Underbody Fiberglass Repair

[Jim Damasiwicz]

Can anyone tell me how I can repair the fiberglass in the rear wheel well where the side pipe exhaust exits the frame. I inadvertingly broke this off when I had my body dropped on the body dolly.

[Keith B.]

Re: Underbody Fiberglass Repair

I assume that you still have the piece that broke off. If so take the piece and test it for alignment. You will need fiberglass matting (not the one that looks like cloth) mix up your resin and apply the fiberglass to both sides of the piece after putting it back into place. Roll out all bubbles!! Put wax paper over the resin and matting and put a small clamp on it to hold it. The wax paper prevent the clamp from being bonded and helps keep the surface relatively flat. Once it is dried you should be able to gently block sand the piece to its original condition. Then use paint to finish the job.

Keith

[Ray C.]

Re: Underbody Fiberglass Repair

It would help to know the size of the repair area. I am not familiar with the instalation of side pipes. On all the repairs that I completed on my 65 I backed the repair with matt and resin, not cloth (looks like window screen)I then hollow ground the exterior approximatly 3" wide. I rebuilt this area starting with a 1 1/2" strip of resin saturated glass mat, then a 2" strip and finally a 3" strip. In areas of visual concern I repeated this process on the underside or where I backed the repair. If you need to secure the broken part for alignment, I used 1/8"X 3/4"X 4" aluminum strips with sheet metal screws. After the application of backing materials, I removed the aluminum plates, hollow ground the sheet metal screw holes and repeated the process mentioned above. I skim coated the repaired area with Evercoat Gold and block sanded to the body contour. This is alot of work, but I hope the repair seams will not telegraph through in a few years.

Ray