Respraying - feasible or not even worth considering

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Must say, @6carjon car with the orange stripes looks superb.

[dombanks]

If your grp bits are a bit cracked or have holes in like my nose cone can they be repaired with filler and then painted??

I recall being told that the cracks will just come back.

[Thrustyjust]

6 minutes ago, dombanks said:

If your grp bits are a bit cracked or have holes in like my nose cone can they be repaired with filler and then painted??

I recall being told that the cracks will just come back.

Yes you can repair. You must drill the end of the cracks to stop them migrating and then open the cracks up and re- fibre glass. Its a bit brutal but if you dont, they will continue to crack again.

[dombanks]

7 minutes ago, Thrustyjust said:

Yes you can repair. You must drill the end of the cracks to stop them migrating and then open the cracks up and re- fibre glass. Its a bit brutal but if you dont, they will continue to crack again.

Haha mine would look like Swiss cheese

[Thrustyjust]

21 minutes ago, dombanks said:

Haha mine would look like Swiss cheese

Anything is fixable with fibre glass . Cue photos of totally demolished body panels being next on the thread. 

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

20 minutes ago, Thrustyjust said:

Anything is fixable with fibre glass . Cue photos of totally demolished body panels being next on the thread. 

Yep, all is do-able, just depends on whether it’s worth doing! Saw some amazing pictures of an old Corvette being restored, where no bodywork was available, a large door skinned section that looked like the gel coat had shattered into a million pieces, was reinforced from behind, then sanded back to  the mat layer, and re-gelcoated, in reverse. Then sanded back and re-profiled, before eventually being painted as part of the complete cars respray. Whole sections of the car got similar treatment, where the surface was too crazed to work with.

[MarkS2]

On 07/11/2018 at 09:53, Steve (sdh2903) said:

Some good info here aswell

 

That is my car I bought it in 2012 sold it in 2015 then bought it back  in 2017 and the paint even to this day looks stunning and often still gets comments.

So as has been said if done properly it is no different to any other non fibreglass car and will last.

 

 

[keirik]

It's amazing the difference you can make with a bit of vinyl wrap and some time

[Phil Nelson]

I painted my Westie this year using cellulose and as predicted, it took ages. Fortunately at the time I was working from home and so I got it done. I repaired some damage and changed the colour from some really bad yellow(s) to Ford Sunburst red and Ford Brilliant white, with gold. I took the body off as I wanted to paint the inside as well as the outside. I followed the paint guide as above using really cheap/old equipment in my drive, because I wasn't that bothered about the finish. However after many hours of colour sanding it came out OK. The bad thing about Cellulose is that it is soft, but the good thing is that it is cheap, easy to touch in and colour sand back when the inevitable scratches happen. Spraying separate panels multi-colours takes a lot of paint and consumables; I got through 30 Litres of thinners! 

As everyone agrees spending time flatting the panels using a guide coat is the most important step with fibreglass. When it is flat you can colour sand successfully, otherwise you will rub through the top coats.

To be honest I enjoyed doing it and saved a lot of money in the process. Next time I will buy a decent gun and save a lot of time flatting down orange peel!

[tex]

Wrapping isn't as hard as it looks but there are some tricky areas, nose cone being one. Impossible to do in one sheet.. You'd need to split the sections, the rest isn't bad once you know how.. I had a few issues, just pull it off and redo it..