How to fix delaminated Carbon
 

Hi All

My Chassis has worn at the front, and some of the layers of carbon have come away. Is superglue the only fix? or should I use something else?

Thanks

I'm not sure if it works, but my guess is that a bonding material+pressure would be the appropriate way to deal with it - and unless you're forcing the carbon further apart, it may be hard getting any glue, epoxy etc. between those layers.

You can get syringes full of very low viscosity epoxy/adhesive for repair of cracks in wood (saw it on a classic car restoration thread, repairing an old wooden steering wheel).

Inject it in, clamp it down and wipe off the excess. Leave to dry.

On the other hand, i have NO idea where to get it from.

Trying to get ordinary superglue between two layers of CF without doing more damage will be a nightmare.

Or you could just get a hobbyists CF repair kit and cut it back to good material and rebuild, this would be more expensive/time consuming. But you can take the opportunity to reinforce if you feel like it.

Hi there.

Like a previous post you need to use epoxy to glue the layers back together again, super glue is a quick fix but will break away again after time or a few hard knocks as it's quite brittle. 3M make a glue that they use to glue f1 cars together with but its going to be expensive and I guess you'll need a tiny ammount. Removing the de laminated part is a last resort, (I'm my opinion) as carbon gets its strength by how the weave is ordinated_ and removing (hopefully by milling) Will make a weak spot further back along the classis. Sad to say you might be better off buying a new chassis or waiting till it breaks

http://www.carbonmods.co.uk/
Buy some resin from above
Open up the delaminated bits a little
Brush some of the resin in as far as you can get it with a small art/kids paint brush ( you will hardly need any resins ) but make sure it doesn't run down any surfaces by working with the chassis from underneath ( so any overspill drips off without running down the rest of the chassis)
Clamp it with a piece of polycarbonate on the clamp jaws
Leave for 24hrs
File off the excess resin that has formed beads on the lower edge that we talked about earlier
Hey presto
Good as new

Cheers for the reply guys

Basically its a carbon V12 chassis plate. My lad used it out on the street and the front it pretty worn. I will look at a cheap epoxy just to stop it coming away more.

Fix it, then get some helicopter tape on the leading edge.

Or get him to buy a new one out of his pocket money.
;o)