Woke up this morning planning to continue assembling front suspension on the Elan. A couple of texts from my son and a phone call from his boss at Geoff Page Racing and I was off to Maldon with one of my rolls of carbon fibre to attempt a repair.
No ordinary repair on a normal car. Oh no, not where Alex works. This repair was to be on the floor pan of a 1986 BMW Arrows F1 car owned by Mike Quaife (a name anyone into performance gearboxes and diffs will know).
A corner of the honeycomb/carbon composite had been bent, cracking the top layer of carbon and breaking the aluminium honeycomb. The top layer of carbon has also separated from the honeycomb. No way of mending the honeycomb so we will have to do the best we can with the carbon. I plan to inject resin into the honeycomb in order to refix it to the carbon. Then lay a couple of sheets of carbon mat on the top surface and clamp the lot together.
Damage is just in front of the left rear wheel.
Just like in all the car reality programmes, this needs to be done by tomorrow as the car is off to Goodwood on Friday, so no pressure!
This car, in qualifying trim, produced 12-1300bhp from a 1.5l, 4 cylinder turbocharged engine!
No ordinary repair on a normal car. Oh no, not where Alex works. This repair was to be on the floor pan of a 1986 BMW Arrows F1 car owned by Mike Quaife (a name anyone into performance gearboxes and diffs will know).
A corner of the honeycomb/carbon composite had been bent, cracking the top layer of carbon and breaking the aluminium honeycomb. The top layer of carbon has also separated from the honeycomb. No way of mending the honeycomb so we will have to do the best we can with the carbon. I plan to inject resin into the honeycomb in order to refix it to the carbon. Then lay a couple of sheets of carbon mat on the top surface and clamp the lot together.
Damage is just in front of the left rear wheel.
Just like in all the car reality programmes, this needs to be done by tomorrow as the car is off to Goodwood on Friday, so no pressure!
This car, in qualifying trim, produced 12-1300bhp from a 1.5l, 4 cylinder turbocharged engine!
