Styling Wow, craziness!

[mj2k]

Looks like I'll need to replace my bonnet (now it's polished I can see an unsightly crease in the front edge, so it's got to go) so I was looking into how much a Biposto alloy bonnet would cost, and came across this craziness!

carbon fibre panels

Not sure if the bonnet would give a huge weight saving (probably about the same as a packet of sweets) but having carbon fibre doors / tailgate would make the Biposto look positively lardy in comparison if the weights given are correct for a track car...

Would carbon fibre doors / tailgate be sensible for an everyday road car like the site suggests though, or would it make your car into a crazily expensive rattly mess?

 

[jrkitching]

Would carbon fibre doors / tailgate be sensible for an everyday road car like the site suggests though

I'd worry about crash protection; particularly side impact protection.

 

[mj2k]

I'd worry about crash protection; particularly side impact protection.

Good point, daft on all levels then unless you've got a track car with a roll cage, stripped interior and perspex glass, or you want a carbon-fibre covered ornament (in which case a roll of carbon fibre wrap would be much cheaper, and wouldn't affect your insurance).

Strange they don't do the bumpers in carbon fibre, you'd have thought there would be a fair bit of weight to save there vs the plastic originals, with no difference in crash safety (or maybe even a slight improvement).

 

[mj2k]

Just found some figures for the bonnet weights:

Standard bonnet 10.5kg
Biposto alloy bonnet 6.4kg
Fibreglass bonnet 6kg
Carbon fibre bonnet 3kg

1 litre of petrol 750g. So a biposto bonnet is worth 5.5 litres of extra fuel, a fibreglass bonnet 6 litres and a carbon fibre bonnet 10 litres. Woo. And 1l of water weighs 1kg so if you ran your windscreen washer bottle half full that's 1.25kg saved for a start.

Or looking at it another way, it's hardly worth the bother of choosing anything but the standard bonnet tbh, you could probably save more weight by chucking out the junk in your door pockets than wasting a grand and a bit swapping to a biposto bonnet...

But a far better use of the cash would be getting the DNA-style bottom arms - a pair of those will save around 4kg too, and since it's unsprung weight will help to improve handling by reducing suspension inertia. Think I know where my next chunk of spare cash is going

Looks like the bare tailgate's only around 10kg too, so swapping to fibreglass would once again only save around 7kg, and would most likely affect bodyshell rigidity. Bare doors weigh about 20kg so for a track car swapping to fibreglass would make sense - that'd save approx 34kg, a fair old chunk of weight for a car as light as the 500. But as noted above, that'd be rather daft for a road car.

 

[A3jeroen]

1 litre of petrol 750g. So a biposto bonnet is worth 5.5 litres of extra fuel,

I'm pretty sure petrol can't be that expensive

gr J

 

[mj2k]

I'm pretty sure petrol can't be that expensive

gr J

It's getting there