Ivan's coupe: roof stuccowork

[fantapants]

Dude, new skills are awesome. Do and that's a mad trick with the hot blade in the grinder...

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[Ivan141]

Thanks, I'm not completely out of the woods yet though.
Last time I was working on the car I slapped some of the raised bumps that the shrinking disc caused out of the roof skin and it has lost a bit of it's shape again.
Might have overshrunk that bit a little, it's not oilcanning anymore but it's just gone flat. May need to gently hammer some crown back into the panel.

[Ivan141]

So, since my last post I have committed a few days to beating the devil out of my roof panel, and it's getting closer, but I've no illusions towards getting it really close with my panel beating skills.

One of the guys in the garage was so kind as to evaluate my work (bodywork prep and painter by profession) and pointed out 2 problem areas I need to address.
The 2 biggest former dents have lost a bit of their strength, meaning they depress easily when pushed (they to spring back in the correct shape though). This apparently is a disaster for doing filler work on such large surfaces, since sanding puts in heat into the panels + the panel giving in makes it really hard to work on.

One of those spots seems to be getting stronger as I beat some crown back into the area, so I'm still hoping I might be able to fix it, but the other is really not that far out of shape to justify me trying to beat more crown into it. So I'm adding in additional support to prop the roof up.

It doesn't touch the roof panel anywhere, but once it's in place, some dots of thick glue will do the trick (same as the OEM roof support).


I dont want to weld this thing in since I've no idea if the liner will fit with it in place. I also intend to spend at least 1 day more beating the roof into better shape.
So I devised a clamping mechanism to hold the support in place.


Here's a shot of the roof, this one hides the remaining imperfections well though...

[robokill]

Ivan, it is good to see all the work going into your hachi. The body looks in pretty good shape after all the time and effort you put into it and the amount of skill you have added to yourself is amazing
Are you still working on it or is it on hold due to corona?


I should put up the question when I can come and pickup the chassis mounting stuff. As also I need to stop talking and get my ass to work

[Ivan141]

Hi Len,

I havent touched it in months.. Due to corona? Perhaps.. when it began the garage was right in corona-outbreak country so I avoided it at first.
Then the belgian border closed which also did not help (cant go buy belgian beer, a big motivator for garage visits).
Lately I have been spending free weekend time welding Damir's MX5, which has off course escalated quickly. (Boy do MX5's rot from the inside out).
Hit me up and Im sure we can come to some agreement on the torture rack.

[adomz]

That looks some great progress!! Good work

I still owe you a rear light tho...

ADam

[Ivan141]

Small update.
I took the extra roof supports home so I can properly shrink the curve into them
on the shrinker/stretcher.. Hope to be bringing those back to the car beginning of July and then make some appointments to get the bodywork done.

In the meantime there was something really bugging me. Lennert (Robokill) once kindly let me have one of his original kouki coupe spoilers (along with a trunklid), and it has been sitting in my basement for years. When I pulled it out this year I found one end of it had broken off completely. These things cost like 400 euro new these days.

So a small side project: try to salvage an original spoiler (cause I like the look of it).
Plan of attack:
-use spray foam (PUR) to fill up the damaged area
-use rasps and saw to shape the foam
-filler over the foam for final shaping
-laminate a layer of carbon over the whole thing to make it solid.





So far I've gotten the first 'glue' layer of epoxy on and stuck the carbon twill to the spoiler. It's not gone horribly, but there are 3 spots where the weave is not super pretty.. on the corners it is really hard to bunch that stuff together without it forming pleats (not surprising). In the middle of the backward facing edge of the spoiler there is also a small wonky patch, but I think I can live with all this.
Next up is layering on at least 3 or 4 coats of epoxy and sanding everything smooth.

Also need to fix the inside as half the tabs in there have broken due to captive nuts being rusted to the bolts. Think I will just put stainless steel strips in there with studs welded to them in stead of captive nuts.. epoxy those in there with some carbon and call it a day. The original mounts never work out well unless regularly maintained (and lets be honest who does that?).

[decryphe]

(06-14-2020 09:12 PM)Ivan141 Wrote:  The original mounts never work out well unless regularly maintained (and lets be honest who does that?).

I know that part too well. I'm missing two of the screws because of broken mounting points. Still enough of the clips left to hold in place, but it's also on the list of to-do-stuff.

Carbon wrap looks good.

[banpei]

I've got a similar thing with the JDM Carina tail lights. You can see below exactly where one of the bolts snapped off:

Hint: it's visible as white silicon kit

I brought those tail lights home last year with the intention to drill out the bolt, tap a new thread and then use a stud bolt in it's place. I haven't found time to do so yet, but if it would fail my fallback plan was to fill up the space around the stud bolt with some resin instead.

[zenki]

Nice work on the spoiler. Love seeing someone save original parts. I have one that i bought years ago with similar damage.