Bodywork coming along
Thread Starter
5th Gear Member
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,505
From: Wasilla, Alaska
Bodywork coming along
Skim coating and sanding! Hopefully the car will go to prime next week since we are only working on it during the weekends. I am working on the corner of my trunk as some of you may remember. I cut the steel from an old computer shell. I used a whitney punch to pop all the holes in the patch which were then spot welded. I then used bondo-glass to fill it in. If any of you are doing bodywork, I suggest you try this stuff. It is like kitty hair and it is much stronger than the regular bondo. It actually has fiberglass strands in it.
My fiberglass hood was bowed pretty bad in the middle along the sides. I used a piece of 3/8" X 2" X 3' steel bar to fix it. I bounced on the steel to put a bow in the middle. I then reverse clamped it onto each side of the hood drawing the bow down with 5 C-clamps so the hood flattened out. Then I took a torch and heated the steel and top of the fiberglass. After it heated I could hear the resins poping and cracking. Pretty scary at first. I thought my hood was going to explode. I took some cool water and ran it over the heated areas. After the hood cooled I took the clamps off and it stayed! I thought of this all on my own and it worked. I suppose someone will tell me that my hood will crumble within a year now [8D]
Anyway, when the car is painted I have a long road ahead of me putting everything back together. I never thought I'd strip the car as far as I did for paint.
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[IMG]local://upfiles/21693/204F52369AF14060BAF25E0E63077E29.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]local://upfiles/21693/B04EDBF272044727AD899CE39DEE9F8B.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]local://upfiles/21693/3DAE6C2E903F46C28A57E0249B4E08D7.jpg[/IMG]
My fiberglass hood was bowed pretty bad in the middle along the sides. I used a piece of 3/8" X 2" X 3' steel bar to fix it. I bounced on the steel to put a bow in the middle. I then reverse clamped it onto each side of the hood drawing the bow down with 5 C-clamps so the hood flattened out. Then I took a torch and heated the steel and top of the fiberglass. After it heated I could hear the resins poping and cracking. Pretty scary at first. I thought my hood was going to explode. I took some cool water and ran it over the heated areas. After the hood cooled I took the clamps off and it stayed! I thought of this all on my own and it worked. I suppose someone will tell me that my hood will crumble within a year now [8D]
Anyway, when the car is painted I have a long road ahead of me putting everything back together. I never thought I'd strip the car as far as I did for paint.
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[IMG]local://upfiles/21693/204F52369AF14060BAF25E0E63077E29.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]local://upfiles/21693/B04EDBF272044727AD899CE39DEE9F8B.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]local://upfiles/21693/3DAE6C2E903F46C28A57E0249B4E08D7.jpg[/IMG]
Thread Starter
5th Gear Member
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,505
From: Wasilla, Alaska
RE: Bodywork coming along
Yikes, I feel your pain. That damn metal is thin and will burn through when you weld it. Can you drill holes around the outside of the hole and hold a patch up under it and spot weld? Then use that bond-glass to cover it. That is my suggestion. Maybe someone has a better one. I hope you are using a wire feed with argon. Good luck.
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