Thread: Carbon Fibre ram tubes

Got myself some ITB's for my build but I don't like the ram tubes. So I'm trying to modify the ITB's to accept a longer ram tube. Somewhat inspired by the hayward CF tubes I decided to try and make myself some CF tubes as well.

This was just my first attempt, and kind of like a proof of concept to see if it's do-able for me.

I made a mould out of clay. The clay becomes formable when heated aobve a certain temp and then gets hard again at room temp. Sadly not rock hard enough to sand, so the finish was somewhat less than perfect.



I never worked with even fibreglass before, but I am quite happy with the end result I got. Sadly the clay mould was somewhat destroyed during the de-moulding process, so repeatability is an issue. But I'm happy with the end result and I think this is something I will persue if I can get a better mould.

End result - still needs a lot of cleaning, trimming, wet sanding and polishing but you get the idea.






Old ram tube vs new.

Wicked DIY project.

My suggestion would be to make a negative out of wood on a lathe. Paint and coat the wood so it is no longer porous and wax up the mold with some heavy car wax or mold release.

I can't do lathe work myself (dont' have one either).

Having a male mould CNC'd out of aluminium. Should have it in about 2 weeks. Will be able to spit out as many of these tubes as I want then. And hopefully I'll get better at it in the process. Kinda cool to make stuff from scratch.

Still waiting on my mould for the ram tubes so decided to build a 4" CAI in the interim. Still needs some finishing but quite happy with the result so far.

Got my mould a few weeks ago. Tried out one quick test tube. Came out very nice. 5 layers of carbon. These should do the job perfectly I think.



Old vs new. Mould in the background.

are you vacum bagging these? if not i would suggest it