Thanks Bill, that's a great article! Joe, when I was in college at the University of Florida a couple of years ago, I worked with SAE (Soeciety of Automotive Engineers) building the formula car for each annual competition (600CC Honda CBR engine, around 450 lbs). What a fun project! We built 4 diffent chassis while I was there--two chromoly "spaceframes", one aluminum bulkhead style and finally, a chromoly spaceframe with carbon and kevlar shear panels forming a hybrid monocoque. All the panels for that car were flat, so they were really easy to lay up on a vacuum bagged sheet of glass. The carbon is incredibly stiff in shear and since the aluminum shear panels on the FFR are bonded anyway, it would be pretty simple to replace them with CF (as they are mostly all simple bends). Would the difference in stiffness be apparent on a street car? Probably not. But on a track car, I'm certain it would. You would need to use kevlar mat around the high heat sources since carbon doesn't stand up to a lot of heat for an extended period of time. You would probably do all the panels for about $12-1400 in materials. It would be different anyway . It would also necessitate more frequent inspections.
BTW, did you see any photos of the two '96 911 GT1 cars Porsche built and debuted at LeMan's? Unpainted carbon and kevlar hand laid bodies that were undoubtedly the finest composite work I have ever seen. One of my friends was at the race and he said everyone's jaws dropped about 3 inches when they rolled them off the transport Porsche replied that 'in their haste to make the event, they didn't have time to paint the cars'. Humility always was one of Porsche's strong points . If I could do work like that, I wouldn't paint it either...
Mike