Interesting article on colored carbon fiber

[Jeff V.]

This came up during a discussion about carbon overlays on the Corvette forum.

https://www.compositesworld.com/blog/po ... rbon-fiber

It looks like colored carbon may not be carbon fiber at all. Or at least not 100% carbon fiber.

Actual carbon fibers can't be dyed because carbon is black. So they weave in additional non-carbon fibers like glass, polyester and aramid. Those can be dyed.

Or in some cases it's just a tinted clearcoat. It's interesting that they use a red 3S carbon hood from Deft Racing as one of their examples of that.

All of this is academic since the majority of "carbon fiber" parts on cars are just non-functional cosmetic overlays, but I thought it was interesting regardless.