Body Panel Recommendations
Thread Starter
Drifting
Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 1,277
Likes: 275
From: Leo IN
Body Panel Recommendations
Hello All,
Does anyone have a particular vendor they have dealt with for body panels that they can give a strong recommendation for?
Thoughts?
-- Joe
P.S. If you know of someone that sells press-molded door sills, please let me know.
Does anyone have a particular vendor they have dealt with for body panels that they can give a strong recommendation for?
Thoughts?
-- Joe
P.S. If you know of someone that sells press-molded door sills, please let me know.
Safety Car
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 4,424
Likes: 619
From: northern CA
I went with Sermersheim's PM panels ... (812) 424-4701. Many here on the forum have had good things to say about these panels. That's why I went with them.
I did have one panel that arrived from Sermersheim's needing a bit of work. It was was hit with the grinder (at manufacture) a bit too much in the area of the top panel, adjacent to the headlight bucket. The fiberglass was too thin in this area. Extra resin and mat were added and the area was ground, sanded, etc. to get the proper thickness back.
The lower left parking light panel bonding strip also needed some extra resin and mat work to make it 'just so'. Both pieces were fine to use 'as-is', though. I'm being a bit too **** in making this project turn out as perfect as possible.
Whatever panels you do order up it's likely you will need to do some prep and fit work on the panels before they are installed. Bonding strips and/or body seams and flanges will also need attention. Be prepared to break out the grinder and...........................DUST .. .. Man, that stuff goes all over the place! ..
.. You want to do the heavy grinding outside of the garage. For the small stuff a Dremel tool tipped with a conical rotary stone works very well. A shop-vac takes care of the dust problem when using the Dremel.
With original factory PM panels being long gone and/or virtually non-existent the repop PM panels are the next best thing.
I did have one panel that arrived from Sermersheim's needing a bit of work. It was was hit with the grinder (at manufacture) a bit too much in the area of the top panel, adjacent to the headlight bucket. The fiberglass was too thin in this area. Extra resin and mat were added and the area was ground, sanded, etc. to get the proper thickness back.
The lower left parking light panel bonding strip also needed some extra resin and mat work to make it 'just so'. Both pieces were fine to use 'as-is', though. I'm being a bit too **** in making this project turn out as perfect as possible.
Whatever panels you do order up it's likely you will need to do some prep and fit work on the panels before they are installed. Bonding strips and/or body seams and flanges will also need attention. Be prepared to break out the grinder and...........................DUST .. .. Man, that stuff goes all over the place! ..
.. You want to do the heavy grinding outside of the garage. For the small stuff a Dremel tool tipped with a conical rotary stone works very well. A shop-vac takes care of the dust problem when using the Dremel. With original factory PM panels being long gone and/or virtually non-existent the repop PM panels are the next best thing.
Last edited by mrg; Jul 8, 2009 at 10:24 PM.
