SpeedKore has carbon parts for our cars now!
https://speedkore.com/product-category/barracuda,1970/



They are also working on `Cuda doors which should offer a huge weight savings. Lucky I got a roll cage already haha!

They are expensive though! I'm looking at doors which are $2,200 each, fenders and header panel which adds to over $10 grand haha! Oh well it would have cost more to make them myself!

I guess my car is not finished after all!

I made a plug for a bumper and spoiler. Had them made by Munssey Speed and Design in CF. The bumper fit my car great (I made it to that car!), but Jeff at Munssey tried in on 3 different 'Cuda's before sending it, and guess what? Fit horrible. One was okay, another was flat out horrible, and the last was like a different angle! So, no way the tucked bumper they are showing is going to fit anything but the car it was made for.









[img]http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/t445/340cuda/file_zpsb7f3081c.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/t445/340cuda/file_zpsa1e40e88.jpg[/img]

That's a pretty cool CF rear spoiler. I met James at the Spring Fling track day last year that has one also. The round metal knobs are so you can add a lexan extension correct? Pretty cool!

Yeah I am worried about fitment. I have already tried a set of fiberglass fenders from Glasstek supposedly the best place that makes them and they fit like dog sh*t! It was a hassle to get that sorted out and both fiberglass fenders was 1/3rd the cost of one of these carbon fenders!

The weights savings is tempting though, carbon fenders are listed at 8 lbs. each while the carbon header panel is 5 lbs. Rough estimate of 1/2 the weight of carbon doors from original doors. (I was sent a Excel spreadsheet of weights and prices)

AMD lists their fenders as 40 lbs. header panel is 13 lbs. I would say original doors would be at least 80 lbs. each, so that is a rough estimate of 150 lbs!

150 lbs. less on my car sure could improve lap times haha!

Jeff only made two. Mine has a lot of reinforcement inside to stay attached at 200+, as well as 5 knobs to attach a wicker bill. I'm selling mine, changing to a different style spoiler.

I may be making my own fenders, hood, deckled, and header from CF pretty soon. My fenders are flared out (over the entire surface) to clear my 335 fronts. They are such a pain to make in metal, the weight savings, and having spare crash parts, makes having CF ones seem like a good idea. My car is heavy, and would like to get it to the 3200 minimum without losing my creature comforts (A/C, yeah!).

If you make CF fenders that fit good, clear those 335's and can sell them for less than $2785 each & header panel for less than $850
I will buy a set from you in a heartbeat!

Yeah, tolerances on composites are everywhere. When I autocrossed my Dart a couple weeks ago, there was a 68 Camaro with all Carbon fiber front components. Quarters, hood, valence, everything. The fit and finish for such a high dollar car was not that great. Lots of weird gaps. Of course the car was wrapped, not painted. If I ever go CF on my Dart, I'll be making them myself.

Pretty cool parts, we checked out the 'Cuda at SEMA. To me, they are not practical. I'll buy another car before I need the weight savings that bad.

Hey Goody do you happen to remember or make an educated guess on how much `Cuda doors weigh when you had them off your car? With and without the glass and inside parts by any chance? It has been a while since I have taken my doors off and forgot the weights.

Thanks!

Fiberglass replacement parts are one of the best cost/benefit ratio performance parts out there. While the carbon parts look cool, I think the cost significantly screws up the benefit ratio.

I have a scrap door shell out behind my shed I can weigh, but one would need to get the weight of a skin for a total door weight.

I highly agree with this statement IF said fiberglass parts FIT correctly. I have fiberglass trunk lid and front lower valence panels from Glasstek and they fit good on my car. I have a fiberglass rear lower valance panel and upper header panel and they were unusable due to lack of solid mounting points so I switched back to metal panels.

Like I stated before I had Glasstek fiberglass fenders that fit horrible on the bottom mounting portion. I tried to tell them about it and inform them their mold was wrong but they just called me a liar and it was a mess to get my money back. Look on their website for 70-74 `Cuda fenders and they are NOT listed anymore? Gee I wonder why? haha!

Per AMD their door skins are between 27-35 lbs. so we'll just say 31 lbs. for the door skin.

I agree that CF doors are impractical for most street cars as there would be no side impact safety beams installed so one would require a roll cage. CF are so damn light though! I have seen Viper GTS-R's with CF doors and it was ridiculous on the amount of weight savings!

when i do carbon stuff, they come out to about .007 per layer and i have parts doing 150 mph with only 3 layers so why not form a door bar and mold it in? i had one pair of small parts that doubled in weight just by painting them. I use west system epoxy and bag my parts to keep them light. Making a mold that is accurate is the hard part and takes the most time, I use matt cloth and vynal ester resin to save money on the mold. If you want to save money on the parts use a layer of s-glass sandwiched between the carbon layers. Tim

Are you talking about a carbon door bar to mold in?

I know nothing about carbon, but isn't why most exotic cars made from the stuff have huge carbon tubs as a safety cell for the driver/ passenger compartment? If the car doesn't have a carbon tub then a roll cage is still required I think?

All my knowledge of carbon comes from Google or YouTube haha!

There are lots of great videos there to learn from.

My overall view on the matter:
1. CF is trick looking and been the bling for awhile.
2. Is a great material, stiffer and more costly, and that's decreasing
3. The biggest hurdle is if one wants the CF finished "look", is getting your CF to lay straight, that is the toughest part
4. Un painted/unprotected resin/epoxy has UV downsides, I paint most of mine, you don't need to know its CF, unless you want to buy it
5. Anyone that has FG/resin skills can do CF, there is little magic here
6. I prefer epoxies, they are significant stronger then most resins, but slower cure, which has its upsides, but for production can be a downside.
7. Vacuum bagging is not not a must, its nice, better, lighter, but not a requirement, unless oz's or marketing are important.
8. I usually add at least one internal layer of kevlar on my larger panels

That has been some of my experience with CF as well. I prefer epoxy curing over night under a vacuum bag. It allows for a stronger piece IMO. Also, the Kevlar ply between the CF is good to reduce the brittleness of the laminate. We did this on the baja car so that the panel wouldn't break if they impacted a rock.

With regards to surface finish, our unpainted parts often trapped dirt between the voids. The later year baja cars that didn't wrap or paint their car had their CF panels turn green, which was funny. We made a CF racing seat for the car and decided to clear coat that to make it look better, but again, we had some clear coat bubbles we had to buff/sand out. You can always vinyl wrap it with the CF pattern. Lol.

I also have some experience with uni-directional pre-preg. I'd say both a wet lay-up and pre-preg have their pros and cons.

100% of the stresses goes through the stiffest fibers until they break, then the next stiffest fiber takes the load. Carbon is the stiffest, then Kevlar, then glass, there are some other aramid fibers out there but these are the most common. Also 98% of the stiffness of a fiber occurs within 2 degrees of the fiber's grain direction. If you have a woven cloth, it is stiffest in the two directions the fibers travel in, if you have just a straight tape, its only stiff in one. Tim

Well that was straight from the PHD that was teaching my composites class...and he showed the math to prove it..

In tension, if the loads are in the direction of the fiber, that's ideal and yes the fibers would take up the majority of the loads. If the loads are perpendicular to the fibers, then the resin takes up the majority of the load. If you all want to calculate tensile and bending loads at different angle plies, pick up the books "Mechanics of Composite Materials." One author's last name is Jones and the other is Kaw. Two different, but similar books.

Good discussion with the CF theory and application!
Although some of it is just beyond my feeble mind haha!

What matters to me is 3 things:
A. Can carbon fiber fenders be leaned on like metal fenders when you are working on the engine?

2. Can carbon doors be slammed shut repeatedly like a metal door and not break in to millions of little carcinogenic pieces?

D. If both statements above are indeed true, is anyone else besides SpeedKore going to make good fitting carbon parts so I can figure out who to send money to?

Thanks!

A. I would imagine leaning on it would be similar to a fiberglass quarter. It really depends on how the panel is mounted, made, how thick it is, etc.

2. I haven't seen or played with a fiberglass door and haven't wrapped my brain around designing one. I'd imagine a new latching system would be in order and I wouldn't necessarily slam it shut.

D. As far as I know, no one makes CF parts for our mopars besides SpeedKore unless it's custom.

IMO:

a. same relative thickness, quality, construction, YES, and as it is the intended purpose to be equal or stronger, even if one is built like Tiny Lund
b. need to address this early, nothing yet indicates CF has any proclivities towards being carcinogenic, yet, unless fine grinding powder/dust, which can be said for almost all materials, FG, concrete, PT wood, etc, so not a concern of mine. Biggest shortcoming of CF, is it can fracture internally/unseen and undetectable, big problem for high performance aircraft with CF construction, not a problem us.
c. I believe there will be a slow supply develops, as prices are high enough to get vendor interest, and that will come down as they realize its not that tough of a product to get out the door, and market competition develops. The good fitting aspect is inherent in the CF and epoxy,ie the post cure shrinkage and real world temp sensitivity attributes are inherent in CF vs FG/resin. Mold quality is still vendor based.

Yeah I hope this all plays out. As tempting as it is to lose 150 lbs. the cost is still way too high and I really didn't want to be the first sucker to try these new CF parts out haha! Hopefully competiton will drive the prices down. Might have to wait a while for that though. Still able to have plenty of fun with metal body parts in the meantime!

FWIW, anything I build a mold for, I will sell reasonably after I have finished the project and have backups. Problem is, I would not consider my molds perfect quality, nor robust enough for long production runs, so no commercial resale value. I don't mind touch ups on my finished piece, since making a perfect mold can be costly and time consuming. I also think it could only help the hobby rather, then them collecting dust in the loft. Downside, most of my cars our not mainstream Mopars.

Competition on Carbon Fiber Mopar parts??? Don't hold your breath!

Nobody else caught questions #
A
2
D ???

I thought Rylis did that as a joke!

I did. I just played with it.

There would be more competition if more people actually tracked their Mopars haha!

A
2
D

is a Home Alone reference haha!

Ya forgot the 'PERIOD!'.

Oh, and here it is;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVGbDEAnDyo

I'm pretty sure I didn't get it the first time.

Funny bit.There are lots of people that never see the details. I like details.