Carbon fiber lifetime?
 

How long a CF hood is going to last just with the gloss finish or how to take care

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Depends on if the clearcoat has any UV protection. 1-3 years before it starts yellowing if not, depending on overall quality.

Buy junk, get junk.

Getting Seibon TS stile

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I heard the stock hood is almost as light as the carbon fiber anyways..or are you doing it for looks?

I believe it's lighter. The STI hood is Aluminum and CF hoods are the same weight +/- 2 lbs. The BRZ hood is appreciably lighter than the STI hood.

And to add further evidence, Robispec's track rat uses a louvered stock hood because it was lighter than the CF hoods they looked into.

So basically unless your doing it for looks or you find one with vents for engine cooling purposes your wasting your money OP

Plus there is always the issue of it fitting properly. It's not worth it, and for a carbon fiber hood that will last and fit like it should, it will be pretty expensive. I'd know, I have a fairly uncommon but genuine carbon fiber trunk on my Evo IX, and brand new, they aren't cheap.

It all depends on who and how the CF hood makes it. Some will be heavier and some will be lighter. You can't just lump all CF hoods in one.

If you want OEM quality/fitment and lightweight then it will cost a lot.

Regardless, the weight savings likely isn't going to be anything significant over a stock aluminum hood and not exactly worth the money or the hassle.

That should be obvious. Replacing any of the stock exterior panels with the main purpose to save weight is an expensive route.

actually, our hood is lighter than the oem style hood

If you wanna shave weight go this route
Rear seats bases - 6.2 lbs
Rear seat back - 15 lbs
Spare tire w liner foam - 25.8 lbs
Front floor mat - 2.4 lbs
Rear floor mat - 0.8 lbs
Trunk tool, jack, tow hook - 5.8 lbs
Trunk rug/liner mat - 2.4 lbs

Total shaved 58.4 lbs for free :)

if you really want to lose weight

use 3 lugs on everywheel
take out emblems
take out floor mats
take out radio and speakers and buy a boom box or you a portable cd player with head phones
lose weight
take out abs
start eating subway

you might lose 2lbs-30 lbs

Unless you're drag racing, im not sure how beneficial it would be when that lost weight is going to lighten up the load on the rear axle and make the weight distribution favor the front end a little more. Not by a lot, but it's still something to consider.

& putting heavier cf hood is?

You wawnt front? K, here you go.
Battery - 29.6 lbs (PC680 battery weight less than 15 lbs).

I didn't say anything about a hood helping. If anything, I said it's not worth the money.

Carbon fiber wrap

Cheaper
Easier
Lighter
Reversible

But it's not a legit original so you will get hate online. O wait you will get hate online unless you buy a 2k custom dry carbon piece. O wait you will get hate for that because you spent 2k for a minimal weight savings on a "25k car".

Do what you want for whatever reason you want. There is always going to be people who don't agree with your decision and others who love it. What matters is if you love the look, function, or both.

Losing weight is going to help more than the change in balance hurts. Every time.

i have the Seibon hood and love it. I wax it pretty much 3-4 times a week just to keep it fresh but will be taking it back to get re-cleared in about 8-9 months. It comes cleared already but i would like def a thicker coat and most clear coats now in days have UV Protection in them blended already.....

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.n...00473715_n.jpg

It depends on what you're doing. But yes, there are advantages... slightly quicker acceleration, slightly better fuel economy, etc. But all of the advantages (and disadvantages) will be relatively small overall. So your experience likely won't be changed drastically with these kinds of changes. But if you lose weight in the right area (like when some people lighten up the load up front with a smaller battery), then that will help in multiple ways.

Do you know how much it costs to re-clear carbon fiber? I was thinking about doing that to my Evo's carbon fiber trunk at some point.

Definitely. And I'm not a good enough driver to see any benefit from anything other than massive weight savings. IMO, if you truly want to save weight you remove things rather than replacing other things with CF.

I finally did the one thing I always joked that people should really do if they want a lighter car.. added the light weight driver. Go to the gym, people.

Yup. Unless you're going to the track, most carbon fiber "upgrades" are for looks anyway and as you said won't really benefit the driver in a noticeable way. Back in 2000, I put a carbon fiber hood on my Honda. Zero changes, but I at least did that since my stock hood was damaged and needed to be replaced. I got a carbon fiber trunk on my Evo last year, but again, it's because there was some damage to the stock part, so I figured why not.

