My 348 Project

My Project sort of started a few weeks ago. While its going to take forever to finish(due to my work), I thought I would tease some of you with some photo's and ideas that Ive got.

First its replacing the Targa Top with a carbon one. As you can see the white one is the mold I made and the others are the carbon being laid in the mold. Notice the Alu inserts for the clamps to be bolts to and also the Pin's or whatever there called. I laid over the top of Alu insert. The pic's here are only after the first layer was applied.

The top should be a lot lighter then the standard version. While my idea is reduce the weight of the car by about 200kg's. This is just the begining.
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These arrived today, 360 wheels. They are meant to be lighter. Only the rear's have arrived and they were dead on 11kg's on my body scales(So dont quote me to much on these.) Im sure the front's will be little lighter.
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Ive got a set of "Brembo GT Brake Kit" on its way from Kevin at www.mvpeurosports.com he has been great to deal with.

All the mods I will do will remain the car in its current shape(look).

Other things that are ready to be started is:

Carbon Dash
Carbon Center consel
(I ordered these from a weckers and they have been stripped(leather) and ready to have molds taken from them).

I also have a 348 side grill, I bought 1 of them from Ebay. I will TRY to recreate it in carbon. A lot of weight can be saved there, but I think it will be very very tricky to get it to look the same, which I want to keep everything the same. If I can do it, I will buy the other and do both.

I also want to do the bumber's(front and rear). I will keep the black strip at the bottom naked, so the top part will be red and the bottom wont be black, but just naked carbon, which I think will look really cool.

I will replace the seats to something lighter of course. I was thinking about getting those Challange seats I posted a while ago. But I have changed my mine and going to get Momo Start seats. There under 6kg each, I will get them stripped and re-done in a nice black leather to match the carbon interor.

Other things like Sun Visors, Door Trims, all leather parts behind the seats and other little things will be replaced in carbon also.

Thanks my plan, but I will be leaving the country next week for two months, so I dont think I will have enough time even to finish the targa top before then. With my work I think I might be able to finish all this maybe in the next year or so. Depends.

Hope you like the pic's and ideas.

 

Nice roof Jack, I read your comment about it making production. I have learnt that I think your pretty right. I can get the latches made real cheap, maybe $30 each. But its the seals that will bring the price through the roof!( get it ).

looks very nice!

 

Tell me about it! Sounds like your scatching your head where to start with it too?

Im just doing wet lay as the moment. I will only do vacuum work if I have to. Im not doing super high end stiff parts here where I need the correct ratio for resin and fibre for best strength to weight ratio. Its more for looks. A roof with a little more resin wont make a different in strength. It might just weigh about 500grams more then a vacuum job.

No need for kevlar on my roof. Kevlars more for impact stuff(like you said), not stiffness. The only time my roof will have an impact if I roll the car, something I dont plan on doing. I might see how it goes with the bumbers thou. Just in case I ever do bump it so it wont crack on impact. Im from the cycling industry and have never had kevlar on any of my bike parts(wheels,frame,brakes,cranks,handle bars etc....)

I will see.

 

Thanks pap. Yeah going to Australia is a bit of a bummer. Im going to have the wheels and brakes sit here for 2-3months and I cant put them on the car! Its going to drive me nuts. Its also going to put a huge hault on my carbon work too.

I will be doing the stuff myself. I dont mind doing simple parts my Ferrari or stuff like that. But when it comes to serious structural parts like sub frame's I will let the Pro's with the good tools to do it. But while Im in Australia I will make a Carbon Bike Frame for my girlie. Thats the only carbon work I will be doing.

 

I get all my stuff from www.r-g.de (here's there english shop http://shop.ezentrum.de/4DCGI/ezshop?hid=27&sprachnr=2 )

Mold is made from normal glass fabric. Doesnt matter what you use really. You can see you can buy glass for about 5euro a square meter. I didnt count how much I used for the molds, but Im guessing 10m max!

r-g.de is great to deal with. Order on a monday and it will arrive here in Czech on a Wednesday from Germany. Doesnt matter how big it is either.