Paint

[Jon Burford]

Hi all.

Just wondering if anybody has considered the weight of the paint that we put on our cars.

The colour that I wanted this year looks as if it's fairly complicated needing many different basecoats. It was at this point I started thinking about how much weight we would be adding.

I have never painted a car myself and I have no idea how much paint is in a standard coat?
Is anybody willing to share the weight difference of a tub for example before and after paint?

Food for thought

[Jon Burford]

Hi all.

Just wondering if anybody has considered the weight of the paint that we put on our cars.

The colour that I wanted this year looks as if it's fairly complicated needing many different basecoats. It was at this point I started thinking about how much weight we would be adding.

I have never painted a car myself and I have no idea how much paint is in a standard coat?
Is anybody willing to share the weight difference of a tub for example before and after paint?

Food for thought

[mech5496]

Including a little body filler, primer and base color, ours was 4.5kg....which is an awful lot if you ask me! I assume it could get down to 2kg but still I thing that's a lot. We had the bodywork of our 2008 car wrapped in vinyl, but it wasn't of great quality so we ditched it; and I cannot remember the weight of the vinyl itself.

[Jon Burford]

Thanks for your response.
I had never really considered it before, your 4.5kg really makes a point of it. The lengths that I would go to to save 4.5kg would be increadible.
I need to have a think about this!

Cheers

[Dewi Griffiths]

As you know, Jon, we had a vinyl wrapped car last year. This involved a lot less prep work compared to the painting of the previous years car. There was no body-filler used and personally I thought the quality was fantastic.

We were able to include all our sponsors and competition stickers into it, also. And I can pretty much guarantee it will be lighter than the 2kg you say you can get paint down to.

See website for pictures of the car and the company that did the vinyl for us is located on our sponsor page.

[Lorenzo Pessa]

In 2010 we used a high quality trasparent coating (a cool carbon look bodywork!). On a bodywork surface little less than 4 m^2 the weight of paint was of 3 kg.

[Jon Burford]

I don't want to use wrap in particular. We don't really have the funding for anything more than bare paint.

Will keep thinking!

[DougMilliken]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">... We don't really have the funding for anything more than bare paint. ...
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Famous racing story -- in 1934 a formula was established with a *maximum* weight of 750kg, in an attempt to (what else), keep speed down. Mercedes was slightly overweight and they removed the paint to pass tech:
https://mobile.credit-suisse.c...&aoid=342202&lang=EN (https://mobile.credit-suisse.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mOpenArticle&coid=280991&aoid=342202&lang=EN)

[AxelRipper]

Last year we went bare frame and painted the bodywork. I think the paint/bondo added only ~2lbs. The bondo was only used to fill some holes in the carbon, then we used a sealer of some sort, basecoat, and clearcoat with a flex additive. All done with the lowest line of PPG, and a Harbor Freight gravity feed gun. Looked great.

We also powdercoated one of our old chassis. Added 2 lbs.

[mech5496]

Jon you might want to stay bare CF, it looks fantastic IMHO. If you look at low-cost low weight solutions, take a look at Motip flat black spray paint

http://www.motipdupli.de/index.php?id=tm_13690&L=2

Excellent quality for a spray, cheap as hell and because of its color (flat black) it hides any imperfections. We use that to paint any metallic surface on the car (i.e. our main hoop) and I definitely recommend it!

[Jon Burford]

Thanks for the link mech5496

sadly we don't have a CF tub, we use ally honeycomb.

We do spray most metal black, but we use some crap stuff normaly. We may give that a go!

[Dunk Mckay]

The paint on our honecomb front monocoq, sidepods and nosecone weighed in at around 4kg last year. We were a little surprised it was that much, but the finish was amazing. A lot of filler-primer had obviously gone into it, you could see areas where carbon strips covered open sections of the 'comb edges with a small (0.5-1mm) that were now flush!

[Francis Gagné]

We have use vinyl wrap on the 2010 and 2011, if the surface is smooth beneath and you get qualified people to apply it it looks great and it's lightweight.

It can scratch if your not careful with screwdrivers but it did resisted going over a small tree!

You can get some pics on our website

[Bemo]

It's one of the compromises in life. I used less than 1kg paint for the bodywork of our 08 car and I didn't use any filler. Didn't look that nice if you saw it from nearby, it was much better to watch it from distance http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

After that season we started to use vinyl. As others already mentioned that's very lightweight and if done properly the results are great, but you really have to take care.

We never used any transparent coating to save the weight. We thought it's stupid to use carbon for weight reduction and then put 2kg coating on it to make it more shiny.

[Ben K]

Moral of the story -- Want a paint job? Gonna add weight. We painted our frame after comp a nice flat black and it added a few lbs. We joked that we could make our drivers not eat before getting in the car :-D

Ben

[Jon Burford]

moral of the story,
Identify weight and reduce it as much as possible. any additional component will add weight, it's our job to justify it or minimise it.

we have decided to go with the paint we wanted originally with a reduced number of coats, I will let you all know how it goes.

[mech5496]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jon Burford:
moral of the story,
Identify weight and reduce it as much as possible. any additional component will add weight, it's our job to justify it or minimise it.
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Jon I would call that "moral of FSAE story" :P

As Bemo said, no need to clear coat carbon fiber (plus I don't like it shiny). A vinyl wrap, if designed and done properly, can incorporate all sponsor logos and thus saving some extra effort (it took me about 8 hours to place all the sponsor decals last year), gives a smoother look and saves some extra weight from the decals themselves...

[Lorenzo Pessa]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by mech5496:
Jon I would call that "moral of FSAE story" :P

As Bemo said, no need to clear coat carbon fiber (plus I don't like it shiny). A vinyl wrap, if designed and done properly, can incorporate all sponsor logos and thus saving some extra effort (it took me about 8 hours to place all the sponsor decals last year), gives a smoother look and saves some extra weight from the decals themselves... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


In addition to engineering scopes, bodywork can have another, important, scope: marketing.
If you need to acquire sponsorships, 2 kg more can save your year.

[mech5496]

Thats for sure Lorenzo, that's why I said "incorporated decals" instead of "no decals". Personally I am a weight weenie, but a quality looking car might help impressing the judges on the competition, and I can tell first hand. Last year we spent a couple of weeks polishing and repainting parts before competition and IMHO it totally worth it. First impression is not everything, but it matters, even in motorsport! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[Lorenzo Pessa]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by mech5496:
Personally I am a weight weenie, but a quality looking car might help impressing the judges on the competition, and I can tell first hand. Last year we spent a couple of weeks polishing and repainting parts before competition and IMHO it totally worth it. First impression is not everything, but it matters, even in motorsport! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I can add that last year my team was quite sure to lose some points because of not well finished surfaces (there was some delay in bodywork manufacture).
FSAE is not "exactly" motorsport. It's also a prototype for "a 1000 units per year" production.