legacycentral bbs

Well, my custom center panel is curing right now. I glassed over the radio bezel and I'll be cutting out the radio portion, then covering it in vinyl for now.

When my gauges come in, I'll drill holes for them and then re-vinyl it.

It looks good in tape, should look fine once I sand it all down and get the radio cutout. Then when I vinyl it.

Total cost in parts has been under 20 bucks. Well worth it for a factory looking center panel.

I've got pics, I just have to get them online. Hardy, care to help a brotha out? I'll upload them and I can e-mail them to you tomorrow.

It's gonna look great!

Matt, we can get working on yours on wednesday (I have the car back). I can glass it all up for you, and you can drill the holes you want and I can finish it in vinyl (I got a shit load of it. 3ft by 4ft, cost like $6 bucks). I'm confident in my skills now that I've glassed something like this. It's really not as hard as I was expecting.

Oh man, I just checked on the glass. Goddamn this shit is HOT. The chemical reaction makes it get SUPER hot. My GOD. I went to touch it and damn near burned the hell out of my hand. It's solid looking and feeling though so far. 15 minutes until I peel the covering layer off and take a look at my artwork

I used a bit to much jelly I can tell already. No worries though. That's why sand paper was invented...

Yeah. . . gotta be careful working with that stuff. People used to caution about the fibers, but it's the chemicals you really need to watch out for!

Can't wait to see some pictures, Phil.

I got some jelly style fiberglass repair from Pep-boys. If this doesn't work, I'll do the old standby of resin and fleece with bondo.

The jelly stuff is kinda shitty. I'd have preferred using a liquid so there's no chance of laying it to thick. I can tell already, this is going to take forever to sand out.

Well, I finished the dremeling and vinyl laying around 3am.

It didn't turn out exactly as I had planned, and I now realize that I could have done a LOT less work to get this to work. But it looks good, and performed the exact function that a prototype is supposed to.

The vinyl was the tricky part. It is a weee bit to thick to stay stuck to the molding. It's kind of loose around the edges, and the glue doesn't really want to hold to well. But it'll do, it SHOULD be OK.

I want to try a different approach next time (only fill a certain portion) and I want to try a different covering method (maybe rhinoliner bed liner, as it'll give a matte-vinyl kind of finish).

The sanding and dremeling took almost 90 minutes. There was a lot of extra glass laid that I didn't really have to have laid. I laid the glass as if I weren't going to be covering it, so every visible portion was covered. Then I realized that I didn't have to do it like that, but it was to late by that time.

I'll do things a little differently next time. I'm glad I'm going back to the junkyard. I hope I can find another BC/BF to snag the trim from.

All in all, this looks good, and it'll do it's job of covering the gaping hole in my dashboard, but I'd like it to be a little bit cleaner next time.

Not bad for my first ever attempt at fiberglass/vinyl. I'm pleased with the results as they are a springboard into how I do this next time.

BAC5.2 wrote:I've got pics, I just have to get them online. Hardy, care to help a brotha out? I'll upload them and I can e-mail them to you tomorrow.

If you know how to use an ftp prog I can set you up an account and you can upload whatever you want (just no kiddie porn or some other illegal crap). Otherwise e-mail will work fine, send em to webmaster@thawa.net

are you going to do a write up? I need to learn how to fiberglass

BAC5.2 wrote:
Matt, we can get working on yours on wednesday (I have the car back). I can glass it all up for you, and you can drill the holes you want and I can finish it in vinyl (I got a shit load of it. 3ft by 4ft, cost like $6 bucks). I'm confident in my skills now that I've glassed something like this. It's really not as hard as I was expecting.

Sweet! I'm gonna call you.

Hardy - If you can go to the bathroom properly, you can lay fiberglass (espically this kind). Spread the paste on some wax paper, put the matting on the paste, spread paste on the matting. Immediately put it on whatever surface you want fiberglass on, and mold it around a little bit. Wait 15 minutes and pull off the wax paper. What you're left with is a solid covering

I don't know how to use an FTP, but I could figure it out no problem I'm sure.

I had a hell of a time getting the vinyl to stay put. It's kinda thick so I don't know how well it will hold.

Hardy - You've got mail!

they're all in the folder http://thawa.net/images/legacy/bac5.2/

Good Lord those pictures are huge.

Holy shit! Yea, my bad. I didn't resize them.

Looks OK though, eh?

Hardy, I just followed the directions on the Bondo box. Mix the 2 compounds, spread it on wax paper, lay the mat over it, spread another layer on top of the wax paper, then flip the wax paper over the bezel, press it around to get it where you want it. Wait 20 minutes, peel off the wax paper and your done.

i don't know... i think i like my setup better

how are you going to angle the gauges towards you? those angled spacers you can get? I thought you would have molded that into the face plate so it would look completely integrated into the body of the car.

This one really didn't turn out how I was expecting. I just needed something to cover the gaping hole in my dash and this was the best solution for the moment.

Version 2 will be a LOT cleaner. I'll probably make the spacers. The gauge doesn't need to tilt that far to be facing me, so I'll likely just lay an extra spot of fiberglass over that area or something.

I also won't be covering it in vinyl again. That was an idea gone bad. The glue wouldn't stick, so it's kinda splotchy. I also didn't sand the fiberglass very well. I might pull the vinyl, sand it perfectly smooth, prime and paint the whole thing. I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

I am kind of toying with the idea of Kydex. I haven't decided yet.

What's kydex? What about black crackle finish paint? Like the dashboards of old Ferraris.

Steve

www.kydex.com

You can heat it and form and mold it for most applications. It's like fiberglass that's textured, pre-laid, and moldable.