TVRs: Airfix kits for grown-ups!
Discussion
My newly-cracked bumper was feeling a little flimsy, so I thought I'd do a quick repair to hold the thing together.
First I got my trusty angle grinder out, once I'd made sure that old tw@y next door was watching telly :D
I cleaned the inside of the bumper back to sound GRP, removing the bodgy patch in the corner that was hanging off. In the pic below, the dark area in the middle of the corner angle is some kind of filler...
[pic]http://photos.fotango.com/p/eba00272483f00000082.jpg[/pic]
Then I gathered some mat, resin and hardener, a stirring stick, a 2" paintbrush with the bristles cut down and (not shown) the wife's best dressmaking scissors :D Well, she won't be needing them now... I also located a special calibrated measuring jar :hehe:
[pic]http://photos.fotango.com/p/eba00272483f00000086.jpg[/pic]
I decanted 100 ml of resin into the jar and squeezed out about 30cm of hardener, which was then added to the resin and mixed. From now on you have to work bloody quickly; this stuff goes off faster than a cornered suicide bomber. Alas me Julie had gone to bed with a migraine and I didn't want to get my digi camera covered in glop so I can't show you the process of stippling slices of mat into the bumper contours.
However, when you've run out of resin, it looks like this:
[pic]http://photos.fotango.com/p/eba00272483f00000084.jpg[/pic]
After about half an hour, which is about how long it takes to clean the paintbrush before it sets and get strands of glass off your hands, I mixed up another batch and did it all again.
I plan to chop out the bumper mountings, blast and paint them and glass them back in. You can see some nice raggy TVR GRP holding one mounting here, although it's a bit blurred...
[pic]http://photos.fotango.com/p/eba00272483f00000083.jpg[/pic]
More to follow....
First I got my trusty angle grinder out, once I'd made sure that old tw@y next door was watching telly :D
I cleaned the inside of the bumper back to sound GRP, removing the bodgy patch in the corner that was hanging off. In the pic below, the dark area in the middle of the corner angle is some kind of filler...
[pic]http://photos.fotango.com/p/eba00272483f00000082.jpg[/pic]
Then I gathered some mat, resin and hardener, a stirring stick, a 2" paintbrush with the bristles cut down and (not shown) the wife's best dressmaking scissors :D Well, she won't be needing them now... I also located a special calibrated measuring jar :hehe:
[pic]http://photos.fotango.com/p/eba00272483f00000086.jpg[/pic]
I decanted 100 ml of resin into the jar and squeezed out about 30cm of hardener, which was then added to the resin and mixed. From now on you have to work bloody quickly; this stuff goes off faster than a cornered suicide bomber. Alas me Julie had gone to bed with a migraine and I didn't want to get my digi camera covered in glop so I can't show you the process of stippling slices of mat into the bumper contours.
However, when you've run out of resin, it looks like this:
[pic]http://photos.fotango.com/p/eba00272483f00000084.jpg[/pic]
After about half an hour, which is about how long it takes to clean the paintbrush before it sets and get strands of glass off your hands, I mixed up another batch and did it all again.
I plan to chop out the bumper mountings, blast and paint them and glass them back in. You can see some nice raggy TVR GRP holding one mounting here, although it's a bit blurred...
[pic]http://photos.fotango.com/p/eba00272483f00000083.jpg[/pic]
More to follow....
I just started to think you smacked the back corner on purpose just to give yourself something to do, and so the rest of us feel inadequate.
I think you should have your own Wedge DIY show on Sky.Show us the Wedge way
PS thanks for the help with my boot release, what was the techinical term for the motor, 'rough as a badgers what?'
I think you should have your own Wedge DIY show on Sky.Show us the Wedge way
PS thanks for the help with my boot release, what was the techinical term for the motor, 'rough as a badgers what?'
Believe me Colin, I would much rather NOT have done it. I don't have the patience for bodywork repairs, it never looks as good as I hope it will.
As it happens, I tried the boot release on my car last night; the motor needs very little effort to move it so I think we can safely say yours is 'badgered'
As it happens, I tried the boot release on my car last night; the motor needs very little effort to move it so I think we can safely say yours is 'badgered'
So, 24 hours later and the repair is set solid. I removed the excess flash with the jigsaw to get back to the original edge of the bumper...
