Aftermarket Carbon Fibre Repair
Aftermarket Carbon Fibre Repair
Giving Your Premium Carbon Fibre A New Lease Of Life
Carbon fibre is not just exclusive to high end car manufacturers, even we ourselves have been in the industry of producing carbon components for coming up 2 decades. With the amount of carbon fibre being installed on cars from aftermarket manufactures and supplier it’s common place that damage will occur from day to day driving. With aftermarket carbon fibre it’s often the case these parts are made to a lower pricing point than most car manufacturers but this isn’t always the case. Although it is a long and can be quite an expensive process, there is definitely worth in looking to see if bringing back damaged carbon to it’s former glory has merit.
Whilst every carbon fibre piece is unique and every bit of damage is different this will massively influence the time involved for the repair as well as the costs.
As we are repairing more high performance carbon fibre than we ever have done, we wanted to really drill down into some of the repairs of these parts to show case the before and after of them as well as explaining what’s involved in the repairs. Below are just a couple of examples of Aftermarket Carbon Fibre Repairs that we have completed recently and a brief explanation about what happened and what was involved with the repair.
We can within reason repair any carbon fibre part from Aftermarket companies from exterior parts such as Front Splitters, Rear Diffusers, Side Skirts & Rear Spoilers to interior parts such as Centre Consoles & Dashboard Trims.
Urban Automotive
Mercedes G63 Carbon Fibre Rear Wheel Cover
Wheel Cover
Original Part Cost: £2000
Repair Time: 10 Days
- This Urban Automotive Carbon Fibre wheel cover came off a Mercedes G63 (G-Wagon). Although it’s handy to have a spare wheel on your car in case you get a puncture, when mounted on the back of the car it can be easily misjudged in parking situations. This customers carbon wheel cover suffered a prang and needed some TLC.
- To bring this wheel cover back to a cosmetically and structurally sound state, this required the lacquer & resin to initially be stripped back to allow the damaged fibres to be addressed. We reinforced the internal sections of the cover to give back strength, resin infused the whole cover to level before lacquer.
- With this cover there was quite a few different sharp edges and angles which required vacuum technology to keep the sharp lines. Although tolerances were not overly tight, it’s important to keep the reinforcements and streamlined as possible to ensure good fitment back onto the spare tyre.
- Once the part had come back from lacquer, we undertook our usual flat and polish before waxing the part in protecting it from the elements.
AC Schnitzer
BMW M3 E92 Carbon Fibre Rear Diffuser
Rear Diffuser
Original Part Cost: No Longer Manufactured
Repair Time: 10 Days
- The reason for damage is unknown with this part as with this part being extremely rare and no longer produced, it was purchased by an avid AC Schnitzer collector who managed to get hold of one.
- Despite being an old part and the resin just starting to suffer from UV damage, we were very much able to bring this part back to a very high standard.
- The diffuser was sanded down to the bare fibres in order to remove the aged resin that had started to fail and turn yellow. We then focussed on making the part complete again and reinforcing/rebuilding part of the exhaust shroud which had cracked and mostly come away from the rest of the diffuser.
- Reinforcement layers were laid behind the part to gain strength and structure back to the diffuser. We then resin infused the whole part again to give a base protection layer and to smooth the diffuser to give a uniform finish. The part was then cured and sent to lacquer.
- Back from lacquer and further refined this was ready to get installed onto a collectors E92 M3. This one is ready to be viewed in a car museum for generations to come.
Sparco ProDrive
Subaru World Rally Championship (WRC) Carbon Fibre Seats
Driver & Passenger Racing Seats
Original Part Cost: Priceless
Repair Time: 30 Days
- One of the things we love the most here at Carbonwurks is we get the opportunity to work on some of the rarest carbon fibre parts the world has ever seen. These carbon bucket seats were produced for Prodrive by Sparco for one of their Subaru WRC cars. Rumour has it, Colin McRae himself once sat in these very seats!
- These seats being around 20 years old had seen some use and abuse, we could almost smell the race fuel embedded into them. For the most part these seats were in pretty good shape given their use and age but needed quite a lot of work to get them ready to be reupholstered.
- The first part (which was one of the longest) was stripping the old stuck on foam off the seat. With these being a raw carbon finish, they were very much stuck into the weave, the process was painstaking and required lots of glue remover.
- Next on the list was to rebuild and repair the seat eyelets which had been previously damaged on one seat and the other seat the old resin had aged and started to fail. We rebuilt these with reinforcements to give more strength.
- The backs of the seats had suffered heavy scuffs and scratches along with some cracks and large dents/holes. These were stripped back to the bare carbon and rebuilt with fresh resin. In total these seat had nearly 12 applications of resin to give the most uniform finish possible before heading to lacquer.
