How to build your own Carbon Fiber Camper making your own Composite/Foam panels.

[ebrabaek]

Well.... I sure like the second handle better than the first one. The first would fit perrrrrrfect on a 70's hippie bus, groovy and curvy and all...... The new one belongs on a Paaaaaanzer.
Old one.....





New one.....





Holes drilled and countersunk for a quad of M4 Stainless bolts. Now it was on to over drilling on the door and filling with Thixotropic...... You know the drill..





Now curing. Tomorrow I will re drill through the THIX and then bond the handle to the door. This way I am distributing the pull and push loads to the back and the front Composite layer. Life is good.

 

[ebrabaek]

Holes re-drilled in the Thixotropic.





Masked and then sanded..... Make sure you get through the top coat and down to the carbon. This is verified by the carbon reveling itself like in the pictures





Then as there ,ight be a bit of torque on this handle I decided to dive in the Scrap Carbon Pile, and fetch a piece of flat panel and bonded that to the back side to distribute the torque from the M4 lock nuts.





Then the handle was bonded in place with Thixotropic. All surfaces was masked with urethane tape to minimize clean up. I had the car in the sun so temps of the panel went to 170 deg F. Even THIX becomes runny at that temp.





Then a bunch of clean up with rubbing alcohol. A trick here is to unmask as the THIX is like a almost hard booger.....(Dont ask me how I know)..... This way you can work it with rubbing alcohol, and the cleanup is so much easier. I totally dig it.

 

[ebrabaek]

As promised earlier, I might as well introduce these to the world..... Made about 14 years ago for a SUV we had at the time to hold my bike racks. We sold the SUV shortly after making them, and I thought this would be a great purpose for them. Perfect fit too.







They are made from my same go to 5.7 oz 2x2 twill and Max bond 1618. Here is a cross section. They are extremely quiet and I swear they add lift..... Shaped like an airfoil. NGX foam in the middle with a M4 nut for comparison.

 

[ebrabaek]

When I started it just planned on showing how to make the panels, but as the whole build is now in here, I changed the title of the threat to better illustrate that.

 

[pigsammy]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing your techniques, this really helps de-mystify the process.

 

[ebrabaek]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing your techniques, this really helps de-mystify the process.

Thank you.
You are quite welcome. I am happy to help making this an easier and less complicated process.

 

[Teardropper]

I think you've watched a couple-three of Mike Patey's YouTubes.

 

[ebrabaek]

I think you've watched a couple-three of Mike Patey's YouTubes.

As a fellow aviator I indeed have. Not from a composite standpoint, but as a fellow aviator it is always crazy fun to see and admire the engineering mind of this Utah Flyer. Our flying realms are vastly different but seeing and following Draco was so impressive. Cant wait for 2.0. He has the tooling. My methods are a bit more of a Garage gangster.....

 

[Teardropper]

As a fellow aviator I indeed have. Not from a composite standpoint, but as a fellow aviator it is always crazy fun to see and admire the engineering mind of this Utah Flyer. Our flying realms are vastly different but seeing and following Draco was so impressive. Cant wait for 2.0. He has the tooling. My methods are a bit more of a Garage gangster.....

As an old Avid Flyer builder, I've watched his videos open-eyed.

Tony

 

[ebrabaek]

As an old Avid Flyer builder, I've watched his videos open-eyed.

Tony

Yeppers....