Can you repair carbon fibre?

[danny the elfman]

Hey. Little problem. The rear shock tower on my dex210 has a crack on each side of it (same place and direction) sandwiching the still ok carbon in the middle. Can I repair the damage to the outside? Cant really afford the £20 just for a shock tower right now. Thanks

[SlowOne]

No, you can't repair CF, but you might be able to salvage the part. Once the resin on CF has cracked, that's it. There are ways to salvage CF parts, but the only way they will be as strong as the original is if they have re-enforcement added, more weight.

The crack you describe might go right through the part and the only thing holding it together is the fibres. In this case, you can glue or bolt some plates to either side to take the load. If the cracks are surface only, you could fill the crack with super-glue, clamp it in a vice to close the cracks up and hope that it holds together.

My experience is that once it is cracked it is weak and whatever you do it will eventually fail. However, if you glue or bolt a couple of plates to each side that will transfer the loads away from the cracks, the part will last much longer. HTH

[Cream]

Originally Posted by danny the elfman

Hey. Little problem. The rear shock tower on my dex210 has a crack on each side of it (same place and direction) sandwiching the still ok carbon in the middle. Can I repair the damage to the outside? Cant really afford the £20 just for a shock tower right now. Thanks

What about £15.00 for a proper Cream extreme one

[buggy#0]

Originally Posted by Cream

What about £15.00 for a proper Cream extreme one

Definetely better than a copy

[danny the elfman]

Thanks guys. I did buy a cream rc one and its great

[Lee24h]

To answer your original question
No
Even f1 teams throw it away

[mattr]

To answer your question, yes.

(But it's expensive, a pain in the arris and you need specialist equipment to do it properly. It'd probably cost more than the part's worth just to get someone to look at it)


BTW, an easy way to protect your cf towers on the 210 is to space them away from the lug on the motor plate. As when the tower flexes, it bottoms out on the lug and starts the cracking process. Just 4, 1 or 2mm spacers between the tower and the gear box casing is enough, and has no noticeable effect on anything else. (Only tried this on MM, don't know how it looks RM)

[mark christopher]

depends how its damaged
cracked no

delaminated yes, apply superglue and clamp hard in vice with jaws covered in grease to stop it splitting