Coil-on-Plug Carbon Fiber Alternator Bracket

[ZD302GT]

I never post much on here but I thought this might be worthy of a post.

I have always been interested in making my car as light as possible to take advantage of all the many benefits. I was always fascinated with the high end supercars using carbon fiber and I watch all Christian Von Koenigsegg videos I can get my hands on. About a year ago I got motivated to start experimenting with the stuff and this summer I slowly put together my own resin infusion setup.

Well, this week I finally finished my first small part, alternator brackets. I used high-temp resin that is good to 300 degrees to allow for use on engine parts. You can see the weight difference in the pictuers. The stock bracket is 7.5oz., the aluminum brackets that I've used for the past few years are 1oz. and the carbon brackets come in at less than half an ounce.

 

[nomoretickets]

Im a huge fan of all things carbon fiber. Let us know how the brackets hold up long term to the underhood temp's. Do you plan to branch out into other mounts/fastenings as well?

 

[ZD302GT]

Well shoot, photobucket cut off the weight of the carbon pieces. I'll have to fix that this evening.

I am not worried about the temperatures since I went with the resin that is good to 300 degrees and the carbon can withstand thousands of degrees. I only worry about the yellowing of the resin. Epoxy yellows as it is exposed to UV. In an effort to combat that I shot them with a couple coats of clear so we will see how it holds up.

I do plan to make other parts. I just wanted to get started out with something flat and simple. Since it was flat I was able to just use a slab of glass as my mold. For any part that is not just a flat sheet molds will have to be built before you can begin laying any carbon.

 

[whyxitx]

Looks good!

 

[ZD302GT]

Thanks! I have also noticed that after long drives the carbon fiber is cool enough to touch all you want whereas the aluminum brackets you couldn't touch at all. I would expect less heat to be transferred to the alternator because of this insulation. The lower mounting point is still bolted to the block so its still conducting heat from down there. But maybe the top portion of the alternator is staying a few degrees cooler, maybe. I'll see if I can find a way to measure the difference.

 

[ZD302GT]

I have made a few more sets of these if anyone would be interested.

 

[whyxitx]

How much?

 

[ZD302GT]

Im thinking $25 shipped. This is the latest set that I made. Getting better at trimming. This one wasn't given an extra layer of resin on top though.

 

[ZD302GT]

Been a long time since I have updated this. This is just going to be me bringing you guys along with what I'm doing. I can't be selling stuff on here. I didn't get a chance to do much over the holidays. The only thing I did was cut out an EGR block off plate to use.

For Christmas I got some fiberglass stuff so I could start making some molds to begin learning to make more complicated parts. I wanted to start out with something simple so I decided to try to make a mold of one of the front fender-to-frame brackets. My first one had voids and air bubles and wasnt strong so I am not working on my second attempt. It is turning out much better.

 

[whyxitx]

Good work!!