping myself really busy lately looking into everything as far as legality here in VA and getting all my supplies ordered and what not, so I haven't been around the forum at all lately.

And my guestimate for pulling the first CF piece off the mold would be sometime in early Dec. It's just a matter of waiting for everything to get here than making and waiting. A mold takes considerably longer than a part to cure because you actually have to wait for it to fully cure. I could skip the full cure step but I'm looking to get more than one or two parts from the mold I'll keep you guys updated and let you know when the mold is finished and I'll even take some pics of it.

Hell if I had the money AND the shop back when I started this whole thing you guys would all have CF parts already. The hardest part for me is going to be where to place the infusion media. But thats part of why I'll be testing with fiberglass first, to get it just right. By using Resin Infusion I can avoid any cosmetic blemsihes and get the maximum resin to reinforcement ratio possible (without using prepregs). This all costs me more to set up shop, but it makes a supperior product in the long run than you're likely to find elsewhere from most manufacturers (and doesn't make the parts anymore expensive than plain vacuum bagging). I'm not a mass production shop, so I can concentrate on quality rather than quantity.

Ttops are on hold. The weather is so unpredictable out here and it keeps raining. I can't be not having ttops on my car right now. I'm going to source some used ones as soon as I get some hoods pulled (I'm gonna need the financing ) then I'll get started on those.

Oh and 007 for the answer to your "who's financing all of these shenanigans?" Hopefully all of you once I start making some parts It'll probably be years before I'm able to commit to a project of that magnitude so don't hold your breath. Plus there's the chance that common sense might grab a hold of me before I dive into that one

I'll keep you guys updated. Oh and the control units I talked about in a different thread are still coming as well. Same deal with the credit card. I was waiting for the parts to come only to find out the credit card was no good. And since I lost my cell phone, they couldn't get a hold of me to tell me the parts weren't coming. I can only check my voicemail from the cell phone. I hate T Mobile. Man I'm sucker for listening to Catherine Zita Jones (but man she's hot )

 

GOOD NEWS!!! I bought a house today. FINALLY. And it's got plenty of room to make parts
Move in should be the beginning of next month.

 

Nice.. I like what I am reading.. keep us posted

 

Congrats man, hope all works out for you!

 

Very nice J, as you said FINALLY

 

Yeah and my wife tried to get me to cough up my business funds to help with move in costs. I told her to get another loan, I got too many people waiting for this to happen

On another happy note: I got some good news from a friend here at Zdriver that should help get some cost down. And I also got some help from someone else (not on this site) who pointed me in the direction of yet another way to get costs down on final products.

 

hey J have you started on that drawing of that kit that you wanted to start.<<< and remember im the odd ball who asked to see if you could make a 350z veilside hood for the 280zx

 

I tried doing drawings but they NEVER come out how I see them in my head. NEVER. So I've given up on that approach and I'm just gonna get out there with the foam and start carving and shaping and glueing and carving and shaping until I finally get the stuff thats in my head. The first kit I'm going to do is going to be a Gnose style kit for the front end. I'm also going to do some work on flares and widebody fenders as well as a couple more body kits I've got floating around in my head. As soon as I move into my new house I'm going to get started on the Gnose type kit. As far as the Veilside style hood goes I'll get into that eventually. I want to do something a little different anyways and that would be a good one. First I'm going to do the OEM style and a cowl hood, then I'll get to that one. Speaking of Veilside, I read an article on the owner a while back that kind of motivated me when I couldn't get anything designed on paper. He's still the one who designs and makes the plugs for all the body kits and what not (half of them anyways. He carves half out and then someone else duplicates what he did on the other side). But anyways the part that interested me was that he said he never puts a design onto paper before attempting to carve it. He just gets out there and starts sculpting away until he gets what he saw in his head. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be doing a lot with Fiberglass as far as body kits and fenders and what not so I can keep it all affordable (of course everything will be available in CF ). I was doing some more comparison shopping today and I see CF hoods going for more than a grand in some cases :Hell I see some companies offering fiberglass hoods for what I plan to offer my carbon versions for. But I'm not doing this to get rich. I just wanted there to be more options available for this car. But I still gotta make a profit. I'm happy to answer any questions anyones got and the wheels have been put into motion. I just got another batch of supplies today in the mail. I'll keep you guys updated.

 

I would like to see whole wide body fenderes and rear 1/4's rather than just a bolt on flare.. Just my opinion.. Oh and J I am getting so anxious that I started messing around.. and well its not hard.. In other words ya better hurry

 

wow, purdy, though i cant tell what the heck that is


how do you suggest blending the CF quarter panels to the metal?

 

I will leave that one for J.. Or J you can always do roof and 1/4's

 

Rivets. Form follows function.

Hey J, I've been thinking ... since I'm shaving my bumpers off [and filling in the rear panels], and putting in a fuel cell instead of the stock tank, I was thinking of adding a splitter-type deal, you know, like on JGTC cars. Or the new Viper Competition Coupe. Any possibility we could do a little something like that in the future, even if it is a one-off piece? I'll do some designs and get back with ya on it.

-Dave-O

 

Any pics on what your talking about??

 

^ That is a hot ***, by the way. ^


See the little fins inside the cutout beneath the bumper? That's what I'm aiming for.

-Dave-O

 

NICE.. I want one of those cars

 

Ah, a diffuser. Sure. I wanted to make one anyways. I'm not a big fan of bolt/glue on flares either s/c. The front will be a full fender and the rears will have to be blended in. Probably span from the door jamb to up to where the vertical part of the quarters stop and crease over and then back to the very end near the tailamp panel. Of course, if you wanted CF rear quarters you'd probably have to end up atleast covering some of the carbon with paint Unless you used carbon to blend it and cover the rest of the body with carbon. I just saw a S14 like that. The whole thing was covered in (not made of) carbon fiber. I'm ready s/c. Like I said just gotta wait for a few more things to get here and then I can get started on making the mold. I might wait til I move so I don't have to lug the mold over to the new house but we'll see. If I do wait I'm moving in on the 1st so it still wont be too long.

D let me know what you got in mind. My emails always open.

 

I didnt even make anything thats a carbon clutch cover for my R6 .. I did how ever oreder some supplies [Carbon Piping] so I can mess with something I was thinking about we will see how that comes along..

 

now imagine that being a ZX

 

^ Haha, Carbonare taking snaps of the Carbon-R.

Maybe I'm the only one that thought that was funny ... Go J-Tuner!

Anywho, J ... this is somewhat of a sketch I was thinking it to look like. I just hashed it up real quick, using NismoPick's 2+2 as a template. I'd definitely round out the rear end a lot more than the sketch shows, and there's even a possibility for exhaust making it all the way to the back of the car, versus out the driver's side under the door. I'd definitely want the slightly larger opening in the center though. I just love how that looks.

The number of diffuser fins and the overall length will most likely change, given design characteristics, and the builder's discretion. So, what'yall think?