I'm pretty new here but thought you all might like to see pics of the carbon fiber fwi my friend and I made for my Regal. We might make another for another of our friend's cars sometime in Feb. so if there is interest I might try to get photos to make a "making of" thread. Most of that would probably be about working with the carbon though, since I guess the basic idea/process of a fwi has been covered pretty extensively.
Pic of it in the engine bay with the block off plate. Got the idea for the block off plate from a post on clubgp about making an insulated fwi and thought his block off plate looked good so I made one. Looks like rust on the strut/chassis brace thing, but I'm pretty sure thats just from the flash as you can see it on the conduit as well (not sure why there is even conduit there but it was there when I got the car so I just left it alone).
You can see the filter peeking out from the hole in the washer fluid reservoir in this one. It extends into the fender basically right up against the inside of the fender.
You can see a good shot of the aluminum bung we made to hold the IAT sensor in place. Originally I had just a rubber gromet there to hold it in, but it backed out once slightly and wasn't sealed as well as I liked, so we made this piece on a lathe and then have a 4 o-ring seal.
i am just wondering if you dont mind how did you do the inside is it smooth or is it rough i was going to make one when i had my rx7 but never got around to it cause i could think of a way to make it smooth on the inside and if its rough it would screw up the air flow
or did you just wrap a steel pipe with carbon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GTP2NV
i am just wondering if you dont mind how did you do the inside is it smooth or is it rough i was going to make one when i had my rx7 but never got around to it cause i could think of a way to make it smooth on the inside and if its rough it would screw up the air flow
or did you just wrap a steel pipe with carbon
Many professional engine builders/head porters claim that you get better air flow with a slightly rough finish than a perfectly smooth one. Something about the friction being higher with a smooth finish. Also known as the "golf ball effect".
The exhaust port you still want a mirror finish to fight off carbon build up.
As Boosted3Bar said, the roughed up surface is fine for airflow. The inside of that one is pretty smooth though, since I used a foam mold covered in electrical tape. Either way its not perfectly smooth, and I've heard too that the slightly rough finish is better for flow. Also, if you make one, don't just wrap a steel pipe with carbon b/c then when you cure the carbon fiber with the epoxy I can't think of any way to get the steel out. We used a foam mold that we could chip and dissolve out after the epoxy was cured. If you planed on just using the carbon for looks then that'd work, but you should use something lighter than steel probably. I know a guy who got a mild steel intake and it weighs a ton. I haven't weighed this carbon fiber one so I can't give any numbers, but it feels a lot lighter than the stock plastic airbox assembly.
thats cool i never heard of that one before i always figured the holes in a golf ball were to control how it went through the air LOL....... maybe i should start making them then the way i was gonna do it was gonna be a wax mold for the inside then just melt the wax out basically built a solid one out of wax shape it and everything then lay the carbon on top wrap the pipe with a vacuum bag and suck the resin inside i do all my carbon with infusion makes it alot lighter and waste alot less resin
It looks like snake skin... Good work! How hard was it to mold?
The molding process wasn't really hard but kind of time consuming. I used insulation foam; they sell large sheets at Home Depot, etc. I cut out circles in roughly the diameter I wanted the intake to be (I made it so the finished [after sanding down the circles and stuff] mold would be the same OD as the tb). I trued the ones on the end that would be coupled to the tb and to the filter on a lathe (lathing foam is possible but kind of tricky) to insure that they was perfectly round. I ended up with like ~50 cylinders (I didn't use all of them) about an inch or so long (the thickness of the foam sheet) and like ~3.5'' diameter. I cut some of the cylinders into wedges so that I could introduce bends into the mold by having the wedges small sides together, or alternating with normal straight sided cylinders. I just hot glued them together, so I could easily add to it as I test fitted it in the engine bay. Since the '96 cars had the washer fluid reservoir where I wanted my intake, I had to cut some material out of the mold to it could snake around the intake. I added extra material on the other side to keep roughly the same cross-sectional area though. The '96 cars also have the battery right under the reservoir, but I had relocated mine to a sealed/vented to outside battery box in the trunk since it was a real pain to take the chassis brace and reservoir out each time. This left a pretty good amount of room for the intake to go through there.
Anyways, once the cylinders were pressed together I had basically the shape I wanted, I sanded the foam as smooth as possible. Then I wrapped it in a few layers of electrical tape to make it even smoother, and cover up the small gaps from the many cylinders being glued end to end. After that I covered the mold with woven carbon fiber sleeve, and then added epoxy. Since I didn't have access to the vacuum process GTP2NV speaks of, I just wrapped the epoxied carbon in more electrical tape (sticky side OUT away from the carbon) tightly to get out the excess resin and insure the carbon was following the mold shape properly. After that its basically lots of sanding and re-coating to get it to have a nice finish.
Sorry for the long post and if its hard to follow anywhere just ask and I can elaborate. Like I said in the first post, I may end up doing a "how-to" thread, in which I will explain it more clearly and hopefully have pictures so that the steps can be better visualized.
That is sweet! Nice work
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