Carbon Fiber Bodywork

You mean something like this?

This is from FiberGlast, $20/yd 50" wide roll. I have my doubts about how it will look. Fiberglass gets tranlucent once it's whetted out with resin and cured. With the material dyed, I wonder if it will look flat, and perhaps not share the 3 dimensional depth carbon fabric has....

I learned a new lesson today, all by accident...though it did cost me a sidecover I was giving my little brother a tutorial (he's 12 but hey, 12 year olds can learn too. Besides, he thinks my old bike's cool), and I had everything layed out and ready to go. I mixed the epoxy just like I always do and I had put down 2 layers of fabric and the coremat when my little brother says "hey is the tub supposed to smoke like that?" I look over at my resin tub and it IS smoking :blink: I pick it up and it's a good 120-130 degrees and gelled up FAST. So fast, I didn't have time to get the last layer of fabric down. I figured no problem, I'll bag it up as is and cure it, then I'll do the last layer as a separate application. This would put the peel ply directly on the coremat, but hey, it's supposed to peel off, so it's whouldn't be any different, right? WRONG! The peel ply stuck to the coremat so strongly, that I not only pulled the sidecover out of the mold trying to remove it, I pulled a "dent" in the sidecover since the peel ply wouldn't release.

Before anyone freaks out that these covers are weak, the new part was only 6 hours old, and I like to remove the peel ply while the epoxy is still flexible. As far as strength goes, my little brother asked me if my carbon/kevlar sidecover was strong enough to stand on. So I put it on the ground, mounting side down and stood on it :pinch: Try that with a stock sidecover :whistle:

But I know what you guys wanna see so even though this cover has been compromised, it's STILL beautiful

What do you guys think about the orientation of the weave/pattern? I turned it 45 degrees from the last few sidecovers I've made

vs this:

porchev914 wrote:

vs this:

i think that this orientation is the most pleasing.i like the darker appearance of the carbon/carbon over the carbon/kevlar.that is purely based on the fact that the bike i want to use them on is going to be black tank with stock style kz graphics.although if i was going to go with something other than black i would probably want the carbon/kevlar.way to show lil bro what not to do, keep up the good work.

leon

i like the 45 degree stuff myself

Thanks for the input Leon, plummen. I suppose it would need to be a made to order setup

I put together a small test piece using some of That red tint I picked up last week

wow the tint could be pretty cool in the right application.
are any of the epoxies you are using uv protected?

leon

that looks interesting. you could paint the frame, or accent parts with a color, to compliment the carbons tint color.

i thought that red tint might pull mark out .

leon

ROFL.
How did u know i liked red bikes? lol
I like a little pink too. :woohoo: