Another 20oz set finished…
I’m liking this fabric more and more as I continue to complete sets with it. This is the 4th overall 20oz set I’ve completed (two B5 sets and this is the second B6/B7 set). The thicker fabric has a much tighter weave.
Archive for May 2010
A few pics of some custom pieces for Coran…
Few pics of the first of many pieces for Coran’s B6 A4.
First up are the seatbacks. These are all cleaned up and ready for clearcoat. I’ll be dropping them off at a bodyshop to be clearcoated later this week. They are just too big for me to handle the clearcoating on my own and need to be done by a professional.
Close up of the groove in the seatback.
These last few pics are of the airbag covers located in the seats. They just need to be wetsanded and polished and will be ready to go.
I’ve got a bunch more parts being made for Coran. You can check out the progress of his car in this thread over on Audizine.
C6 A6 carbon fiber trim production…
Another new model we’ve been working on lately, the C6 A6. It is very near completion and will be sent to the customer in a week or so. I went with the standard 11oz 2×2 twill because I wanted to be sure the pieces weren’t too thick for the metal edges (more on that in a bit).
This is a pretty small set, just the 4 door pieces, a dash piece, and a large shifter piece.
The shifter piece can be taken apart. These two pieces are the sides of it.
This set is unique in that it has these metal (actually plastic) edges to each of the door pieces and the dash piece. Some of the newer Audi’s with wood trim (B8 A4 and the Q7 off the top of my head) have similar accents.
You can see here how it lines up.
They just snap into place. As I said earlier, I was worried about the fiber being too thick for the metal edges, but it turned out to be a non issue because of the correct preparation.
Just like the D3 set, this set had one piece (the shifter piece) that still needed a bit more work. It will be clearcoated next week.
d3 a8 carbon fiber trim production – part 3
I decided to go with the 20oz 2×2 twill, after some hesitation because I wasn’t certain if the fabric would be too thick for the complex curves of the D3 A8. The shifter piece and the speedometer piece with their intricacies worried me the most. The thicker fabric is much harder to work with on more complicated parts. However, now that the pieces are trimmed and sanded up and the clearcoat is on, I’m really glad I took the risk. I spent a few hours clearcoating the D3 (along with a few other sets) and as I finished each piece, I was extremely pleased with the results.
The door pieces got the clearcoat treatment first. They are by far the largest door pieces we’ve ever made. I should have taken a comparison shot of a B5 S4 piece next to the D3, it would be dwarfed in comparison. I’ll be sure to do so when I polish the D3 set up.
All the various ashtray and storage covers.
This shifter piece I am particularly proud of. Sam did a great job trimming up the edges.
The big dash piece.
A stupid bug decided to land on the dash piece just as it was starting to cure. He should buff right out.
I love how clean this edge is.
Some of you that own a D3 were probably wondering where the speedometer trim was. It needed a little bit more work so it couldn’t be clearcoated tonight. Hopefully it will be ready for clearcoat sometime next week.
Couple of 11oz and 20oz comparison photos…
It’s been a while since I’ve had some time to make some blog posts (I’ve been sick the last few weeks) but I have a bunch of stuff to post over the next week or two.
Lately, I’ve had some customers ask me about the difference between 20oz and 11oz 2×2 twill. I took a few photos of some B5 pieces side by side for comparison (I’ve also included a 6oz silver, because I don’t use 6oz black fabric anymore).
First and foremost, I’ll explain the differences in the weight. The weight itself is the actual weight of 1 square yard of the fabric. A heavier fabric will have a thicker bundle of fiber and is generally considered more attractive. The thicker the bundle, the tighter the weave (6oz fiber tends to have gaps between the bundles because they are so skinny). In the simplest terms, a 20oz fabric will have almost twice as much individual strands of carbon as an 11oz fabric.
Here are a couple of close up side by side shots of the 11oz and 20oz pieces. You can see how much thicker the bundles are on the 20oz compared to the 11oz.
Couple more close ups of the 20oz.
Compare the thickness of the bundles on the 20oz to the thickness on the 6oz silver. A side note about the silver: it is basically aluminum powder coated fiberglass, and not real carbon fiber. I hate working with it, as the aluminum makes it very stiff and brittle which makes wrapping it around complex curves very difficult.
Last up I have a teaser of a 9oz plain B5 set that I’m working on. It has more of a checkerboard pattern, where as the twill goes in a diagonal direction.
