taking smashed carbonz..to not so smashed

ok so this isnt really a project bike for riding, i merely wanted to have a go with some carbon repairs to learn hands on with the eventual and a long way off vision of building my own frame.

Que one broken frame, cracked top tube/down tube/seat tube and both chain stays..perfect!

This is the very definition of a bad idea

you never saw the slovenian guy's thread on the weight weenies forum, right? :)

you are most probably right

Impressive level of destruction there. What happened?

You mean the chap who now has a business selling high end carbon bitz?

https://youtu.be/haPvuhznuyI

taken out by a drink driver - poorly judged pass

the video is quite appropriate as it happened in the middle of a hundred mile charity ride, he actually finished by taping the bike up

Hmmm I'm going to get me some of that

Also 'tape racist' - did chuckle

Wow that wheels comprehensively potato crisped as well. He was lucky.

Great ad that.

excuse the general clusterf*** of a picture but heres where im at with the bottom tube given a coat of polyester resin. Sure if you looked close there are small imperfections caused by the difficulty of sanding back ribs from tape wrapping carbon but the trapezoid shape is fairly well replicated merging in to the BB area. I actually have a Vacuum pump and various equipment i will use over time but ive started with basic techniques.

So what's the process here? Thin down the existing tubes near the break to just a few plies and then put a wet layup on top using carbon mat and plenty of overlap?

If you're new to this I'm happy to offer some input as I'm a carbon specialist.

used bladders internally patching the holes to provide some internal pressure too with the inner patch, loads of overlap and tapered the wall thickness then used widening layers to wrap on the outside. interested to hear how you would QC a repair, test strength etc any way to tell? it feels more rigid to the touch than some of the existing areas of the frame that werent damaged.

why are all the frame logos blurred out?

Because the term 'advanced' does not apply here. JK, looks like a cool project, it's always nice to see a cp thread that's out of the ordinary!

Plenty of wheel building experts on here who could fix that buckle

the frame is a rebranded Trigon RQC-28. The owner isnt aware i have it, i wouldnt want it to affect their insurance claim seeing as its a total loss. As for the brand its irrelevant and brands dont really like their product shown in a damaged way however it happened.

Interesting. Do you work for someone involved in the insurance process?

Dibs pedals if you decide to split

QCing a repair like that is going to be a can of worms. You could count the plies and look at the orientation by grinding it back, but you don't know what fibre was used or what resin. You also now don't have fibre continuity along the length, so the failure mode is going to be different - probably now more in a delamination mode at the ends of the repair than tensile/compression. So you need to bear in mind it's not going to be the same as original.

You've got a few things on your side though. Firstly is bike frames are way over-engineered so even if it's slightly weaker than original, it's probably still strong enough. Fibres used are usually pretty crap so it probably doesn't matter what your mat was. From what I've seen of some frames when they're taken back to the composite, they're pretty thrown together and fibre continuity probably isn't too much of an issue, they're full of voids, dry fibres and resin rich areas!

As for the brand its irrelevant and brands dont really like their product shown in a damaged way however it happened.

This is true, to the point where shops get asked to bin busted frames they may have on display, even if they died in a famous and or spectacular fashion, such as that Santa Cruz V10 from this weekend's WC round.

You're using polyester resin? Why?!

yup :)

Brano Meres?
http://www.bmedesign.eu/

Although he's Slovakian. Not Slovenian.