Any special steps when drilling through CF hoods?
 

Hi guys,

I am gonna be getting my RE Amemiya AD9 hood in a little bit and I had a few questios about drilling holes through the CF. I will be adding hood pins to keep the hood secure.

I had installed hoodpins on my stock hood and I just wanted to see if the same methods I used for that hood will work for the CF hood. To do my stock hood I used a dremel with a drill bit. I drilled a hole which was centered on the pin, and to widen it I just put the drill bit through the hole and moved it around to shave away the aluminum.

Will the same thing work with a CF hood or will a CF hood break into a million pieces? well maybe I'm not worried about it shattering, but I am worried that the CF might form cracks when I dril through. Should I used some sort of epoxy resin around the hole once I've cut an opening (to strengthen it)?

TIA

That's what I did....it won't shatter or anything, just leave lots of resin flakes all over the place. I wouldn't bother with the resin on the edges, since that won't be the weakest point anyway, and it's not gonna rust.

Start with a small bit and work ur way up.

Thanks guys, I've never worked with CF before and I just wanted to make sure they dont do anything weird when you start cutting and drilling them.

I haven't worked with the carbon fiber, but I would asume that it's not much different than fiberglass. I'd use masking tape over the area your going to drill and a new brad point drill bit of the correct size. I use these all the time in fiberglass and have never had a problem. Don't use a real high speed and I think you'll end up with a clean hole.