Now I need to attack the painted side, but first those rusty mountings. I used a burr in the mini die grinder to cut throught the GRP that held the mounts to the bumper...
and with a bit of levering prised the nearside mount away. It was stuck to the resin, but as you can see there's quite a bit of rust lurking in there...
Then I repeated the process for the offside mount, which was in even worse condition.....
The raggy stump at r/h side being all that was holding the mount in place!
Continues...
Now I need to attack the painted side, but first those rusty mountings. I used a burr in the mini die grinder to cut throught the GRP that held the mounts to the bumper...
and with a bit of levering prised the nearside mount away. It was stuck to the resin, but as you can see there's quite a bit of rust lurking in there...
Then I repeated the process for the offside mount, which was in even worse condition.....
The raggy stump at r/h side being all that was holding the mount in place!
Continues...
tallbloke said:
These photo-fixit manual pages are part of the reason you got the most helpful wedger award you know Ian. You should bang 'em all in a folder for inclusion in next years info-pack cd.
And when he does he can copy my hundreds of Tasmin photos onto the CD too!!!
Regards
Iain
tallbloke said:
These photo-fixit manual pages are part of the reason you got the most helpful wedger award you know Ian. You should bang 'em all in a folder for inclusion in next years info-pack cd.
There's not just me wot knows a spanner from a sledgehammer, ye knaa.
Maybe we could arrange a few demos, or similar practical things for next year... I'm sure more people would get to grips with electrics, say, if they knew their Amps from their kilOhms.
Then again those who make a living from such activities might be mightily miffed once their secrets are out...
OK, so new bumper mount brackets needed.
I extrapolated from the crusty remains what sort of dimensions the originals must have been, then scoured the workshop for materials. Amazingly the only piece of scrap 1.5" square box steel I could find was just to say long enough to provide the two requisite pieces!
I had some 2mm plate left over from Tony (Uriel's) chassis repair so that was that sorted; that only left the captive bolts. I had a couple of offcuts of 10mm studding rattling around in a box, so I was on a roll.
Quick session with angle grinder and sandblast gave this collection of bits:
Out of focus as usual, funny how it always looks OK on the camera LCD...
Anyway, I fired up the MIG set (last night's lack of a Lotto win means I still have no TIG gear...
) and 10 minutes or so later...
- which reminds me, the studding is stainless steel so the nuts shouldn't get stuck
Whilst I was stripping out the boot to get at the inside of the wing to survey the carnage, I pulled the rusty strut braces out. These are the brackets that support the bootlid gas struts, they're bolted through the wing and the wheelarch.
Needless to say the bolts were also rusted solid and I had to shear some of them to get them off.
Some kind of roofing bolt had been used where the strut brace is fixed to the wing (in the water channel next to the rubber seal); I thought it looked naff so I've sourced some nicer-looking flanged hex-head domes in stainless
... look, the devil is in the detail, OK?!
Blasted and repainted strut braces look like this:
Onward, but not necessarily upward...
I extrapolated from the crusty remains what sort of dimensions the originals must have been, then scoured the workshop for materials. Amazingly the only piece of scrap 1.5" square box steel I could find was just to say long enough to provide the two requisite pieces!
I had some 2mm plate left over from Tony (Uriel's) chassis repair so that was that sorted; that only left the captive bolts. I had a couple of offcuts of 10mm studding rattling around in a box, so I was on a roll.
Quick session with angle grinder and sandblast gave this collection of bits:
Out of focus as usual, funny how it always looks OK on the camera LCD...
Anyway, I fired up the MIG set (last night's lack of a Lotto win means I still have no TIG gear...
) and 10 minutes or so later... - which reminds me, the studding is stainless steel so the nuts shouldn't get stuck
Whilst I was stripping out the boot to get at the inside of the wing to survey the carnage, I pulled the rusty strut braces out. These are the brackets that support the bootlid gas struts, they're bolted through the wing and the wheelarch.
Needless to say the bolts were also rusted solid and I had to shear some of them to get them off.
Some kind of roofing bolt had been used where the strut brace is fixed to the wing (in the water channel next to the rubber seal); I thought it looked naff so I've sourced some nicer-looking flanged hex-head domes in stainless
... look, the devil is in the detail, OK?! Blasted and repainted strut braces look like this:
Onward, but not necessarily upward...
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