Hey guys. I have been working at a fiber composites shop for the last year and a couple of my buddies and I came up with some parts for our roof rack. We can make carbon fiber bars and fairings. Check them out. Give me your thoughts, criticism, and interest. If there is enough interest I am sure we could enough made for everyone that wants one. Thanks for looking.
Looks really good! You should advertise them on NASIOC also. You could probably sell a ton of them if you were looking to make some money off of them!
So, out of curiosity, what shapes can you make the tubes in? I see circular is doable, since you did that, but how about oval or the square and rectangular bars? Can you duplicate those?
My interest is piqued..... I'm assuming these would be plenty strong to be used as a roof rack should be, but much lighter. I don't leave my rack on year round, and I hate how heavy and awkward it is to work with. There's a good chance the price would more than I'd want to spend, but maybe not....
We have the capabilities to make square and rectangular bar options. but we don't have the tooling to make the right size. Round is the easiest to make, and we were already making tubes the same diameter as the Yakima bars. Oval or aero style bars would be much more difficult and expensive to make, because of the tooling involved. We would need a precision ground oval bar to make them on, so, oval is probably out of the question. Yes they are very strong. I believe it was around twice the strength of the steel bars with half the wall thickness. It is considerably lighter then the original steel bars, which felt around 20lbs each. The carbon tubes are less then 2. I have had my bike and kayak on it for a 300 mile trip, and also seen my car go up on 3 wheels around a corner with a bike on the rack. So far the rack has held up to the abuse. As far as pricing goes. I think we could keep it fairly inexpensive. The fairing was comprised of some scraps and drops we had laying around. My goal is to keep the pricing around the same cost as Yakima sells their accessories. The logo is for my vary amateur rally team my buddies and I came up with, which, originated in Duluth. I stands for Carver House Rally, the street and house that we spent a lot of time in college in. It can be see in my profile pic along with our cars. We participate in the SCCA rally cross events, and are trying to get more involved with the SCCA organization. Check out our facebook page... https://www.facebook.com/CarverHouseRally?fref=ts We hope to have a website soon as well. Thansk for all the interest everyone!
that's friggin cool. want to get into the interior trim business too? or the front lip business, or the side skirt business, or the grill business... or the fender business....or the hood business.........lol. I kid...kinda. Wish I had a use for a roof rack, I'd rock one of these in a heartbeat.
I would definitely be interested in a CF fairing. If you started selling the fairings, would they come with the mounting hardware too?
I have actually thought about trying to do some trim pieces, but it would involve a lot of screwing around and the cost of manufacturing it would be to high for a few one offs. There would probably be options for both. Just the fairing for people that already have a plastic one and one with hardware for those that don't have a fairing yet.
I'd be interested in a fairing for my 06 wrx rack. It's a Thule with the rectangular bars. I currently have no fairing, and hate the howl I get when there is nothing on the rack.
