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As you may know, I worked in maintenance in an automotive parts plant. We also at that time made lawn tractors. I was working in a rest room in the mower section and a worker came in and looked in the mirror on the wall. His eye had filled with blood. I found out from another worker that he had just had cataract eye surgery and was not suppose to go back to work for a while. He was bending over our 4' x 3' square metal boxes to pick up parts! I heard that he lost the sight in that eye. Really dumb. Lou.
I really did not know the person and this was about twenty years ago. They closed my plant in 2007, so I retired and today the plant is gone, flattened. This was the original, first 1932 plant of MTD (Modern Tool & Die) in Parma (Cleveland), Ohio.
SBD (Stanley Black and Decker) recently bought the company. MTD makes Cub Cadet, and Troy-Bilt mowers plus Craftsman mowers. We use to make them for practically everyone, JC Penney, White motors, Montgomery Ward, etc. Lou.
I forgot to mention that they later made my plant all automotive parts and we made Corvette parts, plus others. Our last major job was making the whole rear frame for Ford's Windstar minivan and the front frame pieces for the Saturn Ion car. They were seven feet long and held the engine and front wheels. Lou.
I forgot to mention that they later made my plant all automotive parts and we made Corvette parts, plus others. Our last major job was making the whole rear frame for Ford's Windstar minivan and the front frame pieces for the Saturn Ion car. They were seven feet long and held the engine and front wheels. Lou.
I started re-doing the bonding seams on the front end. If they're in good shape it can be kind of hard to see where they are and to start sanding. I had a couple of barely visible hairline cracks at the front bonding seam where the panel is beginning to separate from the pink factory filler. As well, the filler surface between the panels has a slight bit of texture to it while the panels on either side are smoother. I started off with the 12" inline sander with 120 grit on it. I used it 90 degrees to the seam rather than parallel thinking it would nicely remove the high crown area on the bonding seam:
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That took off a wider strip of paint than I really wanted and didn't remove much of the original seam filler so I went to a 24 grit disc on the 3" circular sander which is a smaller version of the 6" circular sander shown in the picture below (to the right you can see the dust covered disc for the 3" circular sander):
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That worked a lot better, cut a deeper groove that wasn't so wide:
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On the driver's side I sanded deeper with the 3" circular sander then I did on the passenger side. I went too deep in one place and ended up with a ragged edge with a bit of a gap between the hood surround and the underlying bonding strip:
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To smooth that out and provide a more solid base for the fiberglass matt and resin I applied a thin layer of Vette panel adhesive/filler:
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I removed the masking tape around the filler before it hardened thinking it would be easier to sand down to level if I could clearly see the outer level I wanted to sand the filler down to:
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In preparation for applying fiberglass matt and resin where the front fender meets the front bumper cover I inserted a piece of plastic cut to shape to help make a smooth edge at the end of the bonding seam and keep excess matt and resin from getting on the bumper cover and in the gap between it and the fenders:
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Where the fender meets the door I put a piece of tape to keep excess matt and resin from getting on the doors and between the door and fender:
I managed to get all the matt and resin in the bonding seams on both sides that I wanted in one go which saves a lot of time. This time I got schmart and masked off the area underneath the bonding seams so I don't have a bunch of excess resin to sand off that didn't need to be there, as I had when I did the rear bonding seams and didn't mask them off (although sanding off the runs of resin on the rear bonding seams wasn't as bad as I thought it would be):
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I used a 6" circular sander with an 80 grit disc to lower the fresh fiberglass to slightly below the level needed to allow for a thin layer of Vette Panel Adhesive/Filler to cover the seam:
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I found the best way to sand with the 6" circular sander was to start at the middle of the bonding seam and to rapidly and repeatedly move the edge of the disc up briefly on to the tape and then back down to the middle of the seam again as shown in the picture below:
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I sanded with the 80 grit until I just started to sand away the masking tape I used to minimize unnecessary matt and resin outside of the bonding seam. I found I was able to sand carefully enough to barely sand away the masking tape but not scratch the brown paint beneath it that I eventually feather edge:
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In the picture below I sanded too much at the top of the bonding seam and made undesirable gouges that will now need to have filler applied over them:
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In the picture below you can see the neat bonding seam edge the temporary plastic barrier between the front of the fender and the bumper cover made:
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After I was done sanding the fiberglass down slightly below level I still ended up with undesirable voids in the matt and resin, they are the white spots of various sizes you can see in the picture below:
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To deal with those voids I put a small wire brush on an electric drill:
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It's easy to remove too much material with the wire brush on the electric drill. You need to keep rapidly and lightly moving the brush in small circles over the void you're removing and then it looks like this:
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I had a lot of big voids where the passenger fender meets the door so I had to do that spot over again:
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The next step is to cover the bonding seams with Vette Panel Adhesive/Filler so any remaining voids won't cause a bulge when the panel gets hot in the sun. I decided to mix up a lot so hopefully I wouldn't have areas after sanding where there isn't enough and I have to add another layer. The picture below shows how much I used for one bonding seam, I could really use a larger mixing board:
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I got a lot on and it was almost enough. Initially I try and get all the filler on the panel as quickly as possible, pushing it firmly into the panel. Then once I've got it all on I try to make it even with the spreader by moving from one end to the other. When you're finishing up with your soft filler you want to pull the spreader across the filler quite slowly to even it out. If you move the spreader quickly it leaves bigger ripples and dips in the filler that are more likely to leave you with not enough filler in those areas after you sand it down to level everywhere else and you'll have to do another application of filler and re-sand back down to level.
