Finished Prep Work

I finished up all the prep work on the bodywork, and now I am just waiting for my supplier to get me the needed materials to start laying the glass.

The side pod is now all prepped, and ready to be rebuilt.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished work on the nose cone, so these will have to suffice:

And all the parts waiting to get glassed.

It has been a long time since I last used this very expensive roll of material... I trust that everyone who is reading this know what Carbon Fiber is. I will be using this to reinforce some areas that are structural mounts on the body, as well as the nose cone.

Sidepod Bottom Prep Completed

The bottom of the sidepod has some pretty serious damage to the front radius as well as a section of the rear mounting location.


This is the front radius that will be rebuilt.

The rear mounting location is the two holes that are at the bottom.

After grinding away some glass, I found the wood substrate was damaged pretty badly. I ground out the damaged wood, and will build the area back up with carbon fiber, as it is a structural mount.

The last few shots show the completed prep work. Also, I refit a mounting tab to the front.

Today/tonight I finished up the prep work on the air inlet. I found some damage that had to be cut out, and will have to do a bit of hand sanding, but it is ready for glass and then final shaping & smoothing.

Another part that was started is the rear side panel that the suspension and drive axle go thru. This was an odd part to fix. More on that in a minute.

After I started grinding on some of the panel, I noticed chunks of resin and glass were "popping" up. After looking, I saw the odd part: Oil penetrated the fiberglass and caused it to not be able to adhere to the sub layers.

I am pretty sure that I was able to grind out the suspect areas as well as clean the oils out with acetone. I will know for sure when I start laying glass.

After a good hour and half of grinding, smoothing, and reshaping, I was left with this:

I still need to sand the paint and gelcoat off the other side, but I will wait until I have a layer or two of fresh S-Glass (a stronger, structural fiberglass) layed and cured.

Next on the list for tonight was the side-pod. This has quite a bit of damage, and will need to have some areas completely rebuilt.

I got a bit further than I thought I would with this tonight. There is still more to be done, but like the rear panel, I will have to glass a new layer on the underside before I continue to grind out the cracked glass and gel-coat.

A bit more prep work

I finished more of the prep on the engine cover, and also started the prep on the air intake housing.

As you can see, the back of the right side is in much better shape (glass wise). There was very little layer seperation, and no thru cracking. I will just have to drill out some stress propagation points, and then start glassing.

This suspension fairing had a bit of damage that was pretty deep, and it was mostly broken glass fibers, with a bit of resin cracking. After the air sander, it was all hand sanded to keep all the contours. The resin they used is some extremely hard stuff.

The prep on the engine cover is about 95% complete at this stage.

Now onto the really damaged part: the air intake housing.

After a lot of sanding and shaping, it is about 75% prepped. The rest of the prep work will be on the inside of the housing, to smooth and even out the glass for a consistant strength.

The work begins

First off; to properly start working on any project, you have to have a nice cigar.

After a quick wipe down with acetone, I took a stainless steel brush to the damage that I could see. This is to "fluff" up the loose glass fibers, and to remove loose paint and any other thing that can be hiding damage.

After brushing the weave out, I took a heat gun to the damaged area to dry any acetone hiding out, but making sure to not go over 160 degrees. Taking certain resins over 160 will cause a thermal break-down of the resin . Since I have no idea of the resin used, it was best to err on the side of caution.

After I was certain that everything was dry, I started cutting out the loose, damaged fiberglass.

Now is the point where the real "fun" begins: The grinding/sanding to find the REAL damage.

During the grinding, I discovered a little problem, and yet another reason not to trust the French. If you notice the lighter colored area, then you are seeing what happens when proper mold prep and layering does not happen. The lighter area is an air pocket, or void between the layers of fiberglass. Pretty much, it is a huge weak point, and I am not sure how the body work survived as long as it did without cracking on its own.

I was getting concered as to when the damaged areas would stop. After a while of grinding, I finally found the end... I do worry that there are other voids in the bodywork, but I am not getting paid to "discover" other areas. If I find them, they will be fixed.

Notice, no adhesion of the layers.

The marked area is what I had to remove to make things right.

Now I can glass the area properly, after I get the rest of the engine cover prepped.