Lotus Europa Community
Lotus Europa Forums => Garage => Topic started by: Dilkris on Monday,August 19, 2024, 08:11:36 AM
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OK - so I'm now faced with the body and this is an area which I know nothing about - but finances and market trends dictate that I am going to have to learn. Originally my plan was always to farm out the body for all required work and spraying but with todays labor rates this would require me to remortgage the house which is obviously not an option.
I have "Utubed" and continue to read a multitude of threads on the subject and have come to the conclusion that to every question regarding glass fibre bodywork and painting there are 10 possible answers.
So.... my "plan" is to do all the work required leading up to final color coat and finishing - this latter stage I will farm out professionally.
Initially my first 3 questions are as follows:
1. I understand I have to create a "base line" or "starting point" and to achieve this I must remove existing paint/s - but to
what level? Please see the 3rd and 4th photo's - do I remove down to the glass or to gel coat? If Gel coat, what color is that
as per the 2 pictures? I am confused by this.
2. What is the recommended technique for paint removal? A DA Sander with a 5mm throw and 80 grit plus other items and if
so what other tools are recommended?
3. Is soda blasting worth considering and has anybody successfully achieved this at home? I originally was going to have the
body soda blasted but the company (30km away and convenient) has closed down. :(
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Hi there,
To start off with a positive, there's nothing difficult about preparing the body for paint and anyone can do it and save a pile of cash on labour rates. The difficult part is knowing what is acceptable, and if you've not done anything like this before I think that will be the biggest learning curve. You'll find that your fingertips are better than your eyes in checking the surface, you'll be amazed at how good you'll become in finding faults !
So, firstly I would strongly reccomend you remove all paint down to glassfibre. Several reasons but mostly because if there's no old paint left then there's nothing to react with new paint as it goes on. Secondly you'll find if there are old repairs or crazing that's yet to come through the old paint - maybe damage in storage, etc.
How to remove paint, well there are as many opinions/options and everyone has their own ideas. Personally I don't like blasting with anything but... some folks do. YMMV as the adverts say. I use paint stripper and in the past I've used stripper which I know will react with bare GRP and for that reason alone most people avoid it. I tend to go slowly and only use it on the outer layer, stopping as soon as primer is found and I usually remove this with 80grit production paper.
One thing I would stress is to try and keep things dry, especially if you see glass fibres poking through. Do repairs with resin & glass fibre, only use filler for the smallest pinholes if you really must.
I've put a couple of links to when I did the Europa (2011 - time flies) and the Elan which had more repair work and probably better pictures. This website isn't designed for phones, it's meant for either a laptop or desktop display. Quaint I know....
http://www.martley.plus.com/lotusland2016/elan/16elan11.html (http://www.martley.plus.com/lotusland2016/elan/16elan11.html)
and
http://www.martley.plus.com/lotusland2016/europa/16europa08.html (http://www.martley.plus.com/lotusland2016/europa/16europa08.html)
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Thanks EuropaTC that's a great start with some encouraging advice. Thankyou for staying within the context of where I am, much appreciated. I will continue to post under this heading with progress (and disasters) as the months go by. :)
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I have a warning that comes from a friend's experience with stripping his Corvette. Keep in mind that this was over forty years ago and I don't know what products he used. My buddy used paint stripper and in the middle of it, he was advised that the stripper could follow the glass fibers into the body and possibly cause problems with the paint later. I have no idea if the guy my buddy sold his Corvette to had any problem with the paint later. I have no idea if he had used the proper stripper for fiberglass by luck or even if it was an old wives tale. But for this reason, I wore out a cheap DA sander taking the paint off my car.
Having said that I understand that there are paint strippers that are safe to use on fiberglass cars so I would make sure you use the "proper" stripper if you go that route.
I'm not a professional body work guy. I did wet sand my car down to 600 grit. To my eye (and fingers) my car was essentially "flat" and ready for primer. I figured there was a few places the shop might want to go over but not many. Well, the shop took what I considered to be a LONG time to paint it (they did a super job with a lot of nice touches like masking off a nice color to satin black line under the fenders). When assembling the care after getting it from the paint shop, I noticed they had used some sort of stuff (filler, I suppose) because it had oozed over a bit of the drain holes behind the tranny. That made me wonder if they spent their time covering a lot of what I had already done with their filler or if they used their filler to finish off a place you could hardly see (and why would it need a filler anyway???).
As for fillers, EuropaTC is right, Bondo and similar products are generally thought to be a sacrilege for fiberglass. I'll confess here that I committed that crime. I tried to keep it as thin as I could but for some jobs I don't consider it totally inappropriate. One of the "proper" ways (THE proper way?) to fill fiberglass is to mix resin with glass microspheres into a paste. For pinholes, I think I would use "glazing putty." This is a creamy filler that comes in a tube. It's thin enough that it fills small pits and voids and sands easily when it cures. It is not structural at all.
