fiberglass crazing, stress cracks on door and boot lid

[lotustastic]

Hello all,

I know that there are tons of posts on how to properly repair the fiberglass cracks on the elan body parts and I'm familiar with the Miles Wilkins book and procedure. However, I have run into a scenario where my elan S3 door (majority covered in bondo to cover up various cracks throughout) and boot lid have literally seemingly hundreds of fiberglass stress cracks covering the panels. I know that the proper approach is to grind out each crack and fill/re-fiberglass with veil layer. However, in a scenario where are so many stress cracks deep into the fiberglass if one ground out every crack which are very close together as well, the profile of the body part would literally be destroyed/altered (in the case of the door, I'm wondering if I should leave bondo be where it is apart from the areas that are flaking and need redoing or just chisel away the thin layer of bondo to see what lies beneath and then start afresh?) and then rough up the fiberglass skin and cover over basically the whole panel with a veil layer without grinding out the hundreds of cracks. I've attached a picture for review.

Please share any comments.

Thanks!

David D.

[Spyder fan]

Option 1 , who are a popular fibreglass vehicle refinished in the UK use a base coat of polyester resin and fine tissue matting before applying primers and other paint coats. This is to stabilise the existing bodywork which may well have the fine cracks in the gel that your panels are displaying. http://www.option1sportscars.co.uk/bodyshop.htm

You don't mention if all those cracks showed through the paint, I would guess not?

Have a look at the link to see what I mean about the resin and matting.

[delle]

Hello David,

my S4 came back from the paint shop a few weeks ago. After removing all 12 layers of paint, any liquid was disappearing in the fiberglass like a drop of water in the desert. They told me, that was a typical example for a very economical use of resin.
The body got a resin shower and sucks it like a sponge. After that, there were only a few weak areas to relaminate.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=1 ... =folder%2c

Regards from Germany

Delle

[gus]

there is a very fine[angel hair] mat available that will disappear into a light coating of resin. You will find you can even split it down in half to make it even finer. Got it from RD years ago, but it works perfectly, does not show through paint and does not allow cracks to migrate

Honestly minor stress cracks with no structural cause will not reappear through modern paint. cracks around drilled holes, boot hinges, base of windshield pillars etc should always have this mat used. the cracks pictured look like someone kicked the car at one time. Laying down this type of mat will assure they never come back