revtothelimit - motorbike forum

this is one for the CF experts.

This is the battery cover off my cannondale e-bike, it sits on the downtube right behind the front wheel so is protecting the battery from impacts, and as the bike is about 5 years old it has done its job well and as is now battered & brittle.

There's no UK stock of these parts from Cannondale but we have managed to find one in france and is on its way. but looking to the future, if / when the new one breaks we'll be stuffed so I'm thinking about using a fibre repair kit to try and get this one back to a useable state, and possibly giving the new one a fibre skin to hopefully help it last longer.

what do you recommend?

Is it worth making a mould from the replacement, when it arrives?

And if you're feeling entrepreneurial, get a small batch made?

Horse wrote: Sun Oct 29, 2023 11:19 am Is it worth making a mould from the replacement, when it arrives?

And if you're feeling entrepreneurial, get a small batch made?

Not a terrible shout. Loads and loads of 'proper' carbon stuff is made from carbon tools - I'd probably go as far as to say that's the default for low volume stuff.

I.e. your part is the positive, pull a negative mould off it in CF, then use that negative to knock out "a number" of positive parts. There's a bit of subtlety to it, but that's the nuts and bolts.

Regarding the OP question - the OEM part is probably a thermoplastic moulding, which is a bugger to stick to in general. So any reinforcement will probably all off sooner or later On the flip side though, thermoplastics are generally a lot of tougher than "normal" carbon fibre, so I'd not necessarily assume a carbon one would actually be any better. In fact the OEM might actually be a carbon/glass reinforced injection moulded thermoplastic anyway.

Clear as mud

As Dazzler says, fibre glass to stick to that, make a mould from the new one and make fibre glass replicas.