Carbon Body

For a while now ive been thinking about geting an old 355 or high mileage 360, taking all the body work off and making custom carbon fiber copies of the pannels. I am well aware that this will take a boat load of money not to mention time, but does anyone think its theoretically possible to do it without throwing the balance off to such a large degree that it would be impossible to drive? what kinds of problems do you anticipate besides the money?

 

The best person to ask is Clive (Zertec), he is currently doing a Mondial body in carbon fibre, do a search for 'Mondial Z'

 

Yes, anything is possible.

 

The cost will be high, but the actual work is pretty straight forward. You need a donor car, you then pull splashes of the existing bodywork and use those as your new tools for making the CF parts from. You should look at Advanced Composites LTM tooling materials/process for the splashes, with proper support/eggcrating before you pull the splashes.

Clean up and polish the tools to get a good surface and you are more or less set. You will need to pull the original bodywork to make return flanges/ etc or maybe you can do some parts, such as doors, hood, fenders separately.

In any case it is not rocket science and is how all aftermarket bodywork is pretty much made.

 

We've already made several of the large panels for the cars you mentioned. Plenty of other people have, too. It would be much better to buy from someone who has already made tooling than to try to do it yourself. If you do have a lot of time and money to spend, you could do it, but if it's your first time, you might be better off just burning $100 bills, because that would take up a lot less of your time, be less frustrating, and if you filmed it you could probably get a lot of hits on Youtube.

As to the balance issue, how much do you think the stock removable panels actually weigh? Not terribly much, and the weight is fairly evenly distributed.

 

Someone made a carbon fiber Europa body years ago. I believe he was Japanese and made of money.

Ken

 

Ken, they were fiberglass to begin with, right?

 

Yup. It's very thin; much thinner than a Vette. They tend to get "stress cracks" in the gel coat although mine's not too bad. The additional lightness from CF would be a joke compared to the cost, but it would be a lot more durable. The fiberglass is very fragile.

Ken

 

Well it would just be a pet project for me. From what I understand the weight savings would be tremendous if you replaced all the body pannels with carbon fiber.

 

I doubt that. What do you consider tremendous?

 

Carbon is pretty fragile too, you wouldn't see much improvement really. The improvements could come from a higher quality lay-up with more fiber and less resin. Kevlar is the best choice for toughness, but being a plastic, it creeps, so panels tend to sag with time unless they are very very strong (heavy) or some significant percentage of glass or carbon fiber are also used.

Aluminum is also quite light, there is a reason airplanes are made from it. Switching from aluminum to CF really won’t produce a weight savings unless you go to with a foam, balsa, honeycomb core, then you could easily cut the panel weight in half. The down side it that the outer skin is thinner and foam and balsa compress easily, so you can dent the outer skin.

 

I am very interested to see what becomes of this, because I always wondered how light you could make a 355 if you used carbon fiber throughout. Irrespective of weight, however, I am sure the car would look insanely cool!

In a 355, I know that the bumpers in CF are MUCH lighter than the stock ones, but the majority of that weight savings is the backing that would absorb a crash, so the big questions is: would your car hold up well in a crash if it were made out of CF? I ask, because most of the heavy steel and fiberglass components of a 355 have extra material or crumple zones built into them for crashworthiness, and a CF shell would not.

In places on the 360 where they use aluminum, the parts are very light, and I agree that there would be a negligible difference in weight if you used CF to replace them.

I think the biggest weight savings would come if you made the unibody tub out of CF, but that is a HUGE proposition.

 

So far the carbon hoods and fenders we have made for the 355 weigh about 1/3 of their stock aluminum counterparts.

 

Kevlar (as the main fiber component of the composite) is inappropriate for almost all body panels, but it is an excellent reinforcement when used in a primarily glass or carbon fiber panel. Great strength and toughness where you need it. Hybrid fabrics (Kevlar or and carbon woven together) are popular but have issues of their own.

 

Just curious, but what are the issues of a carbon/kevlar weave?

 

Some CTE issues when processing at high temperatures (uneven thermal expansion rates), some other fabrication-related handling issues, marginalized mechanical properties, neither super stiff nor super tough. These are the first that come to mind. It's OK stuff. We use very, very little.

 

Which parts do you make? The rear fender area looks to be one piece and the weight of the car is all in the back. So this is the best place for light body panels. For a fender how much does a stock one weight in pounds?