Good idea.
   A female mold and high temp epoxy.

   As I recall the 2nd gen man tx bell weighed 7.5 pounds
   so you should get a lot of pounds out of that.
   Probably about to .125 wall thickness would be enough.
   My guess is 13 plies of carbon cloth will do the job.
   Vacuum bag would be wonderful.

   You could sell them or rent the mold out to a composite
   shop and let them make and sell them for you.
   Carbon fiber would be required for the stiffness needed.
   You need to embed some small aluminum spacers where the
   bolts go so the composite is not crushed when the bolts
   are tightened. You can buy spacers from McMaster car.

   I'll do a sketch of the required spacers for you.

Hi Paul,
I mentioned this as a possibility some time back and the comunnity nixed
it as a fire hazzard. Little has changed with respect to a real serious
fire. With respect to the housing it could easily be made using inner
plys of Kevlar to contain any thing that might come off the flexplate,
or maybe a bolt head if there was a failure of some kind. The suggestion
would be to use a 1/4-3/8 thick nomex honeycomb filler. Tremendous
stiffness increase with very little weight. You can get fire resistant
resins, although the carbon fiber itself is still consumable. Another
suggestion would be to use steel or titaininum spacers as aluminum can
see galvanic corrosion in carbon layups. Another possibility is to
pre-anodize (Clear hard works best) the aluminum prior to the layup.
David Algie (Algie Composite Aircraft) has done some beautiful carbon
bellhousing work, he didn't get the word on naca duct inlets though. His
site is worth checking out though for inspiration if nothing else. David
is a Indy Car builder for Andretti-Team Green and really knows his way
around composites. FWIW
Bill Jepson


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