Several Forum members said they'd like to see a section dedicated to issues and techniques associated with body work, preparing a Corvette for painting and the techniques and materials for best results.

Let's try it and see if it proves to be useful.

 

Great idea

 

Although I'm not a body man, okay, not a car body man, I think I speak for many when I say, "It's about time!" I'm sure it'll be very popular.

 

Now if we could only get a Trans Tech section this quickly.

 

I've been to a couple other paint forums. Some offer pretty good information, but they are not unique to a Corvette. Because of this, I find it difficult to get a good response to my questions. A 'Paint & Bodywork' forum is a great idea.

 

You guy's rock,

paint will be comming soon, and I will do it myself, even if it don't come out right the first time. but then again my first engine rebuild came out better than perfect. despite the coffee can of extra bolts that I never figured out where they went.

see ya on the road

 

Glad to see this coming together. Not Only do I think that this forum will give valuable information to many forum members-but I also think that it will "dis-cluter" some of the other important forums.


Andy

 

Good to see this started....I want to learn and this is the way to do it!

 

This seems like a really good idea. Lots of us have to repaint the noses to our cars and believe or not that's how I started on this forum - looking to see what to do with a 2 inch crack I have on the nose of my vette

 

I suppose I'll start it off. I have a 1980 that had gobs of paint on it. Due to this it crazed all the way to the primer. It was a pain in the butt, but I striped it with Captain Lee's. Lots of work, but I got it down to the primer over the course of a couple months. Okay...the problem. I bought ACI flexible bumpers. The back went on great with hardly any mismatch, the front was about .75 inch too narrow.
This is the part that I'm sharing that might be of interest. Due to the narrow bumper, it obviously wouldn't fit. I took a risk ($375 bumper) and cut off the end that seemed to be a problem and bolted up the two pieces. This left a pretty consistant .75 gap. Without fiberglass experience, I evaluated the situation, removed the bumpers and scarfed the mating fiberglass back about two inches, both pieces. I then mounted them back to the car and taped them together with adhesive backed fiberglass mesh tape. I then filled in the gaps with long strand fiberglass bondo I got from a body shop.
After a few coats of fiberglass bondo and some block sanding...the bumper looks and fits great.
Just because you don't have experience, doesn't mean that you can't try a few things and learn.

Good Luck

 

This is great. The missus and I are doing ours, our first. Hope the experts chime in for us!

 

I agree with the above. I think this section will be a very useful site for anyone wanting to do a little repair or custom work on their Corvette. Thanks for creating this forum.

 

This new forum has both Pros:

1. Obviously a specific place to post questions and pics of your work
2. An easy way to get expert help from across the generations of Corvettes
3. A place for beginners to read, learn and ask questions as the embark on a new skill
4. And many more

and Cons:

1. Now I'll spend even more time on this website since I have another forum to check periodically.

THANKS!!!!

 

I have done some body work and painting over the years and it just ain't that difficult to learn. But I was lucky in having a good friend that was a custom painter and body man. He worked for a few of the hot rod shops and recently passed away. I think a section on body and paint would be great. I see a lot of guys doing a ton of work on their cars only to be disappointed due to poor prep work. And I have to tell ya, it's all in the preparation and doing it right.

 

Awesome!!! I am so glad we have this now. Thanks alot.

 

I have to agree that to have this part of the forum is a very good thing. As someone else has mentioned there are other forums that discuss body work but the majority of it is on steel cars and not related to fiberglass such as the Corvette. This information is much harder to find. So I feel this is a great resource for the members of this great site of which many call home. The Corvette Forum.

 

I may as well have been snipe hunting when I did mine. I didn't have the first clue of what I was getting into. Months and months and months of research finally paid off though. This section really would have been very helpful.
However, I hope the members can regulate the information that gets posted here. The last thing that we need is for some guy who thinks he knows everything about paint and bodywork spouting off bad information. Let's all try to keep it real so to say.
Perk

 

Thanks to everyone who helped to get this section going This will be a great addition to the CF and hopefully those doing (or interested in doing) their own paint and bodywork can both share and learn.

 

Excellent, I should start a thread to see what can be done about the hood on my C4.

 

I'm sure this will be a very useful section!