- During the lacquering phase, these seat needed around 4 layers to seal, flat and finish in matte. The downside of matte or satin finishes is it does not allow for any rectifying post spraying, you can’t simply flat and polish any minor mistakes, the finish you spray out the gun is the finish on the panel.
- Once lacquered, we sealed in the matte clearcoat with a specific sealant to give some added resilience.
- One of the longer fiddly repair jobs but on a priceless part like this, it’s worth taking the time.
so here's what's
Needed From You!
If after reading all the above you want to proceed with getting us to repair your damaged Ferrari carbon fibre part then we’ll need a few things:
Pictures of the damaged part
We’ll need high quality close up and far away pictures of the item in question so we can see the damage and the overall part. Please ensure you take as many pictures as possible from different angles. If the damage goes through the part then we’ll need to see the rear also
Send over the pictures
Once you have all your pictures you can email them to us at [email protected]. If there is a lot or the files are too big then your best solution is to put them all into a folder, zip / archive them and send them to our WeTransfer Account – WeTransfer.com
Vehicle Info
When you send the photos it would be great to include as much information about the vehicle as possible such as what vehicle it is along with Year / Reg or VIN Number. We’ll also need to know how the damage initially occurred.
Once we have all of the above our team of fabricators will look over all the information provided and then come back to you with costings and timescales involved.
Please try to be as accurate as possible with the pictures and the information provided as if we don’t get all the facts prior to the part arriving it may be that extra time and materials may be required which will increase the costs.
For some of the more serious damaged parts it may be that we can’t offer any quote or timings until we have physically seen the item. There is also the possibility that the cost of repair is not financially feasible but we will certainly try to cater as best as we can.
The next step is to get in touch with us using our contact form below:
Frequently Asked
Questions
Often when carbon has damage, the fibres themselves can be fractured and torn. We can bind the part back together along with making it structurally sound but normally if the carbon has suffered cracks, splits or is missing carbon, there will be what we call a “Witness” mark. The best way to think of it is tearing a hole in your jumper, you can stitch it back together, but you may still see a small line where the fabric has been bound back together. Most of the time the witness mark is very small and unnoticeable, other times it can be slightly more obvious depending how bad the damage was. Regardless of this, the end result is as good as can be achieved and saves considerable amounts over replacing the component.
Generally, most repairs do look very good and, in some cases, do look brand new. To re-skin the entire part can be very complicated and very expensive. We try not to go down this route as it’s not always cost effective to do so. We work around the carbon that is there to give the best possible outcome. It’s rare that we would need to consider re-skinning the entire part.
The short answer is yes. We can fabricate small sections and if you still have the snapped off or damaged carbon, we can often make use of this. Depending on the part and the desired end result, sometimes this isn’t cost effective or viable but all the same, this is a type of repair we carry out often.
Very much so. We offer a range of different tinted finishes so if your carbon has a tint to it, we can normally refinish in the same colour.
This will vary massively on the part in need of being repaired. Often aftermarket parts are cheaply made which likely would be cheaper to replace than repair. For higher end, more expensive or rare carbon fibre parts, more often than not it absolutely does make sense to repair as the cost to replace is extremely high or the part is no longer production. We try to cater a repair to the budget of the customer, but we won’t offer a cheap solution if it means compromising the end result.
Sometimes yes depending on where the damage is and the possibility to reinforce. If the part is enclosed, it makes it very difficult to repair behind the damage point and reinforce to suitable level. More often than not however, if we can gain access behind the part, we can make the part as strong or even stronger than before. Carbon manufacturers will only use a handful of layers of carbon, we can add many more layers if required which will increase strength massively.
You can either drop the part off yourself or choose a courier to transport the part to us. We use Parcelforce large for most UK items as they will accept parts up to 2.5 meters in length. If being shipped to us, we do recommend using bubble wrap to protect the part itself along with a cardboard box to ensure the part doesn’t suffer any more damage during transit. If you need help with this element, please do get in touch to discuss as we may be able to help.
Sadly not. The repair process even if it is a simpler and more minor amount of damage, it will still require days of sanding, resin infusing and lacquering. In some cases, we can remove the part from your car here at our workshop (for an additional charge) and you may be able to drive away for a number of weeks until ready to refit.
Although we are capable of removing and disassembly, we prefer not to store any other parts and request the carbon is delivered or dropped off to us in bare form. By this we mean any other elements removed that could get in the way (fog lights, brake lights, trims, cables, fixings etc).
We get asked this quite a lot and the answer is mostly yes. We use specialist high temp resin and cure the part to have the ability to cope with high temperature demands. Often re-finishing/lacquering can be more complicated, but we do have methods to manage this depending on the application.
