Recent Posts

Internal door skin glued on. Needs to be trimmed and excess glue removed but the door is coming together. I estimate that the door should top out at just under 2.2kg.

Ok, what did you expect it to sound like? Bear in mind that this is just two layers of 200gm carbon, so approx 0.5mm thick :-)

Ok

Pattern is an open ended cost. This can be from nothing if, for example, you use an existing part like a bonnet, to many pounds depending on material used.

Mould. This I make  with  a gel coat and 290g Plain Weave Woven Glass 1000mm Wide at £3.80/m2 and a high temp resin, which is more expensive than the standard stuff. On the moulds for the door I used approx 1kg of resin which is around £25. Standard resin would have cost around £13

I used 6 layers of fibreglass so around 3m2 so the cost is approx £23.

Gel coat cost approx £20

I don't normally vacuum bag the moulds so this saves both time and money :-)

Actual part. I used two layers of 200gm/m2 prepreg carbon for the doors. This is too little for a standard road car and I would recommend 4 layers as a minimum. Anyway, I used 2m2 of carbon on my door at a retail cost of around £130. My doors are small (approx 1m2 for both sides) so allow for 2-3 times this cost for a sturdy standard car door.

Then there are the bagging materials. release film, breather cloth and vacuum bag. Cost approx £7

Release agent is used on both pattern and mould. Cost roughly £1

So, the total cost of my door is around £200

If interested, have a look at EasyComposites site at www.easycomposites.co.uk/


I get all my supplies, apart from the prepreg carbon, from them and they are very helpful.

Any questions, please ask.
Steve

Well, made four bolts. Carbon door requires M10 but the passenger door is using the existing bobbins mounted in what if left of the door and these are 5/16 UNC so I will make those tomorrow. A bit rough and ready but they work and can't be seen :-)

The driver's door is 100% carbon, but the passenger door is going to be a bit of a hybrid. I attempted to reduce the weight of this door frame a few years ago and got it down from 6kg to 3.2kg by replacing the dor skin with wet lay carbon, cuting out most of the internal skin and drilling 400 holes! With the the driver's door weighing in at not much more than 1kg I needed to do something to redress the balance.

Making a mould would have been very time consuming due the already extensive modifications, so I decided to use the edges of the door and fill in with carbon.

When I stripped off the old carbon skin it weighed 1.1kg! The new skin is 335gms, so I am getting better at this :-) The door hinges also went under the knife. OEM ones weigh 230gms each and this one now tips the scales at 87gms, so just over 1/2kg saved over four hinges. The fixing bolts will be rifle drilled aluminium :-) Door should end up around 2.5kg with an internal skin.

Door handle, Mk2. The hole has to be large as the latch lever moves.
.

A few parts of it are now carbon:

Floors
Front clip
Doors
Roof
Front and rear firewalls
Boot floor and rear panel
Boot lid
Rear Wheel tubs
All interior, including dash, footwells and centre console
Underfloor aero including skirts, splitters and air curtains
Side exhaust cover and heat shields
Seats
Air filter box and induction ducting

Nothing is skinned, what is the point of that?

My thoughts on anything I find. I have kept so much stuff that over the years a lot of it has come in handy. However, we are fortunate to have the space to store stuff. Finding it can be an issue, as you say :-)

You and me both, James.