[mar10]

What do you guys suggest. I need to bind some wood strips to a fiberglass body, to mount the door panels on the interior. I have NO experience with fiberglass. What type of adhesive so you suggest? I need to add a series of 1"x2" wood (2" against the fiberglass). I have a paint job on the outside so I can't use anything that may produce enough heat to "burn" the paint.

Thoughts?

 

[Mrfixmaster]

I used regular "Bondo" to fasten the wood strips in the inside of my T-Bucket. It's only been on the road for a couple of months, and they ain't fallen off yet, but it would be nice to hear from someone who has more miles on theirs.

 

[Madd Syntst]

My partner has a 32 Ford floppy body. We used an industrial adhesive, not glass to bond the wood to the doors and for support in other areas of the body. Its been on the road for 11 years with no problem. I would stay away from glass. There is a two part compond they use to install body panels. If I was at the shop, I could read you the name. I'd even check hardware stores for liquid nail type stuff. Just read the tube for application. That would be really cheap, too!

 

[mar10]

Thanks for the input. Sounds Like I might give the liquid nail a try. That sounds like a safe approach for the novice.

Thanks

Did you do the interior of your 23T? Are their any pitfalls I should watch out for?

 

[[email protected]]

Best way is to mount the wood to the body with Bondo for a gap proof fit (like on the PolyGrip commercials on TV!). Then smooth it down with 80 grit sandpaper and laminate a couple layers of glass mat and polyester resin over the wood and a couple of inches out on the body. This make the wood a permanent part of the body. Just gluing it on with any adhesive I fear will result in it coming off eventually.

 

[SprayTech]

Mar10 , go here ,this what you might be looking for.
http://www.duramix.com/
SprayTech
You can find it a local paint jobber

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: SprayTech ]</p>

 

[big dreams]

Duramix does make alot of great products.3m makes a product called panel bond. It is two part,and can actually be used to put 1/4 panels on cars. 3m gaurentees it will hold up in an accident.Use this stuff I gauranty your wood strips won`t fall off!

 

[2oldster]

Don't know just what you need, but make sure it's waterproof as you'll have condensation between the wood and fiberglass. They will also expand and contract at a different rate. The glass over wood sounds like the best bet to me. Even then you might leave a little room for expansion.

 

[Shawn Asseln]

Well I hope I am not too late. If you are putting this wood against the outside wall of your body it is going to track through and be very visible from the outside. Under no circumstance can you join wood or any thing else for that matter to a flat area on fiberglass from the back side. It will push the composite out and create a bulge thet will continue to reappear no matter what you do.But if you are going to go in the corners or a tight radius you will be fine.

 

[Shawn Asseln]

Sorry hit the wrong button,
No matter what you use for adheasive it is likely to fail without some sort of laminate to hold it in place. Wood itself will tear and a adheasive desiged for composites is not designed for wood. Another approach is if you can get in the jams with it use a recessed bolt through the fiberglass and the wood, then you know it is not going to let go. I would advise never to rely on just a adheasive alone, be it bondo, liquid nails or even a exotic adheasive such as plexus or panel bond.

 

[mar10]

Shawn, are you saying that no matter whatever I use on the fiberglass to hold the wood (short of bolts) it will eventually show through on the thin fiberglass?

 

[mar10]

Mrfixmaster,

What type of material/fabric did you use on your TBucket?
Did you build bench seat or had bucket seats redone?
Do you have any pictures during contruction that may help me?
The thought of doing an interior on my Bucket scares me to death, but I spent my budget on the rest of the car. I think it is first class and I don't want to screw the whole thing up by having the interior look sceond rate.

Thanks for your input....

 

[[email protected]]

I have had Bleed thru problems on some fiberglass parts and some I didn't. Seems to have to do with quality of materials used by manufacturer. Some fiberglass seems never to totally cure while some gets very hard. Shawn is right, how well the wood sticks is not a function of the strength of the adhesive, rather it is the strenght of the wood. If you just glue the wood to the body you run the chance of a crack in the wood causing most if it to break away leaving the adhesive and a thin layer of wood left bonded. Glassing over the wood to make it part fo the body is a must.

