How to fix a warped fiberglass panel

it's pretty good stuff. i think barry used it on his vette. west is really good but i think this will be a little better than mixing your own.
 
The other question I had about working on glass... It sounds like you are doing your Vette Panel Adhesive/Filler directly on the fiberglass, right? Then epoxy over that?

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yes. with glass it is not really necessary to epoxy first since rust is not an issue. i use epoxy for fill primer on glass also.

but i guess i should smear ospho on it like the 35 year expert does then hit it with etch primer ..... :)
 
Thanks. I have read your vette build threads here and on the old forum, but was never quite sure on that detail. I may pass on the acid/etch primer combo though ;)
 
Thanks for the input guys, I looked for panels over at Studebaker Int and they had them so when the time comes I will go that route.
However, as this is a stock and all original Avanti I'm not into putting metal where glass goes or glass where metal goes. If it was already rodded, modded, or otherwise tweeked from original that could be considered but at this point all I'm considering doing different is changing the type of paint I'll use on it. The lacquer just doesn't cut it... unless someone convinces me it would increase the value somehow!!
I was going to use the West system for the minor spots since there is a good source close by and even though I'm near the oldest town west of the mighty Mississippi... the closest paint jobber other than NAPA is an hour away.
 
I would like to add my experience of maybe a couple of hundred vettes and years of fiberglass work...I think we could be making too much ado about this stuff. I have seen and we have done concourse work with patching fiberglass...it's the way a vette is put together in the first place...patching pieces together to form a body. I also have mixed results using epoxy resin to patch with, because if you don't adhere to very strict policies in its use on fiberglass, it too is a problem...why???? because although epoxy adheres to fiberglass better than ester based resins, regular body fillers and primers don't adhere to epoxy as well unless exacting procedures are used. We have had ghosting problems using epoxy as well. There is no one reason for problems when working with fiberglass. We have problems with one in ten jobs, I don't care what we do....Of course I hate it...I believe vinylester is an all around better material to patch with than epoxy for the average guy. It's not brain surgery and it's starting to sound like it around here (yup, I expect to hear about this from ya'all). Most ghosting is from higher temperatures than the surface has seen before...It's the resin curing up to this temperature and probably won't happen again until that temperature is surpassed...Post cure your repairs to at least 200 degrees and this won't happen...go higher for black or dark colors...What usually happens is the guy takes his newly painted fiberglass car out in the spring and it ghosts everytime he takes the car out....why??? because the temperature keeps rising the deeper into summer you go....won't do it the next season, though...just another approach from an old guy, post cure before you work fiberglass in any way and you'll be much happier...I'd also like to add that the reason you see seams in the old bodies is that the the bodies that were designed for a 10 year lifespan are 5 times that...no one could predict what they would do now, back when they were built...can you predict what an epoxy patch will do???not ranking expoxy cuz I love it, but........
 
I had an unpainted poorly fitting fiberglass deck lid from an unknown source. Two corners lacked sufficient curve to fit properly. The corners sat about a half inch too high. The lid is bonded two piece having been molded from both the inside and outside of an original steel lid.

Somewhere I ran across info from someone with a corvette panel that did not fit correctly, the poster used a heat gun to slowly, successfully fit the panel back into the desired position. He claimed success changing the panel without damaging the paint. As they say, time will tell.

I clamped each corner down and alternated hitting both sides with a heat gun on low setting. The surface temp was measured at 150-200 F degrees. One small section at a time took to a new shape. Somewhere around 10-15 small changes to obtain the necessary shape. I have to be pleased, previously I had a totally ill fitting lid.
 
I used a lot of that vette adhesive years ago mostly for splicing header panels doing collision repairs and there was always ghosting-very minimal but visable at certain temps for sure. Same goes for the current epoxy based SMC repair materials I've used- always some tmperature related minor ghosting on sail panel seams-sectioning joints, boxside repairs, etc... but good enough for collision repairs. I've never had any ghosting problems repairing fiberglass with fiberglass and basic polyester resin. I think a lot of the bondline seams that shrink and show on old vettes a good portion of the problem is also related to the primers that were in use back then just like some of the soldered sail panel joints on metal cars of that era that were primed and sanded-you see a lot of shrinkage in these areas when they age and that old glass makes the paint deteriorate a lot faster than metal bodied cars.
 
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