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I did the rough smoothing of the VPA on the bonding seams using an 80 grit disc on a circular sander while holding a light at a low angle to more clearly see how level it was as I sanded. After I got it as smooth as I could with that sander I put a piece of 80 grit on a flat 6" sanding block.
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After I got the filler down to level I had a few small craters in the seam that needed more filler and a number of pin-holes which are the small white spots in the picture below:
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I roughed up the area over the pin-holes a bit with the wire brush on the electric drill and here's how it looked after I used compressed air to blow the white sanding dust out of them:
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And of course there was one spot needing more fill where I didn't sand the underlying fiberglass enough and it showed through the VPA:
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So, on went a thin second application of the Vette Panel Adhesive/Filler:
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The subsequent hand sanding with 80 grit on flat 6" block was going pretty slow so I decided to try the 12" inline sander at 90 degrees to the bonding seam with 80 grit paper on it. That was going pretty well, I was skillfully sanding down to the masking tape and not beyond until I got overconfident and didn't check my progress frequently enough and I took too much off the crown in the panel (you can again see the underlying fiberglass showing through the grey filler:
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So, unfortunately I had to replace the filler I over-sanded:
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Once the fresh filler was hard I decided to tempt fate again and used the 6" circular sander with an 80 grit disc to do the initial shaping and I didn't remove too much:
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After that it was back to the 80 grit on the flat 6" sanding block:
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It was slow going hand sanding on that spot from there as it has a convex curve transitioning to a slightly concave curve but I got it nice:
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And here's the bonding seam nicely shaped with 80 grit. Next I go to 120 grit to smooth it more and to smooth the rest of the fenders:
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I thought the front edges of the fenders where they meet the bumper cover might end up being really onerous to do with the slightly loose cover still in place but it wasn't that bad. To sand the front edge of the fender behind the bumper cover I cut about a 4" by 2 & 1/2 inch piece of 22 gauge sheet metal, applied sticky one side 120 grit sandpaper to it and without a whole lot of difficulty was able to slide that between the bumper cover and fender to sand it to the proper shape. After all that I wonder if it might have even been easier to do these edges with the bumper cover in place because I could just push in on it at any time and check my progress getting the gap right. Although there is a spot of fiberglass showing through the Vette Panel Adhesive/filler I decided it was not worth the labour to sand down and put filler on top:
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The biggest problem is the between the point of the front of the hood and the hood surround, there's a much larger difference in height between the two than I'd like.
When I took the pictures for post #1830 I don't think I had the hood fully closed as the latest time I checked it's alignment and firmly closed the hood it didn't look as bad:
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I figured out why the peak at the front of the hood is so much lower than the adjacent hood surround. I found that if I pushed heavily on the centre of the hood surround just in front of the hood I could close the gap there to about 1/3 of what it had been. Then I put my hand underneath the hood surround there and I could feel the hood surround has separated from the chevron shaped header bar beneath it:
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So that's the next job. I'm hoping I can put some glue between the header bar and hood surround, clamp it, and let it dry without removing the header bar and the stuff mounted on it. What do you think? Do I need to completely remove the header bar to glue it back in place? I had really hoped to avoid removing the headlight buckets and mechanisms.
Rookie advice...
Tug on the gap between the metal and fiberglass a LITTLE. IF it starts separating you may want to separate as much as possible to reglue it. If the metal gets to the point of flopping may as well clean the whole area and rebond it.
Rookie advice...
Tug on the gap between the metal and fiberglass a LITTLE. IF it starts separating you may want to separate as much as possible to reglue it. If the metal gets to the point of flopping may as well clean the whole area and rebond it.
There's a pretty big gap between the header bar and the hood surround. Are you suggesting I remove it to reglue it, or do you think I can clean the mating surfaces sufficiently with it still in place to bond it back together? If you're suggesting the latter I think I could only clean and reglue the one edge of the header bar that is closest to the hood opening, and even then I'm not sure how far out to the sides I could get on that edge, as it's the middle of the header bar where the biggest gap is.
Edit: Just re-read your comment and I understand better now. I don't suppose there is anyway to remove the header bar without removing the headlight buckets?
you can rebend the header bar to better natch the hood before reattaching it. or buy a new one that is less rusty and stiffer.
I think the header bar is currently a shape that will bring down the middle of the hood surround a lot closer to the level of the middle of the front of the hood. The gap between the header bar and the hood surround is the biggest in the middle and gets smaller the farther out to the fenders you go. I think the header bar is still bent the same way it was from the factory.
Guys, is there any chance I can just clean and glue what I can get at of the in-place header bar?
Do the headlight buckets have to come out to get out the header bar?
No but to clamp it you would. A couple of sand bags may do the trick on top of the hood surround though. Maybe put a floor jack under with a 2by 4 to stop headlight mount bar from dropping away from the glass.
