I have heard Ford is Looking into Carbon Fiber as a way to Get Better Performance and Fuel Economy Using Carbon Fiber Body Components. Anybody else Heard anything on this. Ford's New Ceo is fresh out of the aircraft industry where high Tech and Lightweight components are the norm!

KC

 

If they could do carbon fiber without increasing cost I would be in love..

 

That would be a refreshing change, addressing performance from the mass side of the equation, with such an approach accruing increases not only in acceleration, but also handling, braking and economy. The Mustang really ought to be aiming for around 3200 to 3400 pounds max for their high performance versions, not the 3800-3900 pound behemoth the GT500 has bloated out to become.

 

Carbon fibre sounds great, but it will be expensive, I don't believe we've seen any major mass-production application yet.

Another route is to use different types of plastics instead of steel in certain areas to save weight, I know for a fact that many composite applications are being investigated in the industry.

I agree that a there is a lot of performance and fuel economy being held down by weight, but that problem carries over to ALL cars in north america. Because of increased crash protection regulations and goodies, the weights have been going up and up. Every car is a pig compared to the equivalent car from 10-15 years ago. Most cars are a lot stiffer torsionally than before, but they are still much too heavy.

 

+1 on composite materials. There is a ton of money to be made for the one who figures out how to do this with reduced labour, but as one who has been at or near the leading edge since the early nineties, it ain't here yet. I suggest that some form of dissimilar metal on metal sandwiched composite is more ready for primetime. The cost of the alterantive metals such as Aluminium and titanium has skyrocketed in the last two years though. Materials engineering has largely been left to other basic research facilities for a while now. Steel is still the best bang for the buck, but the old saw about if you want the car builders to protect you against every forseeable occurance and a few unforseen, be prepared for a tank; still holds truth.

As disturbing is the rise of about 500 lbs of driver "comfort" stuff like dozen+ speaker and 12 inch screen driver entertainment systems(?!), heated/cooled/massage seats, rear view mirrors that do everything but let you see behind you, etc, etc, etc. Perhaps in the interest of safety, Congress should mandate driving being a national priority, instead of finding ways to make it a non task. Bet that would save a lot more lives than automatic criuse collision control, and auto-dummy braking.

Not to mention a few gazillion gallons of gas.

 

As much as I would love to see this happen, I wonder how much it would cost to REPAIR vehicles after collisions.

I suspect any weight reduction will come only if they do some re-engineering of the platform to stiffen it while downsizing some of the component thicknesses. My guess would be that won't be done, given the costs associated with it, unless they can amortize across more vehicles (e.g., Interceptor).

It would be cool though!

 

The Z06 has carbon fiber front fenders and front wheelhouses. AFAIK, it's the first use of carbon fiber on a production line vehicle. In the past carbon fiber has been limited to hand built cars such a lamborghini, mclaren, and etc.

 

Repair and insurance costs skyrocket with composite materials. This would be nice for a special edition stang, but not the GT.

 

yeah, from what i've heard, its not very often that you can just replace aluminum or steel with carbon fiber in the same design and expect it to all work out... You've really gotta design from the ground up with composites in mind. Maybe body panels aren't all that structurally important, so maybe its a bit simpler than that in this case.

But that's a good point about Mullaly... Boeing's really taking a step ahead of the pack with the 787 Dreamliner which is made up mostly of composites.

Light weight is definitely the way to go for increased performance, cause as has been said, it improves just about all aspects of performance, rather than just straight line acceleration like increasing the power gives you. Still, they've really gotta watch the price on a car like the mustang. Maybe for the top of the line SVT mustang they could use some composites though. I think the GT500 coulda been cooler if it had only 450hp but like 300lbs lighter thanks to a carbon fiber body, if they could pull that off for the same price. I really wonder how much weight they could save just in terms of body panels...

 

Has Brad got a toy to show you....

http://forums.bradbarnett.net/showpo...88&postcount=3

Fighting weight 2900 lbs although the older specs put variously 3100/3300 lbs wet.

 

That is impressively light. But I wish they would give us an indication of just how much of that is due to those carbon fiber pieces, etc, and how much of that could eventually translate into a production vehicle, since a great deal is no doubt due to other changes like component removal. If they have done so and I've missed it a heads up would be appreciated.

 

The 787 dreamliner body is going to be carbon fiber composite .

If done right it can be just as stong as titanium but have a bit of flexibility as well .It all depends on the layup of the material ,grade type and how thick you want it .And it can be repaired and reworked .

There are also other types of composite materials to use such as kevlar and laminants that could work well but it all depends on what you want as to how much flex/strenth needed and into what area they go into such as high heat or in a car's case ...crumple zone .

 

Carbon would be a bit more work to manufacture, and definitely raise costs. But I'm sure Boeing could loan one of their giant autoclaves to Ford (or maybe Mulally will sub out the work to Boeing ) for the curing. I used to work in the building where boeing built the F-22 wings, and were putting the sections of the 787 together, and it's quite an operation. Of course I have no idea what they were really doing, I just had a server room on the second floor, and would go look at the work going on from a balcony.

Kinda miss that, actually, there were some great places to hide or dig through old forgotten junk in that building.

