Motorsports Composites

General Composites Discussions Composites Talk
#1

Wow, it’s been a long time since I logged on to this forum. I’m glad it’s still going and I’m amazed at some of the stuff you guys are doing.
The reason for this post is about Motorsports composites & repair. As some of you are aware that auto racing has paralleled the aircraft industry in construction. Not only the body work but the main structure of what would be called the chassis or frame. In road racing we refer to the xxxxpit of the car where the suspension and engine/transmission bolt up to as “the tub” and is made up of carbon fiber, metal/nomex honeycomb. With secondary structures made up in similar and various combinations.
There are very few individual independent shops that cater to small teams and club racers in the private sector including the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and vintage racing clubs across the country.
Go ahead and do an internet search of composite repair for say for instance a 1997 LOLA INDY Champ Car.
What I’ve been doing from a small shop in my two car garage for the last 10 or so years has been building replacement parts, modifying , and repairing damaged bodywork including restorations . I started out small with only club racers for client/customers and has taken me to being flown to France in June of this year to the 24 Hours of LeMans race. There I was part of the race team keeping the carbon parts glued back together. All week long I was fed parts while they ran practice, qualifying and made simple repairs to their inventory of spares.
My background with composites started in 1974 when I went to work for a company at Van Nuys airport in California. Through the years I’ve worked on just about all I could except for modern military aircraft. After spending 25 years in the airlines as a composite technician at LAX I gained a lot of training and knowledge fixing broken aircraft, from 747’s MD-11’s and Airbus aircraft. When the small side jobs for the club racers (mostly fiberglass) grew into more fun than profit I decided to do the stupidest thing in the world and go full time and work from my garage. Well looking back I could be better off financially but I would never have changed my choice. I’ve traveled all over the country, US & Canada with race teams.
So here’s the rub,
July 4th. I had a small shunt with my motorcycle and broke my left Femur in three places. I’m able to do some small stuff from my wheelchair but what has happened is I’ve left a good group of customers without any support and I have no one to recommend them to. I know of a few people that do work on race car bodywork but from what I’ve seen of their work I would not trust them to my customers.
It’s a dirty job grinding carbon and Kevlar to prep the repairs. Most of it is hand layup and vacuum bagging some cosmetic filling and priming. a good percent of the parts get painted. If pricing is kept affordable it’s better to fix that to by new replacement parts. It does take a lot of out of the box thinking and some creative tooling but it can be a rewarding challenge once your done. And then tune into Speed Channel and watch the cars you fix wiz by at the Long Beach Grand Prix and other venues.
I may be looking for some help in the future, but in the mean time I welcome anyone to get a piece of this game.

tom irwin (old composite hack)

here is one for show
Before

During

After

#2

I’ve done a lot of scarf repairs on jets at Adam Aircraft before they went under. Yes it is dirty and you need a lot of patience. If you know anyone that needs something in the Denver area I may be able to help. Some repairs took weeks of grinding. Do you charge your customers hourly? Nice work on the yellow part.

#3

I usualy bill hourly plus materials. Because you can’t always tell what your getting into on some of the repairs. Some items I do flat rate because I’ve been there before. In So. CA. I really do not have any competition, but I’m very fair on pricing.

#4

this is simular to some of the work that I do here in the UK. Most of my work is based around historic racing vehicles tho, mainly 70’ and early 80’s Formula One cars. There are a lot of places in the UK that are involved in motorsports composites, but few are willing to do very much wet-lay work, many/most are only interested in pre-preg for whatever reason.

#5

Very good Tom, I envy you really.

#6

“carbonman 82” you pm’d me, you have no contact info
and do not receive PM’s

#7

Hi Tom, welcome to the boards!
I’ve seen your poster at Rev Chem and was wondering who you were! Glad to have you here.

#8

Just to notify you Tom and basically everyone else, PM’s have been disabled for users less than a certain amount of posts. A few users notified me spam through PM’s so I implemented a fix. I am completely intolerant to spam and it annoyed me that spammers were trying to be sneaky like that.

#9

Canyon,
I PM’d you
thanks
tom

#10

TET,
I live just about 3 miles from the store.
I’ve been doing bussiness with Jose’ for years.
I buy from a few other sources, but Rev-Chem is my “Go-To” for a lot of stuff.

#11

I pmed you back. I really enjoy the pictures you posted. Your repairs look great. It takes skill to manufacture composites but it takes even more to repair them.

Thanks for sharing!

#12

Fast turnaround of repair is 80% of my work
The engine cover in the other pic’s was dropped off on a Sat. and picked up on Tues.
Here is a pic of a metal bond on a 747 engine cowling I did back in 1982 (insert old comment here) The bottom photo shows where a pneumatic duct blew and burnt the inner skin. I fixed it by forming the skin on an english wheel and using a Heatcon 9000 series hot bomd console.

I’ve always liked to grind and fix stuff

#13

I made this for my Dual Sport bike
2 plies Kevlar 1 ply C/F




#14

Sweet work on that yellow clam shell. I am guessing you had the broken pieces to work with to see how it was shaped?

About how much do you guys charge by the hour if you don’t mind me asking?

Sorry about your mc accident. I was down for a couple weeks in January… laid my bike down in traffic, cracked my upper arm bone parallel to the bone about 5 inches up to the shoulder socket. Luckily that and a sore leg is all i suffered. With three breaks in your leg… did they use pins or anything surgical to hold it together? Just to give you some idea of how long it can take a bone to heal… 10 to 12 months for what i did and i still have some dull pain that is very easy to deal with, full motion after a couple months.

and while on the subject of motorcycles… anyone who rides… treat it like an airplane… do prechecks and make sure the bike is 100% before riding. I have had a clutch cable snap on me in 3rd gear, a bald tire slide out from under the bike and bad breaks lock up a wheel… it’s nothing like a car, just can’t let maintenance go at all. I even had an engine mount bolt with frame slider fall off at 120mph. Not saying this is what got Tom.