I have a 1969 corvette with a luggage rack, which I would like to remove.The problem is none of the body shops will touch this job. I been told that you can't do this job and guarantee that I won't shrink, and show. The paint is 4 years old. Is this correct????

Thank You Jim

 

if done right, you wont get any visuals...

you can always find some aluminum billet plugs or something real slick to plug the holes

 

Afriend had his removed when he had his car painted by a very good paint shop. His shows pretty badly. The main thing to keeping it from showing is to let the filler sit as long as possible before painting. You have to let all the solvents out. If it were me Id have the holes filled now in the winter and let it sit till spring before painting.

 

Jim,

The hardest thing to hide in a Corvette is a hole. If you put a hole in the fiberglass and fill it. . . it will shrink over time.

Why? When you have a panel hole repaired, the filler material will not have the same expansion/contraction ratio as the original panel. (The same reason you see bonding strip lines on the quarter panels and fenders). Compounding this issue is the fact that the filler material will continue to harden and shrink long after the panel is filled.

While some repairs may take a year to show but over time, they will show!

I have talked with may people over the years that claimed they could do this, but no one has ever showed me a repaired hole that did not shrink. This is one of the main reasons when hanging a new panel on a car you do not want to drill holes and rivet it. We always clamped new panels when I had my body shop.

Now with this in mind, materials are always changing. We have had good luck in hiding the bonding strip seems with a combination of two different materials. However, this is not a hole just a skim coating which can be hide.

My advice is just as I did. I never cared for the racks, but I have a 72 with one on it. I put a new rack on the car and lived with it.

Willcox

 

.. if you did it right could you put it back on without problems?

been 5 years since they done mine

and it does show if you look close enough

 

The way to fix it so it will not show is, if you can get to the back of the hole glue a piece of fiberglass to the back side of each hole. Then dish the hole with a grinder down to the the plate you glued in. Now with fiberglass mat layer up to the original height of the deck. Let dry and lightly grind and finish with plastic filler. It will always show if you use primer surfacer. The trick is to use gel coat instead! There is a trick to using gel coat also! If you want to know more you can email me! I did my vette this way and 5 years later no repair shows.

 

Hi Jim,
Here's a picture of the repair on my 71. Note how big the repaired area is compared to the hole and that no filler was used. It's all glass and resin. No matter how hard I look I can't see the repair.
Regards,
Alan

 

Epoxy, anyone?

 

I think the clue here is to have only one material... fiberglass... so you don't have materials expanding and contractig at different rates. At least that's what I was taught.
Regards,
Alan

 

You are correct Alan. Start with fiberglass backing from the underneath side. When it cures, grind out the original hole down to the new backing layers and cut them into bevel up to the top surface about 3 times the diameter of the original hole. Cut mat material in stepped diameters ie. 1/2", 3/4", 1", etc to fill the concave area. The last layer should be above the original surface until rolled to remove air bubbles. Once sanded (to slightly below the original surface) cover the new and surrounding area with a skim coat of Vette Panel adhesive/filler. The filler while not exactly the same, has a very similar thermal expansion/contraction rate to the fiberglass.

my .02
Dave

 

Back in 1974 when I purchased my 3rd Corvette a 1972 Coupe with 20K miles on the odometer it had a factory luggage rack the only thing I didn't like about the car. Everything else was just right. I purchased the car and within the year sent it out to have the holes filled after I disconnected the luggage rack. I was never sorry that I had them filled. Looking for where the holes previously were over the years I could hardly see them and had to look real hard in the right light to notice anything. Trust me if done right you will probably never notice it unless you look for it and others will never know. Here is a couple of pictures of my old '72 Coupe from back in the day, mid 70's. Who knows maybe someone on this forum owns the car now. Sold it back in 1978 in Central New Jersey.