Lotus bodies are often infected with spider or stress cracks. Because of the particular history of my car (It had been covered with a fine fiberglass cloth before I started working on it. You should not do this as the weave will bleed through the paint.) I didn't have that problem but the solution to those cracks is commonly to grind out the cracks and then fill them. I THINK it makes more sense to cover those panels with a thin layer of mat usually called veil or gauze. I think that should strengthen the panel and eliminate the stress risers in the cracks. It is probably a LOT easier than grinding out cracks and filling them! One layer of veil is probably sufficient but I might consider two.
There are some area that you might consider reinforcing. One is the upper corner areas of the windshield (see the first picture). You might reinforce these areas with a couple of layers of mat on the inside of the car. There are places in the rain gutters in the engine bay that are a weak point too (see second and third pictures). One thing you might consider is to "box in" the edge of that rear rain gutter. Whenever I work in the engine bay, I am panicked about harming that "raw" fiberglass edge. By cutting a strip of fiberglass sheet and glassing that to the edge of the gutter and underneath (forming a hollow triangular area underneath) would finish that edge to be much more durable and more "finished."
There is a lot of skill and understanding about mixing resin given temperature and humidity that I have none of! I just mixed polyester resin like it said to on the can and that seemed to work pretty well for me. I'll restate that I am no expert. What I did seems to have worked and excluding the areas in the pictures, my paint/body look pretty good after 25 years. That's not at all to say that it couldn't be done better and if someone here who has more knowledge than I hope he will correct any errors I've unfortunately promoted.
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Your climate is much nicer to fiberglass that mine. I had spider cracks everywhere. I used a razor blade and scraped 1/4" (6mm) wide strips off and sanded what was left but no 100% eveywhere. If the body is good but just old paint, I would sand to primer, do any minor repairs, seal, seal/prime and paint. IMO body work is much harder than spraying a car. If you do base/clear, anything can be sanded out prior to buff. You can sand single stage but sanding a single stage paint run doesn't always look right. A clear run sands/buffs out. If DIY, base/clear.
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Thankyou all for your very valuable comments and advice - my first dilemma is in stripping down to what? - Some have advised going down to glass whilst others have stated go to gel coat. From the 2 photo's below, I can obviously identify the glass, (2nd photo) but from the 1st photo which color is the gel coat??? I appear to have the top color of yellow, followed by a grey, brown, white and a lighter grey. :confused:
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I saw no reason to go down to the glass unless I had a repair and wanted the new polyester to bond with it. If the original paint had no issues, why take it all off? People do a lot of things just because. I have painted a few cars (5) and am just a hobbyist. I spent a lot of time on here reading http://www.spiuserforum.com/index.php?forums/spi-product-specific-discussions.26/
I'll attach a bunch of pics so you can see what I went down to and did. My car was originally white. I left a lot of it.
Black is epoxy primer/sealer, gray primer, white is paint. The body took months, the paint took a day. It really is the easiest part of it.
I used these Durablocks too. Super nice for all the contour sanding.
https://www.amazon.com/Durablock-Set-6pc-Flexible-Automotive/dp/B003978QGQ
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http://www.martley.plus.com/lotusland2016/elan/16elan11.html (http://www.martley.plus.com/lotusland2016/elan/16elan11.html)
and
http://www.martley.plus.com/lotusland2016/europa/16europa08.html (http://www.martley.plus.com/lotusland2016/europa/16europa08.html)
These were especially helpful - thankyou.
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I saw no reason to go down to the glass unless I had a repair and wanted the new polyester to bond with it.
I used these Durablocks too. Super nice for all the contour sanding.
https://www.amazon.com/Durablock-Set-6pc-Flexible-Automotive/dp/B003978QGQ
Thankyou Clifton - some more valuable advice there.
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Thankyou all for your very valuable comments and advice - my first dilemma is in stripping down to what? - Some have advised going down to glass whilst others have stated go to gel coat.
Terminology strikes again..... gel coat is only a very thin resin layer put down before the glass fibre matting is built up in the moulding process. There's no reason to remove it as it forms part of the composite structure and in practice is keeping the heavier glass fibres away from the atmospheric moisture. I tend not to think of it as a separate entity and hence my "take it to glass fibre" just means to the smooth resin gel coat.
The only time you would remove the gel coat is to repair a crack or bond in a new section because then you want the resin you apply to form a strong bond with the existing glass fibres on the rest of the structure.
At some point you could easily break through the thin resin layer/gel coat and end up with bare fibres showing. This will be obvious and all I'd do at that point is make sure it's dry then paint some more resin over, leave it a day or so and then flatten back with something like 240 grade to get it smooth. You can apply body filler which will look ok, but please don't. Buy some resin/catalyst and a few dozen cheap brushes that you can throw away and you'll have a repair that will last for years. (note the "repair" to the front wing of the Elan which I'd chased for 30+yrs until I did it properly !!!)
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Thankyou EuropaTC - this is another piece of the jigsaw for me and I am finally beginning to understand what is ahead of me.
In my ignorance I was thinking that the gel coat actually had a color to it - as per marine applications, ie boats where the gel coat actually provides the boat color.
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In my ignorance I was thinking that the gel coat actually had a color to it - as per marine applications, ie boats where the gel coat actually provides the boat color.