 

If Ford actually does it - YAY!!! Plus no more rust. Doesn't have to be carbon fiber either. Any serious effort to reduce ever-increasing vehicle weight as well as implementing it across the product line in the near future would be much appreciated.

 

Graphite-epoxy has some interesting advantages and/or dissadvantages...
1. It doesn't like high tempratures. (The temp of your average choc chip cookie oven is about the limit before melt down.)
2. It doesn't like med to high fequency vibration (tends to turn into a black powdery substance.)
3. Impact resistance is moderate, but kevlar is much superior, and just as easy to work with, can be interlayed with each other.
4. Aircraft grade cured thickness .060" per ply, cost in 1980 dollars $14 per sq foot.
5. 1/2 the weight of aluminum, and twice the strength of stainless steel.
6. Finially, graphite-epoxy IS transparent to radar waves...

 

The lancer evo has a carbon fiber spoiler.

 

What's most interesting to me about this thread is the BIG picture here. Mulally could be planning to use some of his expertise as a former aircraft guy to explore implementing some of that technology in automobile manufacturing. And it may extend beyond just composites.

Imagine if employing such a strategy helped Ford to revolutionize aspects of the automobile industry? Be nice to take the lead again.

 

This carbon fiber thing came up a year or 2 ago. It may have been about the time Coletti retired. I think he made some comments how 500 HP was the limit for factory street vehicles, more HP was going to create problems (insurance, regulation etc.) He said something to the effect that the future of SVT was going to be in reducing weight by using materials like carbon fiber. I hope he was referring to vehicles that are coming after the 4,000 lb GT-500.

 

yeah, i remember that, that was a long time ago. But i feel like that was long before the GT500 came out, and that maybe they had to at least temporarily abandon that route, based on what we ended up with. Come to think of it, we really haven't heard much in terms of SVT lately, have we?

Where's the Fusion? The F150? Maybe an SVT focus that comes out at the same time as when Europe and NA get the next gen in like 2009 or 2010. And yes... 100% carbon fiber, including the engine block! And windows and seat cushions.

 

O boy, touchy subject here, but, Coletti was all about making SVT the advanced team for manufacturing as well as the product team for showpiece additions. Think about some of the very trick stuff that we ended up seeing in the GT. I suspect(I can not say definatively, but I have a pretty good handle on what happened), that the nearer term best gain for the company was thought to be to take advantage of Jags aluminium chassis manufacturing and super plastic forming techniques. Here is one of many interesting trade articles on that car. http://www.aec.org/assets/pdfs/ShwcsFrdGTfinal.pdf

There is a good reason that Roush now has a fully equipped English shop, did all the Euro handling of the GT and contracted so heavily on the engine programs for the GT and what was eventually watered down to the current GT500. http://www.roushind.com/news_downloa...04-01-1252.pdf (V10, your gonna LOVE this one!)England is the only place in the world to really understand these sorts of advanced composites, and I believe that it was sold as win win for SVT, Ford and Roush. It became next to impossible to get things done within the system at Ford, and the going outside the system to do what he thought was best for the company and us(SVT and real hi-perf customers) was what got the shiv stuck in his back. He couldn't do the job of 100 engineer teams with less than two dozen engineers and keep up with office politics, and so was made a sacrifice. No points for sleuthing out who orchestrated this.

As for what we got, it was a lot less than SVT envisioned the next SVT COBRA to be. I believe that it became a point of pride for H.T.T. to keep as much of what HE created(he was chief engineer on the S197, the SRA, and other things such as production cost savings, a real toil on the project), and as such anything that the deposed leader planned or worked at was dumped in the name of spite and fiefdom building. A problem that has been long a part of Ford and one that has been identified as needing resolution by the new CEO. There was a higher content SVT version of the GT500 with a fully engineered IRS and other good stuff(recall the patented instacharger/overboost setup on the Lightning concept?) that was planned and engineered, but was canned because of it being to expensive for SVT fans(who knew us better, O. John, or H.T.T.?) How does that look now, as we watch the sillyness around the Shelby part? Anyone think that another 5k for an IRS, GT block and nothing to do with Shelby wouldn't go down real smooth right about now?

Look to what Dan Davis has managed to hide over at FRPP(and look at the biggest tie ups, there is Roush front and center, with Yates and some others). Now know that a certain wunderkind wants to add FRPP to his portfolio as well. I mean, after killing off SVT and dismanteling the group, he needs to have something on which to base his SVT title on. Might as well be hi-po parts right? I suspect that this is why FRPP had to swallow the poison pill of Ford racing oversight. It looks to me to be an attempt to keep certain Ford assets somewhat aloof from the games.

I can only prove bits and pieces of this, as Ford is understandably as good as any large corporation at keeping its dirty laundry inside the glass house. But some dilligent searching, the facts in the media and in press releases and some "suggestions" have allowed me to string together much of this, along with a very good memory. I suggest that looking at the senior people who left Ford from mid 2005 until this holiday season makes for a pretty good story of corporate gamesmanship.

Look very hard at what FRPP is showing, and you may have a clue at what might have been, and what might still be.

And yes, I do have more, much more.