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Carbon-repair process of my TFSA (SL6 clone) frame

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TidyDinosaur:
Dry cloth, but I read a tip somewhere that you could stick some parchment paper with spray on adhesive to the carbon sheet to keep it from fraying when cutting. This worked very well.
I applied the epoxy to the carbon sheet before I stuck it to the frame.
I first applied some epoxy to the frame to cover the entire area, than wrapped the soaked patch around the tube and covered it with some more epoxy. After that I wrapped with the shrink tape and heated the tape.

jonathanf2:
As much as carbon gets a bad rap for being more prone to breaking in certain instances, it's cool you can actually patch carbon up. Maybe after this, you should try fixing your MTB bottom bracket as well!  ;)

TidyDinosaur:

--- Quote from: jonathanf2 on July 30, 2023, 12:00:18 PM ---As much as carbon gets a bad rap for being more prone to breaking in certain instances, it's cool you can actually patch carbon up. Maybe after this, you should try fixing your MTB bottom bracket as well!  ;)

--- End quote ---

Yeah, after this repair, the crack in the BB of my MTB seems easy :)

TidyDinosaur:
This morning I removed the tape and protective plastic to see the result. It is not very aesthetically pleasing but that is just because I will be leaving it like this and will not be sanding and painting...
Structurally it looks very solid. The sound when tapping on the tube sounds exactly the same on the repair than it does on the rest of the tube and there is no flex. I think I actually would be OK to use this frame as my outdoor frame if I would not have ordered a new one already...

Things I could have done better:

* Put the electrical tape to mask off the area further away from the repair area. Now the tape acted like a sort of barrier/dam for the epoxy and this created an abrupt height difference between the epoxy and the existing surface. Easy enough to solve if I would sand and paint this area though...
* Use less epoxy for the final coating. Now the epoxy has seeped under the electrical tape and there is some epoxy on the "good" side of the tape. Again this would be absolutely no problem when sanding...
* Put some small strips of carbon on the lowest area's of the repair before the final carbon patch. Now there is a slight indentation where I sanded away the most carbon.

Sebastian:
Well done! I applaud your DIY attitude!
I repaired my VB218 frame as well and found it much easier than I thought once I’d done the necessary research. I used masking tape to stop the carbon cloth from fraying. Worked well enough.
I too read that the recommended technique is to build up the daläget area starting with small patches and work your way towards bigger patches. Basically to fill the void that you created when sanding away at the crack.
If it was my frame, I’d probably sand the area and put a bit of clear coat on it to observe it and once I’d be sure that it holds I’d paint over it.

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