Pete Andrews asks about his Bugeye;
1. I also got a hardtop with Bugeye #2. The fiberglass is crazed
but it still is solid. How should I refinish it? A new gel
coat? Bondo and paint??
>> A common misconception with fiberglass is that you
can re-gel coat it, but you cannot, and I'll try to
explain why. (Please bear with me, it's been 6 yrs.
since Polymer Engineering .... ;-)
When laying up a object in a mold (hardtops, boat
hulls, etc.) and you desire a smooth outside finish,
you put down gel coat first on the inside of a mold
so that the fibers from whatever fiberglass media
(cloth, mat, or spray from a chopper gun) that you put
down next do not mar the surface of the object you are
constructing. Since the gel coat dries against the
inside of the mold, when you remove the object from the
mold you get a smooth outside surface. However, once
the object is removed from the mold, there is nothing
for additional gel coat (if added later), to dry smoothly
against, and doing so would give you a smoother version
of the inside of your hardtop looks like, but certainly
nothing like the outside. There is hope tho ....
There is a primer available at better automotive
paint supply stores that is designed to be used on raw
fiberglass that will fill in the waves/fibers/etc in
one or two coats. What you want to do is this;
If the gel coat is really cracked & crazed, take it
off with a razor blade scraper. Paint directly over this
and you're paint will eventually soak into the cracks, and
you are back where you started from. you don't want to use a
sander/grinder to remove the gel coat, because you'll
end up cutting into the fiberglass in places and those
oopses then have to be filled with something. Trust me,
if the gel coat is brittle enough to craze & crack,
it'll probably come off in big sheets with a sharp
blade.
Next, using some ~ 100 grit sandpaper wrapped
around a soft sponge pad (so your fingers don't cause
grooves to be sanded in the fiberglass), go over the
whole top just to rough it up/even it out/remove any
traces of gelcoat.
Next spray on a good thick coat of "that" primer
(I'll remember the name right after I send this).
Directly on top of this lightly dust a coat of paint of
a contrasting color. This is called a "guide coat"
because it "guides" you to where the problem areas are
when "blocking" (sanding with the sponge pad to get the
object flat & smooth). When all this is dry, go back to
your sponge block & some ~240 grit paper & begin
sanding (blocking) in straight, even strokes. What you'll
quickly see is that the guide coat is sanded away easily
from the high spots, indicating where the low spots are.
You can concentrate your sanding there to get the low spots
out, but the minute you go through the primer around a
low spot, STOP, because you'll need to add more primer
to be able to get this area flat. Repeat this as many
times as you feel is required to achieve the level of
"straightness" you want, each time moving to a finer
grade of sandpaper. A color coat of paint is usually
applied after a sanding with 400 grit, with good
results.
Sorry so long-winded, and if you find a source for
hardtop sealing rubber, please let me/us know !
4. AH Spares also is advertising new seat foams. Mine are pretty
gross. Any experience with these?
>>I'll try to be briefer here ;-) We rebuilt my seat
foams by cutting up carpet padding and stuffing it in
the holes in the original foam bolsters. Ugly, but it
worked.
cheers-
daren
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