I'm on this website because I think I want to buy one of these cars. I read the factory stuff about a carbon fiber driveshaft. Seems like a crazy idea to me and I've heard a rumor this has been dropped.

Anyone have trouble with this? Is it a factor in all of the transmission problems I see people complaining about? Has the CF driveshaft been dropped?

 

driveshaft is here to stay. I haven't heard of any problems. There are engine blocks made of Carbon Fiber composites.
JMS in TX

 

I haven't heard of any problems from the CF driveshaft yet. I've got damn near 18K miles, and my CF driveshaft is doing great.

 

I can't imagine there would be any problems. CF is stronger than steel and quite a bit lighter.

 

FYI GM uses carbon fiber reinforced aluminum drive shafts on some of their pickup trucks. It is lighter and stronger than several steel or aluminum counterparts but, it is more susceptible to failure if it is scored. Practically speaking this should never happen though.

 

Its good to hear no reported problems. As to the comment about what could go wrong, carbon fiber also has a tendency to flex. In a drive shaft it seems like it would tend to twist and store energy. Energy which it releases at some point. It just seems like such an unusual (non-standard) application I don't think we'll know how successful it is until you have 50,000 cars with 100,000 miles each. Then we'll know the failure rate.

 

It isn't exactly a new thing, they've been race proven for quite some time, and as has been said, there are hundreds of thousands of GM trucks on the road using CF.

 

Is it protected well under the car? I havent looked under to check, but this past weekend, I lightly bottomed out in a construction area.

 

BMW has been using a solid carbon fiber driveshaft on their M5's and Z8. No problems. Great weight savings. I heard they plan to use them on all their cars as production ramps up and costs decrease.

 

If our CF shaft did break... are they expensive to replace?

 

Our driveshaft is not carbon fiber it is carbon fiber reinforced plastic.

 

The U S Air Force's Y-22 Raptor which fly at Mach 2.5 is made of CF,
the forces on that aircraft are massive. Our driveshaft forces are nothing compared to the Raptor.

 

Exactly HOW MUCH of our drive shaft is CF? It's not a CF drive shaft. It states it's REINFORCED with CF...

Anyone have their drive shaft off? I had a 95 Trans Am and had an Alimunimu drive shaft put on it. Wow was that light... Wonder how heavy ours is on the Z... I also wonder if it's carbon Fiber reinforced what (Alimunium, Steel, plastic, etc...)

 

read two posts up dude.

 

OK that anwsers one of many questions I posed.

So you're telling me there is NO metal in our driveshaft? It's all Carbon Fiber and Plastic? Hard to believe.... (but not impossible)

 

Don't know the weight but by looking at it it seems that it is a driveshaft simply wrapped with a CF shell of sorts. Externally reinforced not mixed in reinforced.