Carbon fiber confusion?

[egoman]

Was talking to a friend of mine and he asked me what I was going to do about manufacturing the carbon fiber bits that were on a GT40??????
I told him as far as I knew that there were no such pieces on the originals and that I would not need to fab them out of cf anyways.
I guess that the real question that I am trying to ask is ...was the tech for Cf layup even in existence when the GT40s were in production and if it was which pieces would have been made out of it?

[Big-Foot]

Per;

Carbon fiber - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History of Carbon Fiber

In 1958, Dr. Roger Bacon created the first high performance carbon fibers at the Parma Technical Center outside of Cleveland, OH.[3]The first fibers were manufactured by heating strands of rayon until they carbonized. This process proved to be inefficient, as the resulting fibers contained only about 20% carbon and had low strength and stiffness properties. In the early 1960s, a process was developed using polyacrylonitrile as a raw material. This produced a carbon fiber that contained about 55% carbon and had much better properties. The polyacrylonitrile conversion process quickly became the primary method for producing carbon fibers.[4]
On the 14th January 1969, Carr Reinforcements wove the first ever Carbon fibre fabric in the world.[5]
During the 1970s, experimental work to find alternative raw materials led to the introduction of carbon fibers made from a petroleum pitch derived from oil processing. These fibers contained about 85% carbon and had excellent flexural strength.[6]

I rather doubt that there was any Carbon Fiber on these cars in their original form...

[Brian]

I have a ClassicCars magazine on my bench from October of 2000 which says the three LeMans spec Gulf cars were the first to use carbon fiber in the manufacture of the bodies. They used it in strand form between the layers of glass fiber to reinforce the body panels which allowed them to be thinner. "Not true carbon fiber like in use today" per the article but interesting none the less. Bill Hough can probably shed some light on the early use of carbon fiber.



Brian

[Russ Noble]

There are some photos and description of the CF work on P1076 on the Racing Icons site here :-

Ford GT40 Restoration - Chassis 1076

[Big-Foot]

Wiki's full of it then?

CF that is...

[Chris_K]

Originally Posted by Big-Foot

Wiki's full of it then?

CF that is...

If I interpret the photos correctly, it looks like it's more of a "macro" matrix (my term, not scientifically-based) bonded to the interior of the clip than the typical CF weave we know today.

From the site (photo credit to Bob Meyer):




From the text:

"Carbon fiber "tow" gridwork is used to reinforce fiberglass bodywork. This is possibly the first use of this technology in a race car. The carbon fiber was used in the original construction of the fenders of 1076 for 12" tires. When the fender flares were added in 1969 for 14" wide wheels carbon fiber was not used."

[egoman]

Thanks for the responses guys I kind of thought that the process was in its infancy at best at this time. From what I seen in your responses the techniques that were used were quite crude compared to todays methods.

[FRPGUY]

I might add; That type of "grid work" using CF in 1076 prints through to the outside surface of the lay-up as time goes on. I had an early Chevron B16 Coupe body with the same "grid "pattern in the inside surface and in the right sun light conditions, you could see it "printing" through to the outside surface. CF in the form of a "tow"was easier to get back then. Woven cloths were hard to find and very expensive in the early days of CF. The idea, was the "tows" would act like steel rods to make the body stiffer and less regular fiber glass lay-up was needed. A CF "tow" is a bundle of fiber threads wound into a yarn. The yarn is a little easier to handle. CF has become a refined product these days with many types of cloth weaves, strengths, unidirectional products and prices. It's tough to get these days with the aircraft manufacturers buying it all up leaving little for us small guys! It's an expensive task for existing producers to invest into new production plants.