Diablo SE30/SV Center Console Refinishing

A customer gave us a call recently having just bought a Diablo SE30. The SE30 Diablo was one of the first cars where Lamborghini began using exposed carbon pieces. After 20 or so years, the quality and finish had deteriorated on his. In fact, it was brown and nasty. The finish was flaking off. He asked if we could refinish it. Send it in and we’d take a look we replied. Here are some photos of it as it arrived. As mentioned, the finish had already largely flaked off and the customer had then picked off what else he could.

Before we go any farther, I’ll kill the suspense and let you know it turned out nicely. You can see pricing and all the pics in one spot on our website.
http://www.macarbon.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage-ask.tpl&product_id=1034&category_id=249&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=147&lang=en

You can also see our Diablo products here:
http://www.macarbon.com/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=79&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=69&lang=en

But please read on! Here are the before photos.
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We can’t change the discoloration of the epoxy resins embedded in the carbon fiber matrix. But there was still a lot of brown-ish resin and finish that we needed to get rid of. A lot of time was spent doing the delicate work of removing all traces of the finish around the raised and recessed holes. We sanded both by hand and using a Dremmel. The trick is removing as much of the discolored material as possible without hitting the carbon. This is not a fun exercise!

We were a bit surprised by the color of the dust... green!
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Once all the old finish had been removed, we then sprayed it with new clear coat. Normally you flood the piece with your first coat and go from there.... but even after a few coats, the piece still had more pinholes than we had ever seen before on a factory piece. Out came the sandpaper again to knock down this first finish attempt.
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Unlike most carbon pieces that have a gloss or full matte finish, we were told the SE/SV console uses a satin finish. With satin parts, you cannot sand or polish after you have applied the clear. So dust is your enemy! Polishing in one area to get rid of dust results in a shiny spot in comparison to the rest of the part. Even the best paint booths have some small amount of dust. Normally the dust lands right in the middle of your part where your eye will naturally just focus. Its the way carbon production usually goes! Luckily, we didn't have any dust issues on shot two.

But.... the part was not satin enough. It was too shiny. So it looked like a bad gloss job. We had used the same setting we recently used on a repair to a satin Bentley CF dash but we were not happy. So out came the 1000 grit wet dry again. Third times a....
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Finally, with the third try for the final coat, we got it. A nice satin finish. No dust and no pinholes. Operation complete. We packed it up and sent it out to the customer. Hopefully we'll see some installed photos soon.
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We don't like to put prices in threads as numbers change over time.

However, we've listed the refinishing service on our site with the price.
http://www.macarbon.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage-ask.tpl&product_id=1034&category_id=249&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=147&lang=en

 

The customer sent the following photos. Amazing how putting some parts in it makes it look even better.
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