Hey guys what do you think about a carbon fiber headliner? It'll never rip and it would look pretty sweet if you ask me. Same with the carpet. What do you guys think? It would never stain and is virtually invincible. I've had an idea for it but I need some input. Would you buy it? Thanks guys

brillant, you got some good ideas.

step by step video of how to carbon fiber...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...6764731290932#


heres some material links:

http://www.fibreglast.com/showproduc...FQNEPAodHgNIMw
http://www.acp-composites.com/
http://www.shopmaninc.com/carbonpage.html
http://www.shopmaninc.com/resins.html

I could imagine its the same price to either buy the stock headliner or carbon fiber a new one. 35 bucks a yard square, some resin, and bam new headliner, the left over pieces from a t-top installation could be used else-where. This would look nice in a hardtop.

$$$$

that video was very informative

Thanks for that video. That helps a lot. I'm glad someone else thinks its a good idea. I'd like to start making it and maybe selling it so this really gives me confidence. I'll post when I have one completed.
Thanks again

I'm hoping those are good dollar signs haha. I think it would look good don't you?

Hell yes I do. I actually have a few CF accents in the car, but unfortunately my wallet doesn't agree with the price of manufactured CF products. Nontheless I would definitely love to see the CF headliner... Not sure about the carpet though, it'll be like having nothing there...

I hear that. The prices are crazy. I think the headliner is a really good idea because if the stock one needs replaced it's still going to run you a pretty hefty price so why not spend on something new and cool looking and it'll last forever. I'm not real sure on the carpet either.. it would be definitely different.

My headliner right now is made out of black duck tape... And its held up good for about 4 years!

i think there should be a R&D board. Black duck tape isnt ghetto or anything, it works. IF it doesnt, youre not using enough lol. I personally would pickup a head liner made out of carbon fiber. The stock piece reminds me of women who wear too much makeup hah. its the truth

Nice! haha

Ok cool. I'm hopefully going to start within a couple months and I'll post pics. Thanks for the input!

T-top headliner?!!?? I'd be VERY INTERESTED!! $ would be the #1 factor, & fit would be #2.
I know CF isn't cheap but__ INTERESTED__YES!

If I had one I'd let you use it for design & development!!

Subscribed

Cool man. I've got a T-top too so that's what I'm going to be making first.

i mean i know its not real CF but youd deff get the look but the other day i was in pep boys and i saw they sold roles of frabric for headliner repair. and ofcourse right ther was a CF style one. looked pretty cool and it only cost like 23 bucks a roll

IMO seems a little to much like rice for me, but thats just my

I think it would be pretty sick. And ya the prices for a new healiner are pretty hefty. Its like 180 for a covered t top one. So i would be willing to pay a little extra for a kick @ss one.

Oh really? hmm is it solid or is it still cloth with a CF weave?

Sweet! I hope to start on it within a couple months

awesome do have any photos?

A CF headliner is a good idea, dunno if the benifts out weigh a fibreglass one, but thats another issue... bottom line is its a cool idea

it is defiantly possible, create a mould from a fibreglass headliner would be my suggestion
air drying carbon is available so some processes do not require a autoclave... cant recall the cost off the top of my head, but it is curing as you lay it up so it may be alittle less forgiving
(its hard to generalise with carbon as there are alot of variables and types)


but yer a coupe of plys all over at different orientations that will be stiff as hell and stronger than you'll ever need

btw if ur interested in the "look" make sure the mould is flawless
thats where the $ comes in the prep and labour of the everything

I watched this done with a Civic on a show on (I believe) the DIY channel.

The show was pretty lame overall, I saw proabably 3 episodes and none of them contained any real tech.

As for my take on this... real CF is expensive and if you are looking for weight savings in a headliner then mebe a headliner delete is the better route, if you are doing it for a look then theres no point in investing in a structural piece, a couple coats of resin on your old backing board and some sanding to smooth it out and some relatively convincing faux carbon fabric are really good enough.

what show is that on the DIY network?

idk, it was like 2 years ago and I dont even get the channel anymore.

Actualy, I searched and found it. It's called Tricked out.

