Glass Fibre Car Body Specialists

[Dilkris]

You are welcome to ring me tomorrow for a chat if you wish?

That would be kind and very helpful - can u pm me a number?

 

[Keith 66]

Someone once told me that the crucial thing is to have the shell slow baked to remove moisture from the gel.
Not sure if it's a thing..

Fibreglass can absorb moisture but this is likely to be mainly on boats that have been sitting in & half full of water for year, unlikely to be a problem on car bodies unless poorly stored outside. Main problem with GRP car bodies is that many or most will be made from Chopped strand mat (CSM) & cheap resin, its heavy & to keep it light builders will skimp on the reinforcement (mat) Thing with CSM is that each 1sq M of mat will take 2.5 times its weight in resin.
If you start using woven fabric reinforcements or stiched Bi axial fabrics the ratio falls to 1 - 1 reinforcement to resin. A 5.5m Rowing dinghy i built was laid up this way, I saved about 40kgs in resin by not using CSM which is a considerable saving.
One of the common problems with going lightweight is print through where the weave of the fabric shows through the paint & it can be hard to get a laminate not to show this.
Your body appears to be a standard CSM layup, If its not cracked up It should be ok, Long single cracks along body lines or similar can be dremeled out & filled. Its worth noting that a gelcoat crack means there is some damage to the underlying laminate, On impact damage this shows as curved radial cracks or spiders web effects. If you just repair gel here the cracks will always return one day.
As for fibreglass not being a science, that may be so with cheap CSM layups but composites technology is far beyond what it was even 20 years ago & is now high science indeed.

 

[More Amps]

I always wanted a Europa when I was much younger - it never happened sadly. I do remember hearing that the doors were prone to sagging due to weight and/or weak hinges.

 

[RichardM]

Don't use paint stripper.
If you have any gel cracks mark them up for grinding out, if they are bad you will need to grind both sides, laminate new glass in and fill the surface.
If the other gel is ok don't sand it too far, you don't want to bring small bubbles to the surface as they will bubble up after painting when it's left in the sun.

 

[jonclancy]

Yours doesn’t look too bad. I’ve yet to assess mine, but suspect that it really might work out cheaper in the long run to get a Banks body!

 

[ajlelectronics]

A useful way to do major repairs is to dress up the old panels with a smooth surface and lots of wax, then take a mould from them to make new panels for grafting in.

 

[500e]

Used flow coat on Elans and Elites After getting to a good finish.
Spider damage on jel coat a pain, try not to sand to deep like pic 3/4.
Used it on boats as well.

Gelcoat & Flowcoat

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Not from these people but same thing

 

[ajlelectronics]

Spider damage on jel coat a pain, try not to sand to deep like pic 3/4.

It is important to go down deep enough to remove all the damage. Often some mat applied to the underside will give some decent structure to go down to.