this is an interesting question, and probably can't be answered, but i'll give it a try.

does anybody know the actual surface area of an FCs body (not windows) in ft^3 ?

i am trying to calculate weight, and amount of material required, for my carbon fiber body kit.

this thread is not about you flaming me for making a CF body kit, i am just asking about surface area.

thanks.

 

Its simple trigonometry.

Spec.

 

im sorry to say that surface area is in square feet not cubic feet which would be volume... youre not going to find a way to get an exact number without complex equations so just do this...

1. get a tape measure
2. measure the rough dimensions of each body panel
3. start multiplying and add them up

 

whooopsss
i meant to say ft^2

 

I'd go with the tape measure and rough estimates. But maybe this would work:

1. Get painter's tape, newspaper.
2. Cut a sheet of newspaper, tape to car with a few small pieces of tape.
3. Line up another sheet, fold it over so there's no overlap with the first sheet, crease the fold, then tear a straight line at the fold. Tape this piece to the car.
4. Repeat until car is covered. Newspaper should be right up against newspaper with no overlap.
5. Remove newspaper. Remove tape from newspaper.
6. Weigh the newspaper on a gram scale. Compare to the weight of 1 page of newspaper. Measure the area of 1 page of newspaper. Area = (weight of newspaper) / (weight of 1 page) * (area of 1 page)

warning: be careful not to scratch your finish with the paper. Do this at your own risk.

 

Yeah, you could get a pretty good estimate by calculating the SA of some basic polygons then adding about 6% to account for what the curves would add.

 

actually you wouldnt need to cover the whole car just half of it to save lots of time.

 

out of curiosity, how much extra do you plan to get, since obviously you can't use every little piece? are you going for 2 layers? 3? 4? i've never really dealt with cf on this scale, so i don't know how much you need to keep it rigid

 

This seems like a good way to go about it, you could then get an "exact" area after measuring the area of newspaper you used to cover it. Wow, that was a recap...... er...... uh........

+1 lol.