Another useful day

I got the stuff out of my garage as soon as I could this morning and was pleased to find that all of the repairs I did yesterday had worked a treat. The main ones, of course, were on the panel. I found that the foot piece that had snapped off in the accident and that I replaced yesterday had moved a fraction after I’d put the panel back in the garage for the night. I thought at the time that the resin was hard but evidently it was still soft enough to move a bit. Anyway, no harm done because I was able to add a bit of filler to the front which tidied it all up and also made the repair thicker and even stronger.

I was delighted to find that when I removed the clamp that had been holding the main split together while the resin cured, absolutely nothing moved, so that meant that the panel front was now back in its proper shape. During the day I added some more fibreglass cloth to increase the thickness even further and with a little bit of judicious filling on the front, that repair also turned out very well. While I was doing the little bits of extra filling, I also filled up from the front the holes in the panel top that I filled from the back yesterday, and they also came out as well as they possibly could have. Incidentally, at times when I was working in the direct sunshine, the fibreglass filler I was using flashed off in minutes, so I had to make sure that I was as organised as possible and didn’t make up any more than I could use before it began to harden. So that was three out of three so far 😉

Next was the repair of the split in the back of the pod. I have to confess that it looked a bit ‘chunky’ compared to my other pod repairs because of the amount of cloth I’d used, but no chance at all that it will go again, I think! But after I’d rubbed it down a bit and painted it, it didn’t look too bad, and it’ll be under the seat where it will never be seen anyway. Four out of four and going strong!

Finally, I thought that I might as well start on the cabin floor cross tube while the weather was so fine. Well, to cut a long story short, I got the tube filled (the deep scratches caused by soles of boots), rubbed down and nicely primed with no runs before I finished for the day. So another successful job, making it a full house 😀

Here are a couple of pics showing the finished pod repair and the panel repairs with just primer on.

I’ve decided that because of the extent of the repairs, unlike last time when I just touched bits in by hand, this time I’ll have to spray paint them. The problem, of course, will be finding a reasonable colour match. The way I’ve tried to get round it is to take a photograph of the panel and then create a JPG image that’s as close to the colour as I can get it, by my judgement anyway. I’ve then uploaded the image to Autopaint at St Helens from where I bought my red for spraying the pod and primer. As well as supplying paint in cans for spraying, they can also mix any colour for you and put it in an aerosol. How handy is that! I should receive it in a day or so and one thing’s for sure. It must be much better than the match I knocked up last time I painted the bits on the panel – mustn’t it? 😯