Carbon fibre mudguards

[millsn]

anyone had the problem of polishing the mudguards and they go all white? How do you abvoid this -do you laquer them first? If so, how reliable is the laquer finish?

 

Nigel Mills - 2.0 Zetec carbs

[Tony Martyr]

There may be several types of construction. The ones I have are made by containing the Carbon Fibre weave within a resin coating. It is the hardened resin that forms the top surface therefore further coating would seem to be unnecessary. It sounds as if your surface coating has reacted with something you have applied?

I did notice that if you hold the wings up to bright sunlight they appear to have some pin holes in the weave and they are not easy to drill with a large diameter drill (for the indicator light grommet) as the fibres get picked up by the drill bit - but no turning white

[Brad Tipp]

I had mine lacquered and they have no issues. If they are not lacquered then they can tun brown in sunlight.

 

Brad

 

T 1 PPB - Superlight

 

"Well yes officer I'm not arguing, it's just that [insert excuse here]..."

[philwaters]

What are you up to Nigel??

 

 

 

Phil Waters

You mean you can drive these?

I thought it was just there to polish 😬

[Grim Reaper]

Use MER Bumper and Trim polish/cleaner.

It is a green gel which I have found works very well on Carbon fibre,it has no silicones in it so leaves a shiny surface with no white bits.

[Chelspeed]

If these are genuine Caterham wings then there appear to have been a number of subbies making them for Caterham over the years. Quality appears to vary considerably.

 

My guess is that at one stage 3 or 4 years ago someone made Caterham a batch of wings using resin that is sensitive to UV in sunlight and goes matt and brown in sunlight, no doubt because it was cheaper and they were being beaten up by Caterham on price.....

 

Newer wings from Caterham, and all wings made by a dog in Surrey, don't suffer from this problem. Or it could be that mine havn't faded because they only come out of the darkened garage once in blue moon (and everyone knows there's no UV from a blue moon..)

 

Shouldn't think there's much you can do about it except buy new wings or get the old ones painted, if you laquer over them after they've faded then won't they just show brwon through the laquer?

[The Dog In The Park]

Er it all goes brown to an extent, but Graham is right, this is a material selection issue.

 

Grim reaper took the bone from my mouth - the MER stuff is by far the best solution if you do not want to lacquer them.

 

Lacquer will restore the finish, BUT it chips like paint which if I am not chasing my tail is half the reason you bought carbon in the first place.

 

Made

Outside

Germany

[ROC]

My wings were very very dull having spent a year in Sri Lanka. I was going to paint them as they were so badly gone. However, I posted the same sort of question and the answer was...

 

T cut them, then polish with black boot polish (I found the little round tinned stuff much better than the instant shine stuff) then Mer (the Mer I used came in a pale blue bottle from Halfords and was an peach colour). My nose cone came up better than new. I had a stick on reg plate in Sri Lanka and so this bit had not faded and stuck out like a sore thumb. The combination of the three techniques left me with no visible signs of the reg plate.

 

Best of luck

 

Cheers Rupe

Click here p21 to see pics of my 7 on a Sri Lankan beach