You're quite right, some cars did do that. Back in the heady days of fibreglass kit cars several did colour the gel coat just like boats. Beach buggies spring to mind and I think the Dutton series of Lotus 7 style cars had coloured gel coats as well.
Back to your car - don't get over-awed by the scale of the job. Just look at one panel at a time and aim to strip/prep it before moving on to the next. Pick something easy to start, maybe a front or rear wing or the front panel where the badge goes and build your learning curve there. By the time you get to the bigger panels - rear deck for example, you'll know what's needed and you'll be quicker as well.
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Clifton is correct. you can check if you need to strip to the fiberglass by polishing up the paint that is on the car now. Compound it and polish ,NO WAX, shine a light on it and look for raised fibers. If you do, I suggest some veil but I'm still testing that but with good visual indications now. Getting back to the body panels, unless you can see thru the panel it is all most impossible to see spider cracks or stress cracks. I've posted pics of them when stripping panels.
Repair and help with fiberglass is best left to the experts, www.fibreglast.com has a learning center and videos. no affiliation here. I have a thread call Painting again. Check it out. painting and prepping it yourself is the way to go if you have the time and patience.
Another question, are you painting it the same color? You don't want to see yellow if a paint chip occurs.
Stripping paint , stay away from liquid strippers. Best and fastest way, bend a knife and draw file. Bend it in and arc towards you and pull it along the surface. in smaller areas use a razor blade in a similar manner.
Dakazman
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Ultima GTR's have a good, finished colored gel coat. It would save some time vs paint.
On spider crack. Veil (CSM) is used for the first layer in a mold if you are using cloth do avoid print through. CSM veil offers no strength. Cloth mat veil has some strength but it will print through in time. Maybe a year, maybe more but it will. You don't want cloth/mat on the top, only csm.
Fibreglast used to have all the specs and strengths. https://www.fibreglast.com/category/Composite-Fabrics
If you have cracks or need to build out an edge, the strongest to repair is resign with chopped or milled glass. My car had so many cracks from sitting in the sun for all the years. I used a diamond bit, maybe 1/16" to grind them and fill. With milled fiber and resin, you can decide on how wet or thick you want it. I even used it to build out my door frames to get even gaps. Cabosil for a lightweight filler, phenolic microballons for sandable filler like Bondo. Use a small digital scale with plastic wrap to protect from drips. Guessing drops for weight is risky with the short work time.
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I just realized Dakazman posted the fibreglast link. They aren't cheap but a good resource.
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I did a lot of small repairs at different points, requiring small amounts of catalyst. So I ended up getting a titration column for easy measuring of MEK. It has to be glass. The plastic ones will get brittle from the MEK. https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/glass-burette-ptfe-key-stopcock/S27992?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIs5C-wtqEiAMV7wGtBh3piDl-EAQYBCABEgLwm_D_BwE&ef_id=EAIaIQobChMIs5C-wtqEiAMV7wGtBh3piDl-EAQYBCABEgLwm_D_BwE:G:s&ppc_id=PLA_goog_2086145674_81843404874_S27992__386247001342_12355756827970730903&ev_chn=shop&s_kwcid=AL!4428!3!386247001342!!!g!826064335656!&gad_source=1 (https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/glass-burette-ptfe-key-stopcock/S27992?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIs5C-wtqEiAMV7wGtBh3piDl-EAQYBCABEgLwm_D_BwE&ef_id=EAIaIQobChMIs5C-wtqEiAMV7wGtBh3piDl-EAQYBCABEgLwm_D_BwE:G:s&ppc_id=PLA_goog_2086145674_81843404874_S27992__386247001342_12355756827970730903&ev_chn=shop&s_kwcid=AL!4428!3!386247001342!!!g!826064335656!&gad_source=1)
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G'day, Dilkris,
It's probably worth reading the 'Body' section of the workshop manual - particularly 'B.3 Accident repairs'. and 'Assessing Accident Damage'.
Overall, the basic information has stood the test of time, though there are sometimes modern/better products available and many people skin these cats a little differently anyway.
https://lotuseuropa.org/workshop_manual.htm
As an aside, I'm always amazed to read Lotus saying the panel thickness is 0.093" (2.3mm).
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Not meaning to differ from anything Brian has had to say, I'll add my 2 pence about gel coat.
This is from knowledge gained from years of working on boats, then digging into the Lotus.
Gel coat is just polyester resin (like used in typical fibreglass layups), but optimized to be an exposed surface layer.
- It's optimized for color
- It is resistant to UV degradation
- It can be polished to a high gloss
There's none of that on my 1972 TC. And no need, as it's going to be painted.
When making the body, first step is to spray resin into the mold. Then a 'chopper gun' is used to deposit glass strands for reinforcement. Then more resin is sprayed to encapsulate the glass and complete the layup.
Pretty simple. And in the case of the Lotus bodies, too much resin is used relative the the glass reinforcement, resulting in lots of opportunities for stress cracks to form.
Anyway, don't concern yourself with gel coat, as you don't have any. When you sand through the paint, the next thing you see is the thin layer of resin that was deposited on the female mold before applying the glass strands.
-Vince