Bodywork Part 1

If there is one thing that I have done a lot of over the past 14 years of racing, it is bodywork--whether it was making a new piece or repairing existing pieces. This project is going to involve a lot of bodywork and what I'm tackling now is probably considered unneccesary to many because it is strictly aesthetic and isn't going to improve the performance of the car at all.  However, the car is going to get repainted and I plan on taking the car to car shows to continue my fund raising efforts for the Wounded Warrior Project so I figured I might as well make it look as good as I can since I have the time to do it.   First, I'm tackling the left side panel and here are pics of the areas that I'm repairing.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the hole where the pushrod connects to the rocker but I think it will look better if it was a perfectly round hole so that is what I'm going to shoot for.

This area of the bodywork had been repaired before and what I noticed was there was a high weld on the frame so I ended up grinding that down so there wouldn't be as much strain on the fiberglass after I repaired it.

Lots of spider cracks in this area and in other areas of the car.

A broken piece of fiberglass.

Properly lining up a fiberglass panel so that the holes are properly aligned with the nutcerts installed in the frame is always a huge challenge.  All of the holes on this panel had been changed multiple times plus some of the nutcerts were spinning.  I think all the nutcerts installed were metric and I'm used to working with 10-32 hardware so I ended up changing all the nutcerts to 10-32 and will fix the holes.

Ok, Lets get started!!

Again, figuring out where to drill holes in fibreglass so that they are in the perfect spot is a real challenge so I came up with the idea of creating a template in aluminum and drilling a couple of 1/8" holes in it so that I can fasten it to the fibreglass with cleco fasteners.  The 1/8" holes are very easy to fill in when I'm done with everything else.  I also created a template for the holes for the 10-32 screws along the bottom of the panel.

Repairing fiberglass is the perfect example of tearing something down in order to rebuild it.  The key with repairing fiberglass is to tear it down just enough so that you can use as much of the old material as possible.  I used a dremmel to create the troughs which is where spider cracks were.  This pic also shows how much material I removed where the lower A arm goes into the footwell.  I also sanded down the back side of this and every other place that I am repairing.

Here is the spot where the push rod connects to the rocker.  Notice how I left a ring of bare fiberglass around the hole.  This is important because new fiberglass will be able to bond to it.

And one of the small holes at the bottom of the panel.

This is the back side of the panel but I used a couple pieces of aluminum (one each side) to clamp the wet fiberglass to the panel until it hardened.  This helps it bond to the old material and keeps the panel straight.  I did the same thing when I fiberglassed the other side.

Before laying fiberglass matt on the panel, I used short strand fiberglass filler to fill in any low spots.  The fiberglass filler is much better then standard body filler in these applications because it is much stronger.

Here is the same area after sanding down the short strand fiberglass.

Here is the hole for the pushrod after I applied the short strand fiberglass and sanded it.  After I layed fiberglass mat on the back side, some of it protruded through the front side so I built it up more on the back side and then sanded it flat so that I could apply the filler and cover it with another piece of fiberglass mat.

Here is the panel after the fiberglass filler was applied and sanded.

And this is the panel after I appled "Icing" which is a body filler that is designed to fill in any small imperfections like pin holes.  It is also very easy to sand.  This is where I stopped this weekend so next weekend I will be sanding it smooth and getting it ready for paint.