Carbon Fiber Oil Sump

One of the main tasks is to build a CF oil sump. I wanted to cut down the amount of sump hanging in free air. (As usual, click on the photos for a large version).

I started a few months ago by getting out the Milwaukee Sawzall and start hacking on a chunk of foam. True to form, I just start hacking, then see what comes out of it.

After I got something like it might work, I tried to figure what to do about a mounting flange. I finally decided to make a sandwich with aluminum rings for bread and the CF for the peanut butter.

I kept whittling away on the thing, then finally coated it with drywall paste, car wax, then finally a mold release agent. This is a neat trick. The DW paste is water soluble. Before I coated it with the DW paste I did a water displacement test and it looks like it will hold five quarts. Perfect!

For epoxy, Mike Bergen helped me get some high temp ProSet. This stuff has a 300 minute pot life, but cures nicely in 24 hours. The only issue is that I have to post cure it to 250F or so.

The next trick was figuring how I was going to hole the flange in place while it cured. I figured I could make a little foam collar to support the flange. I would first wrap the entire thing in CF. At the neck, I would leave extra material which would form the flange.

I set the foam collar onto the sump, then placed the lower ring. I then folded the CF outward and placed the top aluminum of top of it. I guess the carbon reacts with aluminum so I first alodined it then I placed a piece of e-glass in between all places where the CF might touch the flanges.

I had predrilled a couple of tiny holes in the flange rings for alignment. I suck in a couple of cotter pins to hold the alignment.

After two days of cure time I spend an hour chipping out the foam. It was pretty easy and most of it came out without a fight. Since both the drywall paste and the mold release are water soluble, it left a nice clean, smooth inner surface.





A quick check looks like it's going to work!

Next comes the drain bung install and the filler neck and dipstick.