Still working on straightening everything out.
It's funny, you look at the fiberglass body when you first get it home. It's sitting there in shiny gel coat and you think... "I'll just grind those seams back and throw in a bit of filler, a quick sand and some paint..." It's not untill you start looking closer that you realise there are highs and lows all over that need work.
I've been working on the panel gaps. I wasn't so concerned with them at first until I saw Andrews efforts. That bugger has made a whole lot of extra work for me.
Here's the drivers door just about all ready for spray polyester. It now has an even 1/8" gap all round and looks much better.
The panel gaps out of the mold were fairly big and varied a bit. To get a nice even gap I first smoothed out the edge of the door. I didn't want to add to much filler to the edge of the door. Filler or adding fiberglass to the edge of the door wouldn't be as strong as the original galss fiberglass. Knocking the edge of the door aganst something when you open it might take a chunk out of it rather than just a small paint chip.
I roughened up the gel coat on the door opening and added a coat of filler in there. With the door located in it's best alignment I went round the edge of the door with a sharp blade and trimmed back the new filler to near the right gap.
It needed more filler in some spots as you can see.
To finish the gaps off evenly I used a piece of self adhesive backed sand paper and stuck it to one side of a plastic filler applicator card. I then ran this back and forth along the gap with the plastic side of the card running against the edge of the door. It worked well and produced an even 1/8" gap. The card was rigid enough to easily push back and forth along the edge but flexable enough to go round the corners.
The sanding continues this weekend. I'll hopefully finish the drivers front guard and start working on the drivers side rear guard.
Cheers