Hey /o/ I've made this mistake in the past, but I come seeking

Worth mentioning that the skin has separated from the frame in places, I'm repairing that as I type.

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>>15188986
I figure, worst comes to worst, I can just fill and spray this bonnet body colour, that was the plan originally anyway, since I was told it was totally fubarred when I went to pick it up.
In the end I did a test fit and liked it carbon, so it's stuck

Ya thats uv damage from sunlight, clear gel coated fiberglass/carbon fiber only last so long unless you wax it regularly with uv protection. Sanding won't do much as its epoxy resin is loosing its strength throughout the substrate and most likely spider cracked throughout the matrix. As for the fire damage it cant be a "little fire damaged" it either is or is not" the heat will make it brittle and you will probably get layers peeling back in the future as contamination works its way in. If you get a new cf hood protect it a get it painted

>>15189076
I have no pics, but the bottom has definitely been on fire, there's paint flake, and the guy who sold it to me did mention his car had burst into flames with it on.
The gloss fade only seems to be around the engine area, where it gets hot. If you look at the middle of the vents, for example, it's pretty glossy still.

Are you saying there's no way to repair faded CF? The actual weave looks fine, it's just lost it's gloss and gained a few cracks in the lacquer from what I can tell.
Even if I can't remove the cracks, I guess a fresh coat of lacquer will at least spruce it up a little

>>15188868
>Hey /o/, I've made this mistake in the past, but I come seeking advice
Gee, you sure have a way with words. You dislike us but still want help.

>>15189139
>Are you saying there's no way to repair faded CF?

It's damaged and a lot of the brittle carbon fibers inside that CF + Epoxy matrix are probably cracked and broken. As you said, the hood is delaminating in various parts already. One of the features of carbon fiber hoods is the stiffness and you already pointed out it is exhibiting more flex than it should.

Another thing about this hood is that you keep saying "repair" when all you are doing is cosmetics to hide the imperfections. What you are doing is not repair; it is cosmetic work to hide the problems. I've worked at a factory building which did manufacture some things from scratch using carbon fiber and epoxy. I didn't work in that area though, but at least I got to walk around often enough to pick up on some things. One was that stuff carbon fiber matrix can have the fibers broken if the flexing occurs while delaminated. That's because the amount of total flex is no longer distributed evenly in such a case.

>>15188877
>Worth mentioning that the skin has separated from the frame in places, I'm repairing that as I type.
When you consider the other delamination damage and the uncharacteristic flexing of the hood as you drive at 80 MPH, this hood is on a downward spiral. Remember that fixing cosmetics and sanding away broken fibers is not actually repairing CF. It is concealing damage.

The hood should not have its carbon fiber matrix delaminating unless there is some serious problem. I don't mean edges but the main interior section itself. Perhaps the fire caused enough damage to epoxy to cause debonding in that area around the middle support? If so, that would explain why you have more flexing at 80MPH.

>>15190200
It was a badly worded joke of sorts, /o/ isn't exactly known for it's knowledge base, but it can be a good laugh


I don't see any delamination of layers or actual damage to the carbon weave, though. There is some damage in the top corners where you can see layer damage, but that's from storage and doesn't really bother me. I may cover it later on.

I know fibreglass bonnets move quite a lot during use, I'd assumed carbon would be similar. It should be very stiff then?

The separation of the skin and frame sections of the bonnet was at the silicone beads that were put there to bond it from factory. I just renewed them and it feels a little more braced and solid, but there's still a fair bit of flex in it, closer to how I'd expected it to be really.

>>15190200
Thinking again, I think you've misread my posts. The separation I've mentioned is of the frame and skin of the bonnet, not the layers of carbon weave.
The actual weave itself looks fine, and I can't imagine carbon would have been structurally damaged by heat, it is carbon after all

I said 'repair' because I was renewing the beads of silicone that had lost their grip between the frame and the skin, thus repairing the bonnet. This sort of talk is why I made the joke at the beginning

>>15190892
how stiff a mold is depends entirely on it's design. a good mold will have a bracing structure on the underside just like a metal hood.

a single sheet of 1mm carbon will flex all over if it doesnt have any kind of lattice.

>>15190981
It does have a frame, the skin had separated from it though, that's the repairs I was making earlier. It has stiffened up considerably since.
It looks as though some of the frame has been cut back to allow the vent to vent better (thick, solid carbon frame), which explains why it still has a bit of flex in the skin.


I'm not concerned about the structure of the bonnet though to be fair, it's not going anywhere at all, and will have less chance to move when I get the aerocatches installed.

I'm still wondering if I can sand the clearcoat down without damaging the weave underneath, though?