Whilst working on the repairs to the glass fibre bits I thought I would take some time out and sort out an issue that has been bugging me for some time.
When taking off the glass fibre panels to get to the birdcage I had attempted to remove, in it's entirety, the passenger side lock post cover from the rear quarter and roof bow. This did not work well at all and I ended up with an awful mess where the bonding strip runs along the rear quarter. Rather than going further and doing more damage I decided instead to cut out a section so that I could get to the join of the birdcage sill and lock post. A bit brutal but it should end up ok. I would have preferred not to have done this but I was doing more harm than good trying to remove the whole panel so this revised approach seemed the best - well the least worst anyway - idea.
It ended up looking like this - this area was quite noticeable in my 'finished' birdcage pictures in the last post. The rear quarter is actually detached from the bottom right up to the roof bow. It looks bad in the picture but really, really ugly in the flesh, as it were.
Thus the first task was to reattach the rear quarter with bonding agent. Another reason for trying this repair was to experiment with the bonding process - I didn't want to use it the first time on something so critical and complex as the floor and firewall.
Thus, with bonding agent mixed up I reattached the top part of the rear quarter back to the lock post cover, using plasticene to spread the load, cling film to ensure that I didn't end up gluing a large block of wood to the side of my car, and a bucket full of water to provide some weight to press the pieces together. The other end of the rope is tied to the holes in the opposite wheel. A bit Heath-Robinson but it actually worked quite well so after leaving it overnight to go off....
... I repeated the process to glue the rest of the quarter to the lock post cover. This time with the addition of a 4mm steel strip bent to the profile of the car to provide a reasonably consistent load all along the join. Again plasticene was used to allow for any discrepancies in the curvature between the quarter and the metal strip
After leaving it over night I ended up with a reasonably good looking repair that fitted closely together.
To fill the gash in the side I chopped out any loose glass fibre, ground down the sides of the hole produced and applied three layers of glass fibre mat and resin. After sanding that down to get a rough profile I applied a coat of glass fibre filler (Proworx in this case which works very nicely). This is a very strong filler and helps add some rigidity to the repair. I think it is known in the US as kitty hair filler.
This was then sanded down and body filler (again Proworx brand) applied. After some further iterations (3 I think) I applied a final layer of glazing putty (UPOL Dolphin glaze) which is quite fluid and gives a very nice finish. Apologies: forgot to take any pictures of these stages.
Finally a coat of high build primer was used to check the finish. Paint often shows up all sorts of imperfections - and there are some - but I think it looks Ok for the time being and will be finished off when the rest of the body is ready for full prep and paint.
... and now back to the firewall installation....
