Professional installation or DIY for carbon parts?

You've ordered a carbon part. Install it yourself or have it done? The honest answer depends on which part it is, how it's mounted, and how much you stand to lose if it goes wrong. Below is a breakdown by category, without sugarcoating it.

Fine to do yourself

Mirror caps, vents, small trim pieces and interior parts. These usually clip on or go on with double-sided tape. The risk is small and a mistake is usually fixable. Take your time with degreasing, that's ninety percent of the work.

Canards. As long as you're willing to measure carefully. They need to sit symmetrically, and crooked canards stand out immediately. Mask them off, measure from a fixed point on both sides, and dry-fit before removing the tape.

Doable yourself, but be honest about your patience

Spoilers and small rear wings. Usually adhesive or tape, sometimes drilling. Once drilling is involved the stakes change: a misplaced hole in your trunk lid is permanent. Use templates and measure twice.

Front Splitters. Doable in principle, but a front splitter sits low and takes a beating from vibration and air pressure. Insufficient bonding surface or a poorly degreased substrate means it comes off on the highway. That's not just your part gone, it's also dangerous for the traffic behind you.

Better left to a professional

Side Skirts. Long, heavy and visible along the entire flank. They need to run tightly parallel to the rocker panel. If one sits a few millimeters off, it shows on exactly the part of the car everyone walks past.

Hood, trunk lid and bumpers. This involves disassembly, and on a hood also hinge adjustment and sometimes gas struts calibrated for a different weight. A carbon hood is lighter than the original, which means the original gas struts can push it open too far.

Fenders and widebody parts. This is the heaviest work. It involves fitting, sometimes sanding, aligning and bonding, and the transition to the existing bodywork has to line up. This is bodywork, not accessory installation.

What you need if you do it yourself

• A good degreaser, not an all-purpose cleaner.
• Masking tape for positioning and protection.
• A space above fifteen degrees Celsius. Adhesive and tape bond poorly in the cold.
• Time. Dry-fit, mark it out, and only then make it permanent.

The degreaser we use ourselves is the same one we keep in our workshop.

What we do

We install carbon parts at our workshop in Elburg. You can add the installation service to the product, or call us if you bought the part elsewhere. Not sure about a specific part? Just give us a call and we'll tell you straight whether you can do it yourself.

Read more about installation in Elburg.