Hi guys Im new to carbon fiber and was looking at making some car engine covers and parts. I was wondering what was the best resin to use and the one Im currently using is only rated upto 60 degrees celcius. Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers
You’re in Aus, so you might be a bit out of luck. I haven’t come across any very high temperature resins here yet, nothing affordable anyway.
That said, I use Renlam K3600 (top Tg of 93 degrees) on engine bay parts in race cars, and they haven’t had any issues. To be honest, no covers are going to get much hotter than 100-110, and your resin isn’t going to melt into nothing. You might notice some print happening, but even then it isn’t much.
thank you Hanaldo, yeah the highest temp resin ive been able to find goes to 90. but was wanting to eventually do the rockers and thinkgs like that down the track
I’ve done rockers for a 1000hp GTO Monaro with the Renlam K3600 and they are still fine. Admittedly I did use an aluminium base, which probably prevents any distortion.
It’s something you need to think about regardless with rocker covers, they have a sealing face which needs to be perfectly flat and not move at all. Composites aren’t totally suited to that, hence why I built those ones with an aly flange. Not to hard if you’ve got a local laser cutting facility, the flanges only cost about $130 to get done.
Vessvute, noticed you’re in QLD - where do you source all of your resins?
cpalada I have been ordering it through play with carbon which is in nsw, but have only just found a locally distribution center around the corner in wacol. (i have forgotten their name). dont really know anywhere else to purchase it from.
Talk to Anthony from ATL composites (kinetics resin) , the boys from CG Composites , also Simon from lavender composites all great guys to deal with. I’m sure they will fill your needs.
Tim
Vinylester will generally handle higher temps than regular epoxies.
Thanks for the advice. Much appreciated