dried out glass????????
Thread Starter
Instructor
Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 216
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From: columbia south carolina
dried out glass????????
i have been warned by an aquaintance that does body work that alot of times after 30 or 40 years (33 years in my new projects case) the glass dries out and you have to soak loads of resin back in to keep the car together. this car has never been wrecked and has had NO body repair at all. is this going to be a concern on my 78? is this something i need to prepare myself for in case i find it when i start stripping then painting in the spring?
Thread Starter
Instructor
Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 216
Likes: 1
From: columbia south carolina
excellent, i feel better about this now. i have found a paint that can be legally sprayed with no proper booth. i have a small backyard "paint booth" i built to paint motorcycles, made up of 4 4x4's planted in concrete spaced far enough apart i can get a car in if necessary. i hang tarps along the sides and across the top and seal with tape. this is all on a concrete pad i wet down before spraying. i'll be stripping, prepping and painting myself. i can do all parts of the process from stripping to color sanding.
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Le Mans Master
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From: eastern NC
A long standing view that I have encountered is that fiberglass (and particularly so for early fiberglass) does continue to cure over time. Anyone that has handled early fiberglass should be able to confirm that it is considerably more brittle than more recent fiberglass. My personal experience tells me that old fiberglass does lose resiliency over time and that a major factor in the rate at which this occurs is environmental.
I have never heard it suggested before that you could reverse the condition by soaking old panels with resin, but I guess anything is possible. I do know that if you spill straight resin onto any surface and then remove it a few days later it will be very brittle. This would seem to indicate that most of the resiliency inherent in fiberglass panels is primarily due to the glass fibers.
I'm sure there have been many more in depth discussions of this phenomenon before...?
Good luck... GUSTO
I have never heard it suggested before that you could reverse the condition by soaking old panels with resin, but I guess anything is possible. I do know that if you spill straight resin onto any surface and then remove it a few days later it will be very brittle. This would seem to indicate that most of the resiliency inherent in fiberglass panels is primarily due to the glass fibers.
I'm sure there have been many more in depth discussions of this phenomenon before...?
Good luck... GUSTO