After all the hot gas in this post and the great advice in the above posts, realize this has been done at least 1,000,000,000 times with great success. Just use some common sense in where you glass the wood to the body. For example, haw about glassing in a rim all around the top and bottom edges of the body shell then bolt uprights to these rims at key places? Like Shawn says, put it @ body edges, molding curves, anywhere that any bleed thru would be hidden. I recall several articles over the years in rod nmagazines showing how to wood a glass body (probably have several in my massive mag collection but don't know where!).

 

[Shawn Asseln]

What I am trying to warn you about is if any material that is solid (ie wood, steel, etc) is placed up against or close enough to the laminate will work itself around it. It is not noticable in a radius or sharp corner but in a flat area such as a door skin it will produce a very definate line. It does not matter if the laminate is 1/8 inch thick or 1 inch thich. I had a mold of a door skin which was over one inch thick track through a 1/4 inch piece of plywood i used as a stand. No matter how many times i took it out and resurfaced the mold it kept comeing back. Even after removing the piece of wood. I had to remake the mold. What it does in a basic way is it changes the way the molecules are tied together and causes it to swell and bulge. Does not matter if it is glued, bolted or just sitting there for a period of time. And also no amount of post cure will help this as the resins used in these types of applications never fully cure until the day they start to deteriorate which is longer than any of us will be here.

 

[bomo]

SHAWN I AGREE WITH YOU IVE HAD SOME EXPERIENCE WITH GLASS BODIES AND THE BEST WAY TO BOD THE WOOD ON ANY GLASS BODY IS TO INCAPSULATE THE WOOD WITH FIBERGLASS BY THAT I MEAN JUST LIKE A BOAT STRINGER IS DOON. PUT YOUR WOOD IN PLACE USEING RESIN, THEN CUT YOUR CLOTH BIGGER AND SOAK IT IN RESIN THEN LAY IT OVER THE WOOD AND BRUSH OUT ALL THE BUBBLES YOU NOW HAVE A PIECE OF WOOD THAT CAN'T ROT BECAUSE NO WATER OR MOISTURE CAN GET TO IT AND YOU CAN STILL SCEW THROUGH IT FOR YOUR INTERIOR.

GOSH I HOPE YOU DON'T USE ANY OTHER PRODUCT LIKE LIQUID NAILS OR BONDO !!! THE WORST THING IN THE WORD FOR BONDO IS MOISTURE HOPE I'M NOT TO LATE


BOMO

 

[Shawn Asseln]

bomo,
That is the correct wat to make a support but do not forget to leave a air space underneith the stringer and to build up your glass a tiny bit at a time. I suggest folding cardboard into teepees and laying your wood on that and then start with one layer of a half ounce matting tabbed onto the wood in about three inch intervals and let that cure for one to two days, then come back and fill in your open areas the same way. Do that twice over and you will have a support that will not fail. The strength is not in the wood but in the glass laminate. One thing I have also done is vasalined up a garden hose and laminated over it then pulled the hose out and keep going like that to make support ribs on panel trucks and such. The host is flexable so it will pull out of slight curves and budy shapes. But even then I do not advise any laminate or such on large flat areas.

 

[johnny 1986]

Corvette Adhesive is a good choice. There are 2 types, one is for the old fiberglass cars. The other is for the later model "SMC" type glass.

 

[Madd Syntst]

Hey Johnny, you learn something new every day. I did not know that Corvettes changed the hglass compound. I admit it makes sense, but just didn't know. Thanx for the intell update.

 

[rpaulsen]

I don't want to mislead you, and I see a lot of people here wouldn't agree with me, but I had to bond a fiberglass skin to a steel frame on a 1972 Javelin AMX cowl induction hood many years ago. I used a product called PL400 from a hardware store. It costs under $2.00 for a standard caulking tube. I had the car for 11 years, and it held fast and never printed through.

 

[awsum34]

Mar10, Is your car already painted? Reason i ask, some two part bondo's or fiberglassing the wood in. you might get hot spots through the paint. Sometimes when you sit back and look you can see where the heat from the bondo or fiberglass faded the apint alittle.
Just something to think about