dotcomhusker

My black 993 has a few stone chips on the bumper & hood. I've been able to reduce the appearance a lot via the Langka method and elbow grease. Ok results, but of course it's never a respray.

In all cases below, I'm talking about CF with clear only, no paint. In my case, it would be against existing black paint.

I've always been considering an upgraded on the front, say a turbo front bumper, but wasn't considering CF. With the chips, I was considering a replacement hood. I see others have done it and I think against black it would look ok. In looking at some of the catalogs, though, I see that, for example, Getty Design as well as GT Racing have pretty much EVERYTHING available in carbon fiber, so it got me to wondering other parts in CF would look like. Consensus seems to be Getty parts seem to fit a bit better so that would likely be my choice for anything, although I'm open to input on this as well.

Now, anti-flame disclaimer... I am not interested in having my 993 look like a deleted scene from “2Fast2Stupid – Tokyo Cheese”.

I have seen some pics of a CF hood on a 993, but never against black paint. I've seen a pic of a black CF decklid against what looks like a black car, and that was alright (well so was the rest of the car, it was Princeton Wong's beast, nice job!!)

• Any pics of a natural (no paint) CF replacement bumper?
• Decklid w/ spoiler?
• Fenders, egad?
• Rear quarters, holy hell?
• Entire car, sweet Hay-soose on a bicycle?

Just curious how far anyone has taken this. Not that I'm remotely interested in going THAT far, but I'm just curious what it looks like.

Cheers all.-j

993_Pilot

I have seen a Lotus Elise with a complete unpainted CF body, and it looked pretty cool. However, with that said, I am not a big fan of major body panels in unpainted CF, while the remaining portion is contrasting with bright paint. That may look good on a black car, and I will be curious to see if anyone post pictures, because I would like to see them as well.

dotcomhusker

almost didn't upload these because they're not very clear. this is just a CF hood. Forgot to mention, this hood is from M. A. Shaw.

atan888

looks good imo

poorb0yw

I tried finding nice carbon replacements but had no luck with the front bumper. The fenders, hood, decklid and sunroof panel can be made to LOOK reasonable by current suppliers. Don't expect too much tho.

dotcomhusker

Can't remember about M A Shaw, but I remember that The Getty Design and GT Racing catalogs both show replacement bumpers in fiberglass and CF. Did you just not like the quality?

poorb0yw

Thats correct. If you ask them to lay up the carbon fiber in a presentable manner they will just tell you they can't do it.

Here are some sample pics of a GT racing carbon bumper.




They wont take the time to trim the carbon so that the overlapping seams will match up with the lines of the bumper nor will they try to align the direction of the weave.

Here is my experience from various suppliers.
Getty - They have them listed but will tell you up front that it wont be acceptable to leave unpainted.
GT Racing - Charged my credit card saying it could be done and didn't inform me of the "quality issues" until about 3 weeks later.
MAShaw - Mike sources from Getty. Nice guy but he doesn't always disclose everything up front. Based on previous experience.
Rennspeed - Stopped making carbon pieces b/c of the same problems.

TheOtherEric

Sounds like we need a Chinese supplier! The local Lotus shop (Fox Valley) found a Chinese CF maker and is having every panel for an Elise molded in CF. They expect the set won't cost too much, like $6,000-$10,000 for CF panels for the entire car. Maybe we need to do the same thing.

Geoffrey

I have the carbon pieces from Getty Design on my race car and the doors, hood, were fantastic. The parts with multiple compound curves had several pieces of CF similar to the pictures above. If you want to leave the carbon look, it needs to be clear coated. The hood on the 993 above looks like it does not fit very well.

dotcomhusker

Thanks for the info. Even if you could get the hood to align properly and the fenders along with it were acceptable and not to bling-bling, there's no way I'd ever put a CF front bumper of the aesthetic quality of the rear bumper in your picture. You would sure think they could do it even if they had to charge a premium for larger pieces that were specifically to be left natural in clear.