Diffuser repair results

Here's some pictures of my recent repair to a 430 carbon fiber diffuser. There was a hole in the side and many of the ribs had split open. None of this was visible with the diffuser on the car, but it could only get worse. I had the car up on the lift over the winter so figured it was a good time to get it healed up since these are expensive to replace.

I found a local guy who does CF repair, primarily on bikes. He hadn't worked on car parts before but was kind of stoked to work on a Ferrari part. I think he did a pretty good job at a reasonable price. I guess that high end bicycles are mostly CF these days so you might find a guy like this in your town.

This was the main hole.

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This is how it looks after the repair. Obviously this isn't really an option for a visible piece since it's pretty much impossible to line up the CF pattern, but you can't see this on the diffuser when it's mounted. Importantly, it's completely structurally sound and smooth to the touch. This repair was $160. Not exactly cheap but there's actually a fair amount of labor and I was happy to not have to learn such an esoteric skill.

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Meanwhile, many of the ribs were split:
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A CF repair on the ribs would be overkill and expensive, so what he did was fill them with black epoxy and then sanded, painted and clear coated. He charged $60 per rib. Possibly I could have found replacement ribs, as they do bolt on, but I was fine with the price and the repair came out good.

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Overall, pretty happy with the result and glad to have a structurally intact diffuser again.

 

@colorfull I'm in Charlottesville, VA. Gotta update my profile...