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I didn' make it back to the car yet, but I got to repair my new fender straight out the box!
Nasty big crack at the top of the arch.
The hand laid glass seems very "rushed" , 1 front had the same bad finish, with air bubbles under the gelcoat and inconsistent depth of Mat. Which contributed to this crack(s). Was trying to set them up for my new style side marker lights but that will have to wait until this dries.
These two B pillar cover panels i unglued for access, but somone had chopped them up for version 1 of rust repair on this poor old car.
Chopped out the middle area for access to the frame rail end I guess ( on both sides ).
Made new pieces to splice in , which i already have done , they are strong but kind of rough , but for where they go it will be fine.
On some of the aftermarket hand laid parts I get in. It seems teat some companies only put enough material on them to sell the part and do not make them like they were made 30 years ago where the part actually had some structure to it and they were thicker.
So..more times than not...I have to prep the underside of the panel and apply MORE mat and resin to thicken up those parts due to calling the company and complaining to them about it seems to fall on deaf ears.
YES...air bubbles in the panel is something I battle with all the time...and it seems that this occurs on parts that have white gelcoat ...it seems to be more predominant. It is like the laminator can not see them when they are rolling out the glass. Not only that...when I hold parts up to the sun..I can see how thin the gelcoat is on the part due to sunlight coming through it rather easily in areas. So much for 20 mils of gelcoat being on them in most cases. Just a thin coat seems to be the standard for some companies.
Yes those guards were all over the place in regards to thickness of the gelcoat and how even the glass was laid.I ground out all the airpockets that I could see. Was nearly a full days work to prep and re glass all of them.
Before I went to work I set up a test piece for the L.F glue
the base piece is extra from the new hood surround , so I stuck the old "false gill " on and clamped it , next to that is a glass fibre mix with the L.F
glue , what I will do with that is grind it flat and use straight L.F to glue an old piece of bond strip on ...and see how it goes
I made a "well" from blue masking tape and filled it with straight L.F glue . Also clamped a new (I made) off cut on to check if the glass I'm using is ok (compatable).
Ground flat the glue , roughed it up with 40 grit paper
then just glued some of the old bond strip on
So will leave this for a day or so and see how it goes. I cant move the glue that was in the tape well , so i think this will work out ok .I tried to remove the off cut but I started to hear the glass tearing ( it was over 45 degrees bent up) .
Started back on this now , in between renovations of my kitchen and bathroom I will make some progress on this . Not so bad as it's getting warmer outside now. I want to get the work smoothed out on those 1/4 panels before I reattach them . So I made a start.
not much I know . Sanded most of that off and it's looking ok.
Just getting a bit more done on these panels , rear C6 side light mounting holes done, just smoothing them off .Down to 120 grit .Once I get all areas done I will wet sand and reprime.
09-22-2018, 07:11 AM