Heres a link to info about the specific episode,,, http://www.diynetwork.com/tricked-ou...ior/index.html

Sadly no pics but ... http://www.honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=1597104

thanks dude

Oh I like that idea, I never thought of getting a mould of a fiberglass headliner. Where would you get one of those?

I would rather have the stiffness of the CF instead of just covering a cloth one. It's not so much for weight reduction as much as it's for the look. I would only air cure it so it wouldn't be structural at all. I just want it for its durability because it would never rip or tear or go bad.

I do not currently have any but when I do do it I will definitely post some.

A true Caron Fiber Headliner would cost more then your car would be worth. Another example of faux wood type interior.

i was wondering, what kind of Carbon Fiber. i thought this project would be about 150 bucks tops

In your dreams, so it will be the fake CF look for you and the headliner.

whats real carbon fiber, cause what i seen around, its not fake. got an example?

F'glass t-top head liner...?... I haven't seen one. Been on Ecklers, Harwood, USbodysource. I'll look more in-depth when I get home.
Yes still interested in this project, outcome, and price..

Figure $150-$400 for 2 yards of carbon fabric, pre preg represents the top half of that average but simplifies things considerably and eliminated most of the extra items you would need to buy.

2 yards will leave you with plenty to do accent pieces as well.

http://www.uscomposites.com/carbonpage.html


This is where we get our fabric and resin. Its not as bad as you think.

It wouldnt do any good to do a CF headliner, for weight savings, so its going to be a cosmetic thing. I would suggest buying a fiberglass headliner (hawks sells one that would be perfect, comes with the sail panels) and remove the fabric. Then lay two or three layers over the outside. It would look real nice, if its done right.

Where the expenses start adding up is if you want a repeatable process. Molds are expensive, and the CF has to be laid by hand, where fiberglass can be sprayed. A nice hood for example would run several thousand dollars. But a cosmetic piece isnt that bad.

Id guess $2-300 more than the cost of the headliner.

There will always be naysayers who missed the whole point of your idea and simply point out the negatives they can find... Whether they pertain to your concerns or not. Don't worry about those guys.

Sounds like a good idea. I'd probably paint it to hide the CF look myself, but I like the structural idea. How about fiberglass? It should do what you want and be a little easier to work with as far as shaping and such, no? Although... I put the ABS headliner in mine and I can't imagine installing that thing without being able to bend it a little bit! lol. The ABS one is garbage btw... I bought mine from Hawks, a year after the install the black color was faded off the top edges all around it (and the only sun exposure was through the tinted t-tops) and there's a huge gap along the sides of the t-bar part of the roof. The fit everywhere else is questionable too. It was tough to get my visors back on without mutilating the top.

The worst 150 bucks I ever spent.

So needless to say... Good luck!!!

Thanks. Yeah fiberglass is also an option. I want to do this for that very reason, the cloth just fades and rips. It sucks. This will be quite the project I know but I also know it's worth it. Thanks for your input!

Why do people keep thinking about "structural benifits" with this idea? Even if it was made of pure unobtainium what structural benifits could it possibly have? Its not even solidly connected to the car so it's not as iff it will ever cary any loads.

Exactly, I want it to be there for #1 the look and #2 it won't rip or fade so I don't have to buy a new on in 3 years. And I don't want it held up by duct tape or thumbtacks like some ******* cob job. I'm buying some mold next month I think.

I know the knight rider vendors make fibreglass headliners there not super cheap cos there bas*ards to get a mould off an orginal because as u know they fall apart if you even look at them to hard lol

from a common sense side of thing theres no reason why u'd go CF over GF
yes CF is stronger, stiffer etc... but unless u are hanging stuff from ur headline CF is overkill, if it were me and i had to make one from CF
I would make a mould from a GF headliner, get some air dying CF 2-4 plys all over, job done!

