How can you tell if it's real or fake carbon fiber. There are so many products being sold as carbon fiber nowdays, you just know there is a lot of fake or not!

help would be much appreciated

 

The weave. The way its wraps around corners if they are any on the product. Carbon fibers are woven on top of one another, so there is always depth and texture. You can kinda see a reflection of the different strands when you look at different angles. But even 3M has mimicked that well with the vinyl.

And you're right it is almost impossible to tell. Some of the fake stuff looks really good.

What are you looking at that you feel is suspect?

 

The price of carbon fiber has come down so much in the last few years because they have introduced so many levels of quality in carbon fiber now. None of the carbon that you see selling for these street cars is real. Now, I don't necessarily mean that you are getting fake carbon, what I do mean is that you are not getting the same carbon made by the same process that, for example, a Formula 1 car uses (I don't even think that F1 cars use much carbon fiber nowadays anyway).

When you buy the carbon that goes on your street car you are purchasing something that is basically fiberglass, at least it weighs the same as fiberglass. Carbon Fiber is popular with race teams because it is very lightweight and extremely strong. The carbon that the street cars are getting is not that light. The difference between fiberglass and carbon fiber is that fiberglass has resin in it which adds all the weight and carbon fiber can stay together without resin. All of the carbon that I see for the street cars has all the resin in it. The process to remove the resin from carbon is expensive and there are very few companies that go through that. All the low cost stuff you see on here does not remove the resin. In order to remove the resin they wrap the newly put together carbon piece in a vacuum bag and they suck the resin out and they also put it in an autoclave that adds a lot of pressure to help push the resin out too. You don't have to use the autoclave but all the really lightweight stuff is done that way. You can tell which products have been vacuum bagged by looking at the final product.

The molds are different for each process and the time to do the complete process is lengthy. This is a very remedial version of how carbon fiber is done but the bottom line is there is no carbon that I have seen for sale on this site that is done that way.

I hope that this answers your question a little bit.

 

1. Price, the real cf pieces are $$$.
2. The company that makes them. Stuff from asia is usually laminated cf (which means only one layer of cf fabric is layed over the firberglass, plastic part and then it coated with resin)
3. The actual part. Stuff like interior trim will always be laminated, not worth the time and money to mold them and produce it is actual cf.

 

wow! very informative =]

 

Yup. Real carbon fiber is thin too, has a metal feel in your hands. Once you feel real cf you will know right away.

Most of the cr-p out there is just the fabric on top of fiberglass with clear resin.

 

Yes and no.

There are several types of carbon fiber and these types of carbon fiber can also have different methods to produce them. The weave can be different as well as dry and wet carbon.

Also, AFAIK, ALL carbon fiber uses carbon fiber fabric with a binding resin. The autoclave process does not remove this resin. There is a difference between wet carbon and dry carbon where dry carbon the resin in pre-impregnated.

Also, modern F1 cars use carbon fiber in a very, very large ammount of components.

 

thanks for all your guys help. +1 for imformative. thanks

 

Nothing in particularly. I was just very curious.

how would you compare JBSPEEDS diffuser and Eurotecks Diffuser??

btw did you install the diffuser yet??

 

My **** is still sitting in my room -_- the stuff from JBspeed fits very well, but you can definitely tell that it's fiberglass with the laminated CF on it. When its on the car you can't tell though. all you see are the CF lines

 

I like it purely for the fact it doesn't hide the exhaust tips.

From what I read all of Euroteck's Products are Fiberglass but they have real carbon fiber overlay instead of print like JBSPEED or eBay stuff. Someone can correct me if I'm mistaken.

Euroteck Rear Diff.

Euroteck Front Lip

 

that looks super super good t goss

 

(I don't even think that F1 cars use much carbon fiber nowadays anyway).

you're kidding here, right?
the whole f__king chassis is carbon fiber. beside the engine block, i'm not sure what on an F1 car isn't carbon fiber. just for the sake of amusement, what material were you imagining that F1 teams have switched to?

 

Carbon fiber is a word used a lot in Formula One and many components are still made from it such as the control arms and lots of other steering components but carbon fiber is kind of old technology, it has been around for a long time. Carbon carbon which has a high graphite content is used a lot nowadays. It is a lot more rigid then carbon fiber and it is lighter too. It started with the brake rotors but they have developed it so far now that they use it as a structural component in cars now. The material is extremely stiff but, at the same time is more brittle than carbon fiber. They have actually brought aluminum alloys back into Formula One and coupled it to the carbon carbon structures for safety. I think the 2010 Renault is a carbon graphite and aluminum tub now.

Last year one team managed to get the weight of the car down to 920 lbs. when the minimum weight requirement was a little over 1300lbs. They had over 400lbs. of weight to put where they wanted. These teams are spending an enormous amount of money getting the weight down in these cars, imagine having a car with running gear that weighs less than 1000lbs?

To accomplish this it takes a little more than the use of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is light, but it's nowhere close to light enough for these guys. So, I am not trying to start an argument here and it is true that carbon fiber is still used, but it's not like it was ten years ago where everything was carbon fiber.

All this technology comes from the military and they have been using it for a long time. Carbon graphite is so heat resistant and stiff that it was used for the nose cones on nuclear missiles.

A lot of these materials are kept under wraps for a while but with all the personnel changes in the last couple of years a lot of this technology has been spread around the teams and a lot of it has leaked out to the public too now. You can only keep this stuff secret for so long.

Eventually we will see this technology because it is ultimately quicker and cheaper to make than carbon fiber so it's only a matter of time before it shows up in our street cars in everyone's quest for more fuel efficiency.

And just so you know I didn't think that F1 started using chrome moly chassis's or anything like that.

 

I don't know where you're getting your information, but I'd like to see it. AFAIK, all F1 teams use dry carbon fiber, using the autoclave process for almost all structural components, monocoque chassis, body and wing elements, driver tub (reinforced with an aluminum honeycomb and kevlar to protect from carbon fiber shards in the event of a crash), and a whole list of other components on an F1 car. Pretty sure they even use it for the gearbox housings now too. Carbon/carbon is in fact used for the brakes, I will give you that, but I don't believe it's realistic to use it on the other parts of the car because of it's brittle nature. While carbon fiber is certainly not new to F1, processes to develop and use it are constantly evolving.

It is not unusual for an F1 car to be significantly underweight. All F1 teams strive to make the lightest possible car, and then add ballast so they can have as much control of the center of gravity/center of mass as possible. Obviously, this is to control the driving dynamics of the car, and the more flexibility you have in weight distribution, the better.

 

Actually they use Pre-Preg carbon cloth