Superglue on Carbon fibre chassis
 

Hi All

I recently bought a second hand touring car and found the carbon fibre chassis has got some dried in superglue patches - whats the best way to remove it? - will superglue remover work? also i have a few scuff marks on the chassis if i use wet and dry to remove these the surface will lose its shine, can i recoat the chassis using a varnish or laquer? if so whats the best stuff to use to get that high shine again?

Thanks for all your help :)

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Superglue probably been put on it to seal the carbon fibre but if you want it off then acetone would work

Cheers Jamie, the supeglue patches are on the main faces of the chassis, the edges are unsealed at the moment

Acetone may also damage the chassis. If u want it like new buy a new one

Acetone could make dull patches on the carbon..

I have never seen anyone sand down a carbon chassis and get it shiny again, I doubt it would be easy.

Is it an old car?

I'd use a Stanley knife blade to gradually shave it off, keep a very low rake angle on the blade to ensure you don't dig in to the chassis, and don't rush. Make sure the blade is new. Go very steady and eventually you will know when to stop. A bit like the scrapers you use for removing paint from glass..

First of all I would NOT go sanding down any large peices of carbon fibre, 1st because the dust particles created is really bad for your lungs and secondly it will go dull and you'll never get it back to looking like new.

As suggested if you want like new it would be best to buy new, if you relly want the chassis to really good then your best buying a new one. There are a couple of sites that offer new chassis for various cars I would try exotek.

I would definately glue the edges, not sure what glue is doing on the main part of the chassis if they haven't glued the edges :confused:

Maybe he glued his tires whilst on the the car?

Depending on how the carbon was initially produced the carbon is likely to be coated with an epoxy resin, this is what will be making it shiny. Depending on how much has happened you can wet flat it with 2000 paper to polish it back up but this stuff is rock solid and 2000 won't really make any impression on it. You could re lacquer it with a 2k clear but that isn't the sort of stuff you'll have laying around at home and by your initial question I'm guessing you don't work with Carbon Fibre or in a Body Shop. So you could pay someone to do this all for you but a new chassis would be cheaper than your time and you paying for other peoples time, so I'd go with what has been mentioned above and buy a new one.

Cheers all for your replies, the chassis itself is in excellent condition except for the superglue patches where someone has tried to superglue lipo locators on, but will have a go at finely scraping the old glue off first :thumbsup:

I had the same problem a couple of months ago, what I did is......

(i) mask around the affected areas
(ii) tape some fine wet+dry to a cork block - sorry can't remember what grade I used. And use water and sand any high points
(iii) when the glue residue is almost gone, don't keep rubbing and damage the laquer on the carbon, stop
(iv) remove the wet+dry and tape a piece of cloth, say from an old T-shirt, to the cork block
(v) then remove the masking tape, and onto the hard and time consuming part
(vi) I then polished, using the cloth attached to the cork block, the whole of the chassis using Autoglym's super resin polish which has a mild abrasive property to it. This step takes many evenings, so just sit in front of the TV and rub (that sounds wrong doesn't it :lol:)
(vii) then using baby wipes, clean the chassis which now should be incredibly shiny.

I just used what I had in the house and am really happy how it turning out. So just wanted to let you know it can be done. :)

Caveat: this worked well on a Tamiya TRF501X chassis, not sure if other manufacturers carbon would be any different.