idea i have for S1000rr carbon fibre parts

Hello Folks,

OK bit of a strange one here but Im wanting to pick your brains on an idea i have been throwing around. I have a carbon fibre company in Scotland doing high end components for various industries using Autoclave prepreg techniques. We are only small but we have all the equipment (autoclaves etc) and a new spraybooth arriving for rep/paint jobs/lacquers etc. Im not trying to sell anything here because for 1 i dont have any bike moulds and 2 its just an idea im throwing around at the moment, but Im a huge bike fanatic and used to race 1000cc bikes at british level but had to stop in 2007 to focus on my work. I would like to stay involved with it in some way and im planning picking a bike or 2 and mould and do full bikes worth of parts and custom parts. The S1000rr was naturally the one i thought of first and i have just purchased one so it could be an easy candidate but Im just wondering what your thoughts are.. if its worth doing it or not, or is there enough parts on the market and not worth bothering about. As I mentioned we do ultra high quality parts ( not like chinese stuff) and most of our work is high end motorsport or archiectural products so this is a new line if we do it.

Please feel free to give both possitive and negative reviews on the idea as its just a thought..

Thanks for the help in advance!

All the best

James

Re: idea i have for S1000rr

There is always a market for good quality carbon stuff, especially if you can do it cheaper than other people.

Re: idea i have for S1000rr

Thanks for the reply. Yes ive always believed if the parts are flawless they should sell. Its not even about the money side ( I know that sounds stupid) but i just need to make sure there is enough demand to warrant the production of carbon tooling/moulds. I dont want to cover every bike on the market and not really interested about doing race fairing because every man and their dog do it and being an ex racer myself.. you would be supplied that even the big teams use grp because of costs. So its just the road stuff ( full kits also) but maybe more specialist stuff like self supporting seat units, fuel tanks and things, things that will also may a tangable performance enhancement rather than just cosmetics. So im looking to do specialist parts aswell as the mainstream bits.

We have a cracking painter in-house and he has also been developing translucent coatings and we can achieve most colours that change the weave colour but still keeps the weave visable and ultra clear.. so "proper" colour co-ordinated carbon can be achieved to suit the bike.

Thanks again for the comment.. much appreciated and im certainly thinking about it now.

cheers

There is a healthy market for Carbon for the S1000rr , in my opinion its partly because the original plastic parts are such poor quality I've replaced Hugger, tank panels & badge panels with ilberger carbon. Many of the other BM's I've seen have had carbon added . So if a British company can provide quality kit at competative prices Jobs a goodin ;D

Hi Parley,

Thanks for your input. Yes we can do top end stuff, we are lucky enough to have a brand new autoclave and a large one arriving in 4 months which will be the 2nd biggest in Scotland next to british Aerospace. But the the advantage of being small firm is we can be price competitive. I have looked at the prices from a few firms ( wont mention who) and from what ive seen we can match the prices of what they are selling unlacquered ones for....lacquered. I will maybe try and list a few pictures of work ive carried out but we have worked within bikes before but it was motoGP stuff.

I will have a look at the best bits to mould but if anyone has ideas of good things to mould for the bike il certainly have a look. Think it might have to be a goer! If i do, i will speak to the forum boys and maybe see if i can do a sponsor thingy and show them on here first.

If you could make an aftermarket pillion seat replacement cowl, that would take the lock, they would sell like hotcakes. No aftermarket ones available yet and OEM ridiculously expensive.

Yeah tings like that would be easy enough and wouldnt cost much either. Just requires the rear lock recess put in place which is nothing. As it is small the material cost would be fairly low on this aswell.

Good luck with this mate, i for one will be watching out for details and photo's

For me it all depends on the tooling
most of the chinks stuff is splashed off originals and they are not spending the dosh on ali tooling or even using the data to make that tooling.
I have friend who can scan and convert STL files into solid CAD models , though I suppose you do that already.
You need to aim for Ilhmberger quality for less money....simple as really.
the colour sounds cool and would differentiate your stuff from the mass of others.
Reckon you would need to sell a lot of cowls to pay back the tooling as that part would be part complexed IMHO ( Which is why no one has done it)
Good luck anyhow , the coloured carbon would interest me definately

Hi Fatbob,

Yes tooling is the key and what alot of people over look.. but your parts are only as good as the moulds you pull them from. This is why im asking the question about the chinese stuff because we use carbon fibre moulds instead of the cheaper polyester grp tooling mainly because the cheap materials suffer badly in the autoclave when you start whacking on the pressure and heat inside the vessel. The down side is good quality production tooling comes at a price much higher than cheap tooling and although i have a rule not to cut corners on materials etc because it will always come round and bite you on the ass, I dont want to kill any protential market before i even started no matter how good the quality. Hence why i was checking wether it was worth looking at before making any moulds incase it was already sewn up so to speak.

As for scanning, its interesting to know. I do have scanner access at the moment because we mainly make moulds from cnc'd patterns ( cut our patterns from a 5 axis machine for accuracy) so if we need to copy something that doesnt have CAD data.. we get it scanned. I have recently built a full carbon fibre car shell using the scanning method. anyway diversing alittle here...

Ilmberger seem to be pretty decent for parts but havent looked at there prices yet, but as we are small im sure we can compete on price etc. I will try and throw up some pictures of the coloured stuff we have done. There are youtube videos of our work that we did for a designer in England but il list a picture of carbon that we sprayed a dark yellow/gold colour that shows the weave clarity. Its not a bike part but gives you an idea of what is possible.

Anyway thanks again for the comments guys, much appreciated and all very interesting!

cheers

james

Hey James - I'm probably adding 2 and 2 and getting 5 but were you the guys who took over the 666 Racing carbon business ?

Cheers

Graham

No I didnt take over 666 road racing. They were cheshire based then went further north than us but have gone bust since. They did bike stuff and i certainly know of them, how come?

Can anyone help me load up some pictures? taken some of a carbon mudgaurd but cana seem to load it up? just thought id show you something from s1000rr mould i made as a test

Think you need to be a "full" member mate ( name in green) if you go to the welcome area and intro yourself in there one of the admins should sort it out for u. Try and pm one if u can as witrh being "trade" it may work differently. PS liking the sound of your gear

Do you have a photobucket account, upload the pics to there, then paste the IMG link to here, jobs a good un.

This is a quick mould and mudguard i made. Straight from mould so hasnt been flattened back or lacquered yet, just trimmed. Not the best picture but there was no damage or weave movement etc

The other picture is an example of the coatings the lad that sprays stuff inhouse has developed. We are plsying sround with loads of colours but we can actually get decent bright colours. This isnt coloured weave.. this was originally black carbon that we have spray coated.



Please let me know what you think and any feedback welcome

Looks nice, would you be able to do the paint effect in white rather than gold?

Hi Godzilla,

We can get this affect in white, but we use a different material that takes the white coating better. Only downside is its more difficult to apply to complex shape so yes we could but depends on what parts.

finished article..

Just out of interest... do you think it would look cool doing a full road kit (potentially) in the white/blue/red/black colour scheme but the colours are done in the lacquers like the gold stick i listed? so the bike looks like the BMW colour scheme but you see all the weave of the carbon underneath?

kyleum295 link=topic=1063.msg10036#msg10036 date=1341744735 said:

finished article..

Just out of interest... do you think it would look cool doing a full road kit (potentially) in the white/blue/red/black colour scheme but the colours are done in the lacquers like the gold stick i listed? so the bike looks like the BMW colour scheme but you see all the weave of the carbon underneath?

Click to expand...

Wow that looks perfect! How about you make a seat cowl?