paint

[johnnyvespa]

need some paint to put on my high top fiber glass roof as it is crasing up and i think it is leeking thanks

[Plasticman]

Sorry, paint alone will make not a halfpence of difference except highlight the crazing. is there not a load of info in the wiki etc to save me loads of typing
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[johnnyvespa]

hello mate i looked on the wiki but it dont cover repairing and painting fiber glass roof
as it is the same on outher sites . so keep looking . thanks for help . john

[Plasticman]

ok, im away now but if nobody else responds I will post later
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[johnnyvespa]

thanks most greatfull .

[Plasticman]

Ah right the crazing,I used to do a lot of fibreglass work in the 70's cant anymore as its in my skin and I come out in a rash when I go near it that said I do like it as a medium,
A lot of vehicles in the 50's onwards were made with grp bodies and composites of ally and glass.steel and glass and wood and glass to name a few,anyhows back to the prob in hand, when we got a vehicle in with the usual 'star' crazing, we would identify them all and run a DA over them first then I would use an engraver to erode away the flaky type material till I got back to a glass that was stillk relatively bonded and solid, this was repeated on all stars and any other surface cracks and such
next a thin coat of resin applied and overlaid with surface tissue, this was coerced into the depresions I had made, left to dry and a few days later sanded over, and left a week or more to cure, then prepped and painted in the usual way,
I will try dig some pickies out but they are 35mm so will copy and upload when I get time (need to do it anyway)
below is a picky of a Jensen 541, I bought this in the mid 70's as a mere 20 something

I will find the picks of the state it was in, any how the bonnet was the whole front and had been up and over on the A1 so I made it cosmetically correct, took a mould and produced the new bonnet/front, all the body was grp save the sills,door skins and lower front 1/4 panals, the grp was 5-6mm thick, this acr I remade the entire front from screen fwd and sills, this picky was taken recently and mailed to me by new owner, it lasted 30 yrs...

[lloydy]

To repair some small patches on a previous van i had, i used this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Gelcoat-Fille ... _500wt_715" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Went on really easy, think i even have a unused tube of it .... dead cheap to buy new anyway
lloyd

[Plasticman]

Or as Lloyd shows it, smear the filler over the cracks,sand down and when you paint it, do not go gloss, keep to no more than satin as the shine highlights the cracks etc., its down to how long you want it to last and how much effort you can be bothered with
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[lloydy]

with my way best results are had by viewing from a distance............

[Plasticman]

nah, it works, but as you know the hitops can and often are covered by hundreds of little cracks that can look evil, sand it down fill the lot and prep paint will work , still take loads of time but keep to matt finnish idealy and you will not notice.

(close up or at a distance)
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[bootie3367]

What about that roller paint, read about it but can't remember the name. Is that not flexible enough to prevent further starring or cracking once prepped?

[Plasticman]

Nope
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[bootie3367]

OK, well that's put a spanner in my plans then. My hi top is showing signs of crazing as well.
Ho hum, lots to do then
It's been sprayed body colour so that's a lot of work really, something I didn't want to do. It's OK at the moment but will need doing in the next year I think. I am not a GRP man and have never worked with it. I might just try out techniques on my trailer first!

Cheers for the info and apologies to the OP for the threadjack.

Jon

[Oldiebut goodie]

Two pack epoxy or two pack polyurethane works on boat hulls - a high top is just the same the other way up.

[Plasticman]

it partialy covers the problem as long as your happy to keep repeating it, but doesnt fix it, and some of the problems with boat hulls are outside the scope of this posting and not really relevant.
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