Engine air cleaner lid

Talk Composites - The Forum for Advanced Composites

Back

Engine air cleaner lid

Author	Message
67redrocket	67redrocket posted 9 Years Ago HOT Topic Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 49, Visits: 486	Iam making a air cleaner lid like this. Usualy I use the GC50 gelcoat on my parts, should I skip the gel coat on a engine part because of the heat? Can I use regular infusion epoxy or should I use hi temp epoxy?
	Reply Like 2
Hanaldo	Hanaldo posted 9 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 2.5K, Visits: 28K	To be sure, you should always measure the temperatures the part is likely to see. Having made parts like this before, I suspect that it wouldn't get that hot, I normally would expect between 85-90 degrees in and around the engine bay. Even next to a turbocharger the hottest I've seen on a 35 degree day and 4 laps is 97 degrees. The TDS for the GC50 says it has a HDT of 76 degrees, but doesn't mention a Tg. I find HDT a frustrating piece of data, because it realistically means nothing when you are talking about a coating like GC50. Who would care how stiff a coating is at any temperature? /rant. In any case, I do find you can make a fair assumption that if the manufacturer states the HDT rather than the Tg, then it's because that value makes the product sound better and it's the higher value. So the Tg of the GC50 is likely to be a bit lower than 76 degrees, so my advice would be that if your part sees anything more than 75-80 degrees, I would leave it off lest the heat cause it to prematurely discolour. With regards to which resin to use, I suspect that the regular infusion epoxy would be fine. If in doubt, use the high temperature resin to be safe, as long as you have the means to suitably post-cure it.
	Reply Like 2
morepower	morepower posted 9 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 242, Visits: 1.2K	A carbon air cleaner lid should be OK.... I do these... No problem..
	Reply Like 2