Sanding, Sanding, Sanding

[Aussie Mike]

I Haven't posted an update for a while. I'm almost ashamed to post these pics after Andrew and Dale unveiled their fantastic paintwork efforts.

I'm prepping for paint at the moment. I got tired of looking at it with nasty flat black paint peeled in places where the sponsorship stickers were.

I've spent a bit of time talking to the experts and reseaching paint prep. I think I've learned a lot about getting the car straightened out and prepped for paint. I'm certainly a lot mor confident of the steps involved now.

At the moment I'm filling the seams and going back over and fixing my previous efforts as they were dubios at best.

This time I've filled the bulk of the seams with vinyl ester resin and micro spheres. It's the same resin the body is layed up in so should have similar characteristics. It's harder sanding than regular body filler but this is just getting it roughly the right shape.

Here's the rear guard taking shape.



I bought some eurethane rubber sanding blocks and self adhesive backed paper. They are a lot easier to use and control on curved panels than the old speed file especially for a novice like me.

Something I've been thinking about for a long time and a few have already done is sills for the CR body. This is the beginings of a door sill. I've welded some 40mmx75mm RHS between the dash hoop and the door lock post. This will give me something to build the sill up from and also adds some extra rigidity and side impact protection. I've noticed it's much more solid already when realigning the door hinge and lock.



Another area of the body I wasn't happy with was the edges of the cockpit. They are pretty much just trimmed off where they roll down and looked unfinished. Dale and Andrew have both done a great job of putting a nice rounded edge on there.

After some thought I picked up some good glass fiber reinforced filler and applied it under the edge of the where it rolls down. I built this section up to a reasonable thickness and then sanded the edge to round it off nicely. A bit more filling and sanding and it should look tidy. I plan to do the same to edge around the dash.





I'm stripping back a lot of my earlier work and redoing it. I wasn't confident that it was done right and figured I would be very unhappy if it ruined my paint job down the track.

I've also got the windscreen and wipers fitted. Hooray!





Cheers