Dale002

I have a crack on the right front fender lip, What would be an acceptable repair, material type and so on?



front fender lip

View from the underside.

DUB

Use WEST SYSTEMS EPOXY RESIN and mat to fix this.

Not beign able to actually know exactly where the crack is due to your photos were to close to it. I can not tell if this area would be effected but any stresses due to not knowing its exact location because you writing the front fender lip does not work for me.

BUT...regardless of that I use the West Systems resin and mat and prime and paint. Some of the repair may need to be done on the underside due to how the SMC likes to shear. So do not be surprised if the repair area gets much larger than what you may think due to distressed fibers that need to be ground out.

DUB

Dale002

which one?, they have different mats and resin kits on their web site. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.

DUB

I use the WEST SYSTEMS 105 resin and the 206 hardener.. As for the mat...get their mat that I would guess is the ounce and a half mat. I do not buy my mat through them so I am not exactly sure what the part number for it is. Maybe you should contact them on the phone and link them to this repair on the forum so they can see what you have to repair.

DUB

Dale002

Hi DUB,
Sorry for the delay, been dealing with an EF0 tornado one week then a Hurricane the next. Been busy. Here is a better picture of the passenger front fender on my C7
I'm thinking the basic repair should be close to the same a fiberglass?

DUB

This crack will take a little more effort when it comes to laying in the mat and resin so you do not have any air pockets in the mat.

I am guessing you are not going to be overly concerned on how the repair looks/feels on the backside of the panel.....which is where I would lay up my mat and resin.

Filet the mat so it is half as thick so it is much easier to control and makes it follow the shape of the panel IF you find that the full thickness is not doing what you want it to do for you. IF you filet the mat...obviously you will need to apply more pieces to gain the thickness you need for the repair. 3 layers of ounce and half mat at its full thickness should be fine...so that means you would apply 6 pieces of your filleted mat. You can apply a layer of fiberglass cloth on top of this for added strength.....and actually put some cloth in between the layers of mat if you choose to do so for even more strength.

Make sure you mat has frayed edges like it gets when you tear it by hand and not cut straight with pair of scissors.

Make your pieces of mat go from smaller to bigger. so there is a nice taper to your repair and not all of the sizes of mat being the same and it then becomes a huge blob on the backside of the panel.....unless you do not care about that.

Make sure you taper out the area you prep on the backside about an inch or so on each side of the crack and make sure when you are grinding it out you get all of the distressed SMC to come out.

DUB