horizenjob wrote:
The SouthWest Speed pedals look nice, are you happy with them?
I don't see much use for carbon once you are using honeycomb for a sandwich. You can get stiffness so rapidly with thickness of the sandwich.
Do you think you'll get a weight saving over aluminum skin? Are you going to do something like test panels and dropping a weight on them? I think it's difficult to figure out something like damage resistance. I've seen aluminum boats take a pretty good dent in the bottom when dropped on a rock and still be water tight. Fiberglass won't dent but it might be able to spring back from a pretty good impact.
Kevlar can be pretty attractive in a layup. It won't heat up like carbon if the sun gets to it also.
So far I like the pedals, although I've yet to push any fluid with them yet. Price was right and it was easy to get all of the fittings from one website to plumb everthing.
Agree with the carbon vs. core assessment. I keep reminding myself this is a LOW-cost. Composites are't the low cost option but I already have most of the knowledge, tools, and consumables required.........plus I enjoy doing it. I'm planning on only using carbon for the visual pieces (dash, firewall, fenders), which are pretty much the only pieces that won't have core in them.
Assuming you use .032 or greater aluminum....then you bet there will be a weight saving. The only panel that has to do any "work", other than skinning the chassis, is the portion of the floor under the occupants which will mainly be kevlar, glass and core.
Right now I have Style 220 Glass, Style 7781 Glass, Style 220 Kevlar, a one off Hexcel experimental 7.3oz/yd Glass/Kevlar hybrid, 3K twill Carbon, 6K twill Carbon. The core is .300" 3/16-3.0 Nomex. Still playing with epoxys but it looks like it will be Aeropoxy 2032 for laminating, and ES6279 for bonding core to face sheets. Vacuum bag wet layup with be fabrication method.