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I'm collecting my bodywork on Monday, and I asked Terry to supply me with some gelcoat. She said that's standard practice - I presume from you message you didn't get any?
I'm expecting mine to be patchy, and have a friend lined up who's a dab had with grp. He said the basis of the repair process is to hollow out the offending area, fill with gelcoat, and then cover with a wax to get the shape right whilst the gelcoat sets.
I don't any more than that, but I suspect when I start polishing mine back, I'll find out how to repair thin gelcoat..............
I picked up my bodywork about 6 weeks ago. Must say upon getting it home and inspecting it in a bit more detail it is bloody awful. And I did not receive any Gel coat with the bodywork either.
My intention has always been to have the body professionally painted after it is all complete and SVA'd, so not too overly concerned. I would be annoyed if this was going to be my final finish.
It is because I am going to get mine sprayed that I did not complain to Marlin, which is wrong I suppose because if they do not know that the Gel coat is not acceptable then they will still be getting bad product from their supplier.
Though they should have in house QC!
Regards
I know what you mean. My orange Gel Coat is superb in places.....but a bit dodgy round some of the edges....clam shell corners and bodyside catch clips.
I too have been promised some gel coat but not seen it yet & given up now.
However, every cloud has a silver lining......and if you basically spend a huge amount of hours (circa 100) with buckets of water, wet n dry, soap, files, cutting compound, polish, wax...etc....a very decent finish is possible. I then mixed up some orange / red / yellow tamiya acrilyic model paint to get the right shade to match the gel coat....then use this to do chips etc as it polishes away well and blends OK. Everyone who has seen the car has commented on the bodywork finish and most have thought it was painted..
Prep work on gelcoat is the key (although you do need a good base to start with)
Many many many hours of wet n dry and cutting compound transformed my Sumo bodywork from really quite poor to stunning and it looked just as good over 10 years later when I sold it.
My approach back then was to use 800 wet n dry followed by 1200 to remove the chop strand matt impressions then farelca G7 (I think, could have been G3, quite coarse anyway) on a drill attached mop head followed by T-cut on the same. The only thing I would do differently is use a proper oscillating polishing mop.
It's an absolutely ball aching, depressing job but ultimately worth it if you are sticking to gelcoat.
Polishing compounds I used were designed for gelcoat boats...hence better finish than you get with regular car polishes that are designed for paint.
A company called [url]www.sailboats.co.uk[/url] (Northampton)......a range called trade secrets (G3 rubbing compound followed by cutting boat polish followed by carnauba wax)
..as I've said before, takes bl**dy hours but worth it.
P.S. I did all of mine by hand (no machines) that way you can judge when to stop on the gel coat without going through to the f/glass!