The products I listed above and the movie demo is a fine example of real carbon fiber. Is there another carbon fiber worth more than gold out there? Is it not real carbon fiber?. The dude who's going to start building these headliners is genius. Materials $150, sell them to people who expect to pay high prices, say 3K. thats about the median price of a 3rd gen car. But the dude could also choose the option of profiting with honesty- charging less and perhaps as a gain when established will be signing contracts with Amazon, Hawks, etc. putting ads on thirdgen.org supporting the message board while at the same time taking the steps of bring the Third Gen cars into the 21st century. a jig would help forms and a vacuum pump, etc.

ive just remembered something quite important

CF is not the sort of material you want any where near you in a crash, thousands of sharp stards of carbon as well as the serated edges where the material would have smashed/fractured. fibreglass is a far more safer option as its not as brittle and tears instead of shattering
you can make the CF safer by using a kevlar ply or making it completely from kelar but the to contain the carbon the kevlar has realisticly be the first ply and has a different look than the sterotypical 2x2 twill CF that most people think of

thought this is worth a mention

No no you have CF confused with fiberglass. They make racing helmets out of CF, if it wasn't safe they wouldn't make them. Have you ever seen one of those orange reflector markers broken on the side of the road? those are fiberglass and they splinter into tons of tiny little shards.

THANK YOU! I've found pretty cheap CF online and $150 to $200 is pretty much what it's going to take to make it. Sure the mould is a bit expensive but it will virtually never go bad so I can use it over and over again. Sounds like profit to me.

trust me you don't want to be near fiberglass if there is risk of being cut. I used to know a guy that got in a jet ski accident and got a grip of fiberglass splinters in his leg. The doctors couldn't get all the splinters out without basically turning his leg into hamburger and he now has to take some kind of pill (forgot what it is) for the rest of his life because the fiberglass poisoning is destroying his immune system.

exactly so the fiberglass is a bad idea.

Fiber glass is the big boy way of doing away with hemp. Some of the first Ford Cars were made out of hemp. You can take a sledge hammer BFH and try to dent/break a door panel. IMPOSSIBLE> its DuPont's fault for doing away with hemp and funding the law, (1937) bunch of bastards, although they make great synthetics, they KILL people.

I can assure you I certainly have NOT got CF confused with GF

I dont know what you think CF is but it still must follow the laws of physics. certain types of Carbon fibre have huge tensile strength but are brittle as f*ck they will break if a load (force) greater than there properties can withstand. CF is NOT indestrucable

my suggestion was to be safe, if u make it out of Carbon fibre the carbon must be contained in the case of a crash (ie using a kelvar ply) to prevent stards fly around everywhere, this is fact
Race cars use kelvar plys for this reason usally bodywork which is at high risk of contact/breaking.

Helmets are massively strong helped by there shape(spherical), Helmets are constructed from several separate layers not just Carbon Fibre, offering a combination of strength and flexibility vital to absorb the force of large impacts. The outer shell has two layers, typically fibre-reinforced resin over carbon fibre. Under that comes a layer formed of vastly strong plastic, the same material used in many bullet-proof vests. Then there is a softer, deformable layer made from a plastic based on polystyrene, covered with the flame-proof material. The head has many layers between it and the CF to catch any stards in a helmet but a headliner where you want naked carbon fibre for the "look" they wouldnt be anything apart from the air between your head and the headliner

I think im from a different part of the world to you so I dont exactly know what those orange reflectors are but yes fibreglass isnt pleasant and carbon fibre can be just as bad, its just carbon fibre has must more desirable properties...
Im not trying to steer you away from doing this far from it, just sharing some knowledge.

that aside...
how thick are you planing on making the headliner?

Yeah I'm from Idaho. They have them for snow plows..
Not hella thick but not so thin that it snaps just looking at it.
I agree with you from a safety stand point, you are right. That would be very unpleasant in a crash.

I was checking out the construction of Indy cars on the science channel (how do they do it). Theres no metal roll bars to protect the driver, instead they use carbon fiber from the body. Implementing the structural integrity of the carbon to form a mono-structure, almost rock solid construction at a fraction of the weight of steel . These cars go 200mph+ and crash all the time. i found that interesting thought id post it. The driver can experience upwards of 10 G's greater than a highway collision pileup.

cool the kelvar is very good for safety point.
for reference typically 5 plys of a 200g cloth of CF will be about 1mm

Yep great material no doubt about that
G-forces can peek to silly numbers 40, 60 or even over 100 in a crash but its last for a fractions of a seconds, fighter pilots struggle going much beyond 10G for any length of time purely because its substained G force

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WItGK4ZwlVc

I believe he driver only suffered a twisted ankle
a credit to carbon design and contruction technques and all other safety devices now found on race cars such as the hans device etc...

now