Think balsa scrim will be durable enough for side skirts on a street/race car or should I use a solid piece of balsa core?
Also is it ok to laminate carbon fiber directly onto balsa or should i use fiberglass cloth between the two?
I’ve pretty much decided aluminum honeycomb is too pricey and more difficult ( and messy ) to cut than other core materials.
im not sure what these side skirts look like or there shape but why not just solid carbon? or if they are fairly flat use a foam core, nomex honeycomb core, or a coremat like lantor soric. all 3 of those cores are fairly cheap, light weight and easy to work with either by wet layup or infusion(except the honeycomb). IMO.
How about this… Baltek mat?
http://www.fiberglasssupply.com/Product_Catalog/Core_Materials/core_materials.html
yes, baltek and lantor are the same company. they have many different core-mats available, most of which are designed for infusion or wet layup. They are good for bulking laminate up and for odd compounded shapes that foam and honeycombs may have difficulty with. However they tend to be on the heavier side. the core-mat retains alot of resin. I would think a solid carbon side skirt would be sufficient in strength and weight. what type of race car? It would help seeing photos too if you can.
not quite the same… but if you look at the nose of the car…
I picked up the Divini Cell foam core today. It weighs less, even saturated in resin than balsa does dry. I’m not sure which type of divini cell it is but it is green and held together with some fiberglass cloth stuff and scored evenly about every centimeter. It is 3/16 inch thickness. Anyone know which Divini product that is?
Thanks guys… i’m not knocking your suggestion of solid carbon fiber… just costs more $ than these people will/can pay for. If it was my own car rest assured it would be solid carbon fiber.
That race car ^^^ looks awesome. While i was at the supplier today a business neighbor of theirs had a hydroplane jet boat mold sitting in the parking lot… next time i’m going to visit the guy and see what his boats look like out of the mold and assembled 
Im not sure what your side skirts look like but you may have difficulties getting the core to shape well in the mold, and get good surface quality. if your part has a lot of curve to it the scores open up wide and can create print. Are you infusing? I personally would have probably gone with the lantor core with carbon on both sides vs. the foam core. It may be slightly heavier but The lantor will shape much better, easier to use, cheaper, strong enough for side skirts and will probably have better surface quality. Regardless look forward to seeing the finish product!
Thanks Hojo,
yeah i’m getting excited to make these skirts… mold construction should be within the next 2-3 weeks.
I’ll try the core i purchased on the first pair. It’s actually the bottom of the skirt that is using the core because that area is flat and 1/4 thick laminate with 2 layers of carbon fiber on each side of the core 12oz and 6oz 1 layer each… the top will be molded carbon fiber with probably 3 layers of 9oz and 2 layers of 6oz cf.
Could this be the core you’re talking about? http://www.compositescanada.com/product.php?idProduct=294
Yeah… that car is amazing… Dyson / Mazda USA was nice enough to bring it to an event that we were holding over the past weekend (since they were coming to town anyways for the Le Mans race at Mosport this weekend). It’s truely amazing… I was glued to the thing for a couple of hours just checking out it’s construction and how they did the aerodynamics of it n all. I was gobsmacked by how light everything was. Hell… they even let me sit in the thing. In any case, was the star of the show… and we were able to raise acouple of thousand for Sick Kids… so was a good day
We also had an open wheel car from the Star Mazda series car’s from AIM… that was another amazing car.
Very cool you were able to raise money for kids:)
Yep that is the exact core material i have here for the side skirts. Interesting the data on that site says it can be infused.
Very cool.
Cool… let me know how it works out. I’m looking at making a set of sideskirts for my car (hopefully before it gets too cold).
Absolutely