I agree. I can't believe how overweight some people are who drive quick cars but talk about how they want their car to be as light as possible, and they're stripping interior parts out and going with carbon fiber hood, doors, trunk, etc.

Shouldn't cost much more if at all more than getting an equivalent steel panel painted. The prep work should be nearly identical. If your hood has big vents/details that are more complicated to prep that's another story.

I wish car panel manufacturers would do just a *little* research into the resin systems they use on their hoods. You can get epoxies that are very UV resistant (Most cycloaliphatics are a good place to start), and with a UV clear they will almost never yellow. Instead they go with cheap epoxy and try to protect it with a clear coat. If the top layer of epoxy fails under the clear the clear is just going to flake off even if it's still perfectly fine itself.

On the commonplace end of things, epoxy based surfboards are a good example of a product that spends a ton of time in the sun and has to be designed to do it without a clearcoat in many cases. On the high end, the bare carbon finished Pagani's, Koenigseggs, and even the roofs on some M3's etc. are all bare carbon. Do you think that they want to have customers bringing them back after a year with yellowed and flaking body panels? I think not. There are proper materials that eliminate the issue. Most companies just don't want to dish out the $$$ needed for them.

Cheers
Nathan

^ But the clearcoats they use on bare OEM carbon fiber, especially on higher end cars like those, are FAR better. The clearcoat on my Evo's stock carbon fiber wing held up pretty well for being a thin coat. But the clearcoats on the more expensive stuff is pretty solid. I remember reading something about the clearcoat used on the Corvette ZR1's carbon fiber roof costing $60,000 PER GALLON (and I just looked it up), so that is probably made to last. Having seen a ZR1 on Monday and touched the roof, it did feel like quality work made to last. And that also explains why going with a Veyron but just keeping a clearcoat rather than selecting a color adds a couple hundred grand.

Just as a note, the UV blocking additive is $60k per gallon, but likely is mixed in at a very small percentage. The clear itself is closer to $2k per gallon. :)

http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2...ercar-sunblock

Cheers
Nathan

Of course, I know they're not using the entire gallon on each roof and that it gets mixed with other liquids. But I'm pretty sure that that good stuff isn't used on most other aftermarket carbon fiber products for this demographic of cars.

I'd be curious to know what the additive is. My guess would be some sort of nano-scale ceramic filler that either completely absorbs or completely reflects UV so that it never gets to the epoxy. Something like what they put in the 3M Crystalline tint films.

Nathan

This is what I order

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i have to second the fitment issue of cf components. as awesome as my seibon carbon rear delete was, there were some modifications with files in order to make the holes wider since they were ...off..pretty off..haha but you can't tell because the bottom portion covers that part up well. in terms of hoods, i'm pretty damn sure our hood is just as light and i also second the vented deal. ok i'm done haha.

The better the quality of the clear coat the less likely to yellow. Most nowadays cars have a good UV stable clearcoat and paint.
Any resin whether epoxy PE or VE will yellow at some point in time if it is exposed to the elements. Now, there are few good ones with very good UV additives added, so that coupled with a really good clearcoat should protect the CF very well.
The clearcoat used by top car manufacturers is really, really up there! None of the things you and I have mentioned, is used by the CF aftermarket manufacturers mainly because of the costs. The market is quite competitive so they need to keep the costs down to compete with lower quality products in the market, therefore they need to cut certain corners. There are some good quality stuff out there but it costs quite a lot and sometimes not even worth the effort.

Does anyone know if dry carbon also eventually turns yellow as well?

Dry carbon has resin in it just like "wet carbon", the only difference is which stage of the process that resin is added to the cloth and how well controlled the fiber:resin ratio is. Depending on how the wet layup is done, the "dry" part could have additional vacuum/autoclave curing steps but these days it's hugely common to use vacuum bagging even on wet layup parts.

So short answer, yes. If they use a resin system that can fail due to UV and a cheap clear, it will yellow.

Cheers
Nathan

Hey sorry for the late response but the paint shop I went too quoted me about 200$. I'll probably pay a little more than that due to me saying to them to add another coat but most of the cost is prep work and what not.

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looks nice. i have the same hood. any flaws with the weave or finish? mine had a few waves

Seibon Carbon Fiber Hood
 

Random question that I cant seem to find. Is that center piece functional or just for looks? I can see from other pics the side ones are obviously.