Repairs to paint work.
Discussion
Well I got the the old gal out today for a visit to the paint shop. This is only the second time I've driven her since bringing it home some 18 months ago. I seem to have spent all my life underneath the thing after cleaning up the underneath which included stripping off all the suspension and repainting.
Anyway, back to the subject. Spiders? well thats what they call those cracks all over the bonnet, and huge some of them are. They are repairable and this requires some considerable work on my part to keep the cost down.
Having spoken to the best sprayer in my home town it appears that although time consuming, its not that bad to sand these all out. What needs to be done is to sand back to the point where the cracks in the surface have gone completly. This will require taking the paint right back to the GRP and creating a filling area for some new GRP. If you go in deep, due to the crack depth you may well need some matting to build up the area in layers, just as it was in the mould.
Now the interesting point in all this is that I thought that you had to use Gelcoat at some point before filling and spraying but this is not the case.
This bloke has sprayed lotus cars for repairs and has assured me that if you are respaying the car then all you need to do is fill the dips with GRP sand back below the suface, fill with universal filler, sand back anf fill with polyester stopper, spray with a 2 pack primer and then rub to a fine finish recoat with primer until spot on and apply the finish coats. well thats all then !
The point here is that you do not have to apply Gelcoat at any point for this and he never has!
He said the only time gelcoat is applied is in the construction stage and with modern materials there is no need to apply is unless you could get a perfect matched colour gelcoat to fill the crack and to his knowledge this does not exist for a 1988 TVR S2.
Comments ?
gadgit.
Anyway, back to the subject. Spiders? well thats what they call those cracks all over the bonnet, and huge some of them are. They are repairable and this requires some considerable work on my part to keep the cost down.
Having spoken to the best sprayer in my home town it appears that although time consuming, its not that bad to sand these all out. What needs to be done is to sand back to the point where the cracks in the surface have gone completly. This will require taking the paint right back to the GRP and creating a filling area for some new GRP. If you go in deep, due to the crack depth you may well need some matting to build up the area in layers, just as it was in the mould.
Now the interesting point in all this is that I thought that you had to use Gelcoat at some point before filling and spraying but this is not the case.
This bloke has sprayed lotus cars for repairs and has assured me that if you are respaying the car then all you need to do is fill the dips with GRP sand back below the suface, fill with universal filler, sand back anf fill with polyester stopper, spray with a 2 pack primer and then rub to a fine finish recoat with primer until spot on and apply the finish coats. well thats all then !
The point here is that you do not have to apply Gelcoat at any point for this and he never has!
He said the only time gelcoat is applied is in the construction stage and with modern materials there is no need to apply is unless you could get a perfect matched colour gelcoat to fill the crack and to his knowledge this does not exist for a 1988 TVR S2.
Comments ?
gadgit.
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