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Posted

Not for sale by me, but I've recently bought a pair of these and they are lurvely - they weigh nothing *cool*

 

Maker is a L7CGB Member *thumbup* (I'll let him introduce himself) - He's just set up a new eBay name, hence the zero feedback, but don't be put off.

 

Guy

 


See some pictures of the build here. 13000 miles completed!

 

Edited by - 7Heavensoon on 5 Nov 2007 22:31:13

Posted

Yes I'll second that - I have a pair of his front wings and they are simply exceptional.

 

I have heard a rumour that he will be doing some rear wings soon as well....and maybe a nosecone.

 

My first thought is that where Rif has gone for the very high gloss surface finish and strength this chap has gone for absolute extreme lightweight for motorsport....and BEJESUS these are LIGHT!

 

I think there are excellent markets for BOTH sets of product. *thumbup*

Posted
BEJESUS these are LIGHT!
Julian - even my wife was impressed, and she hates 'sh*tty kitty', as she affectionately refers to my pride and joy.

 

-----See some pictures of the build here. 13000 miles completed!

Posted

Will the anonymous maker be selling at a fixed price to L7 members rather than the lottery that is e-Bay?

 

They do look good though *thumbup* Do they fit the standard wing stays?

 

Phil

 

Summer Lightning Haze *tongue*

Posted

"My first thought is that where Rif has gone for the very high gloss surface finish and strength this chap has gone for absolute extreme lightweight for motorsport....and BEJESUS these are LIGHT!"

Just wanted to correct this, (sorry Julian):

For wings we have gone for lightness and less gloss, our front wings look like the original CC version but better still in quality. Weight is 250gms!!!! Rear wings next month and nose cones in January. We have all of K9 / Dog in the Park moulds.

 

RiF Driving one of the first Duratec 7, and building CA07BON for Henrietta 😬 😬 😬.for pictures of 7 and carbon andCA07BON

 

Edited by - RiF on 6 Nov 2007 15:48:17

Posted

hi all. thanks guy and julian for approval and the post here. i saw this post this morning but only now had time to reply in depth. a few of you may be aware, i have already made 3 or 4 sets of the large and small wings under my own e-bay account. now we are going a more commercial we have started an e-bay business account. we have an internet website address registered, but at the moment we don't need to spend the unneccessary time and expense making a website/shop when we have all on doing the manual work *wink*.

 

we can't do a buy it now on e-bay yet as we don't have any feedbacks. once we can do it, most items will be a buy it now, with auctions now and again for special offers

 

we do have a special price for club members. as we don't want to fall foul of website rules it is probably best not to discuss prices on here maybe? i don't know. if there is any interest then probably blatmail me or send an e-bay message.

 

we will be offering standard size nosecones and rear wings soon, hopefully by xmas but they are still at our patternmakers at the moment. we will also be making rear wings with what we think is a really cool intesting option that we don't think has been done before, but don't want to say too much yet.

 

we do intend to make most bits for the 7 (if there is a market and we can get tooling money back then we'll make it). but as we are making moulds AND components for a few different cars at the moment progress is a little slow.

 

our main priority is to make and sell quality, lightweight 100% pre-preg CF components (using the exact same pre-preg as F1 and aerospace), that looks great for sensible prices as we aren't making a killing on these bits.

 

thanks for reading *thumbup*

Posted

Just for one clarification guys is that any wing can be made light, by this i mean how much material is used in it's construction, not just carbon fibre fibre but resin and fiulling material.

Pre-preg carbon fibre is no heavier or lighter than a wet lay of vacuum forming non autoclave version.

Now i am not going down the route of saying this is better than that scenario as it has been covered more than enough on this forum. *nono* *nono*

 

What i can say is i have seen Richards wings and can honestly say that their quality and finish was what i achieved with the K9 products. The wing construction he uses is extremely light and is very strong as owners who have used his products will testify, i have not heard of any of his aeroscreens breaking due to weighing to light?

 

Any competition that supplies the bespoke Caterham market with the same product is going to be good for the buyer, but Richard has invested heavily in time and money with his commitment of his products and deserves respect in this, and trying to compare eachothers products is not a fair comparrision in my view. *thumbup*

 

 

Posted

peter you are indeed correct 'any wing can be made light'. imagine a 1 ply 200gsm wing. now that WOULD be light!! *wink*.

 

other things to also consider that there are different types of carbon fibres which have a bearing on the strength for a given weight. we are confident we have chosen a good fibre. a 'toray t800' as seen in this table under 'functional and composite properties'.

 

here

 

you can see compared to the cheapest t300 fibre 50% stronger. hence our light weight whilst retaining the strength.

 

for requirements of a high stiffness as opposed to high strength we plan to use an m46j fibre. it's strength is less than the t800 (2160 GPa compared to 2840) (but still more than the t300) but consderably stiffer. anyway most people can read and understand a table such as this so won't babble further.

 

 

we have said in our e-bay shop fibre type selected depending on application. we are going to keep it simple and have these 2 types of fibre impregnated with the same off the peg high strength resin at the optimum resin/fibre weight of 42%

 

we haven't actually done much R&D but rely on our experience.

 

when we first started the ball rolling with this project. it was around the time, peter you had stopped making bits and we saw what was then a gap in the market as (if i am incorrect RiF please correct me) we understood that RiF couldn't do these things using his technique (no i don't know what it is). we didn't want to try to compete with people and potentially steal any business but had started to pay to have patterns etc made and vac pumps, ovens, consumables etc and had to continue it through.

 

it isn't neccessarilly good news for ourselves or RiF that we are going to be doing similar components to each other, but the winner of course is the consumer.

 

Edited by - bryn7 on 7 Nov 2007 19:17:26

Posted

Hi Bryn,

We originally could not make compound curves with the new system we developed for many of the parts we were making, but 2 years ago we broke through this problem. We had agreed with Arnie Webb that we would not make certain items, so held back on our development.

Then there started to be a shortage of wings and nose cones so we spent considerable time furthering our development and at the beginning of this year started making front wings be it on a very low scale by our new process. Then negotiations with Peter started and we decided that instead of spending time on trying to mould complicated mouldings like a nose cone by our system, that with all the moulds we were purchasing, it would be easier to revert to vacuum bagging our own pre-preg manufactured material.

As you may of read it took 30 mouldings to crack the right combinations of formulation but we are now able to make front wings, rear are pretty close so then onto the nose. We have also had to re-tool as many of the moulds would not mould to the desired quality and as with yourself we will not sell poor quality mouldings, hence the delay in marketing.

During all of our 4 years of making 7 parts (33 years of composite moulding, I am an industrial chemist) we have been involved in cleanroom plastic cladding but this year we have dropped it for many reasons and now are concentrate on the carbon composite market, 90% is for the seven at the present time.

We are still moulding certain compound curved mouldings via our novel process and have orders for mirror casings that are working well by this technic.

Perhaps we should have a chat sometime *thumbup*

 

 

 

RiF Driving one of the first Duratec 7, and building CA07BON for Henrietta 😬 😬 😬.for pictures of 7 and carbon andCA07BON

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