Friend made me a Carbon Fibre Boot Panel!!

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I have a friend who works in the Aerospace industry. Looking over my car, I mentioned that I fancied a carbon fibre boot panel.

"... hmmm, i could knock you up one of those!" he says. It seems pre-preg carbon fibre goes out of date, and has to be disposed of!

Here's the finished product, and a bit of a write-up of how it was done. What a present!

We used some prepreg with a nice visible weave for your facing sheets and then some thicker nasty prepreg for the intermediate layers.
The first pic shows you post layup and with some release film over it to stop the bagging adhering to it.
Pics 2 & 3 show you when it was fully vacuum bagged - nice and tight with no leaks. Then it was time for a bake overnight.

Next day we got the bits out of the oven and pics 4 & 5 show you the untrimmed panels.
Unfortunately, due to some improvisation we had to do with finding an appropriate tool to lay it up on there is a scratch on the resin on one side.
We were positive it was nowhere near that bad on the tool. Anyway were hoping it will polish out a bit.
The finished panels will include all the cutouts around the edges but none of the holes. I thought I'd let you drill them to allow some flexibility with the new fixings.

Well hope you like them. P.s. from memory we managed to chevron the weave on the top - just like on Koenigsegg!! ;o)











And the finished product!!!

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Picked up the panels today... What does PH think about fasteners?

Here's the edges...


and these are the fasteners i'm using on my ali sheet (but I don't know what tupe they are)

Think rivets through holes in the CF may crack it?

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The fasteners above were Dzus slide latches. Dzus also do 1/4 turn quick release fasteners.
Dzus brand fasteners are are now made by Southco

The 1/4 turn range and specs can be found on...
http://www.southco.com/browse/dzus-turn-to-close-t...

I've chosen some D8 Panex fasteners... you can configure the stud, retainer required for your panel thicknesses here...
http://www.southco.com/product/configurators/d8.as...

I rang one of their distributors. They have a minimum order qty of 500pc!
However they very helpfully offered to send me a free sample, but I had to have the colour/style that they had in stock.
If I ever need 500 quick release fasteners they'll have my business!

ETA: I am using Black peel rivets to secure the carbon fibre side panels to the GRP. They splay out, and distribute the force over a wider area.

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Pic of panels on car... not attached yet.

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Definately a "homer", out of hours, offcuts, simple fabrications - all done with a little assistance from production ops on goodwill etc.

Unfortunately i don't think it'd be possible.

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My Dzus Fastners arrived this week.

Panel doesn't fit quite flush, because of the thickness of the fasteners.

Just needs to be riveted in place once my GSXR throttle body conversion is finished.