I'm looking for some tips & tricks regarding carbon repair. I've jumped into a seriously garaged Specialized Roubaix that was left for dead. It had a large and serious DT fracture around the entire tube along with some cracking down the seam of the final carbon layer until the BB junction. It was also damaged on the drive side CS.
Basically we went in and removed the carbon that was damaged and rounded off the sharp point in attempt to kill the stress risers. Not sure if this is common practice or not but it seems appropriate from what I've read & seen online. The DT was vacuum bagged with 5 layers around the entire DT from above to below the removed material with some overlap. I assume that it was overkill but for the first frame I'm tooling around with it was better to be safe than have it explode later. This came out decently and cured well, the CS will be filled and re-wrapped either either the vacuum bag of the electrical tape method (still trying to see what kind of pressure that really puts on the fibers).
The big problem I ran into was a lack of a good structure to build off of. I know there are people who use structural foam for repairs but other than "great stuff" I haven't found any kind of expanding foam that I can profile properly.
Can anyone give me some pointers on the process or some things that have worked well in the past?
I'll get some more photos up in the morning.
Thanks
Bookmarks