Reinforcing Front Clam

[AVH]

My wife dinged the lower lip a few weeks ago, so I'm going to be pulling the clam off to get it patched.

While it's off, I'm considering adding a layer or two of a carbon/kevlar weave on the inside of the clam to give it more strength. I've read the "uberclam" post, so I know others have tried this. The shop I talked to advised against this though. Their thinking is that if you hit something, you're much better off with the cosmetic damage being down low. They figured that there was too much risk that the reinforcement would just transfer the force of the impact further up the clam where it would crack in a highly visible area.

Any opinions or experiences with this?

[xtn]

Sounds like good reasoning to me.

I mean you could make the front clam out of 1/2 inch thick plate steel. Even so, if you hit something at 10mph, if the clam doesn't deform, whatever it's mounted to will.

xtn

[Thomasio]

I agree, it will break at the weakest link... reinforcing the lower portion will guarantee breakage elsewhere.

Thomas

[Randy Chase]

I disagree on the problem being transferred. Unless you hit something substantial. In which case it did not matter.

[AVH]

Originally Posted by Randy Chase

I disagree on the problem being transferred. Unless you hit something substantial. In which case it did not matter.

I read about your work. Very impressive! Have you taken any hits since reinforcing yours?

[Randy Chase]

I have scraped a couple times. You can't tell it touched anything. I have hit a lot of cones. You can't tell.

[ace10]

Originally Posted by Randy Chase

... I have hit a lot of cones. You can't tell.

i'm gonna wager that wifey isn't using the nose of the elise as a battering ram against poor defenseless rubber cones.

[AVH]

I'm planning to have truck bed liner (Line-X or Rhino Liner) sprayed on the bottom and just rolled over the lip. Hopefully this will handle scrapes ok.

It's the clam's ability to take a 1/2 mph bump into a parking berm or speed bump that I'd like to improve. It seems to me that the flexing in a bump is so localized that the fiberglass just yields. If the flex could be distributed over a larger area, then maybe the glass could survive intact.

[Randy Chase]

What we do know, is that if you centerpunch a cone at 60mph, it will damage the clam. What we also know is, it will not damage mine.

The rest is just gut feel. The front of my car is extremely tough. Like if you bonded a surfboard to the front of the car. My point is that if you hit something hard enough to transfer enough force to cause some area behind that to crack, it would have caused major damage to the very front anyway. What my uberclam does... is transfer the load of a hit to a much larger and stronger area. I really can't see how this would be a bad thing.

The stock clam has some weak points, specially around the license plate plinth. I have removed those weak points. The stock clam has some areas subject to being a source of scraping, the winglets and the plinth again. I have removed those areas.