Thread: Project Sebring GT Spyder

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I think you're right that knowing when to stop sanding is a talent that comes from experience, and that it's got to be kept fresh. A friend was prepping a Torino for paint, and after priming he blocked it and found a few small highs & lows so he skim coated them, sanded "smooth" and primed again only to find the same spots again, and again, and again. I think he turned three or four gallons of primer into dust on the floor!

Yep! Been there done about the same thing. When I was doing my 46, there is no telling how much K36 I used. Way too much, that's for sure!

Bodywork, awesome! That kind of work is no fun for me, but it will sure be fun seeing your spider get closer to the road!

There were numerous drilled holes in the body, too. The builder had installed mirrors forward on the fenders. I know that they are considered a classic sports car thing, but I find them utterly useless as a rearview mirror. The field of view is too small and it takes 2 people to really set them correctly. One person can do it, but you’ll wear yourself out climbing in and out of the car. I will be mounting the mirrors on the doors. I filled the holes and covered the repair with new gel coat.



The trunk hinge holes had to be filled as well. The original holes looked like a rabid beaver had gnawed them out. The hinge barely covered them. I tapered the holes on both sides and used short strand fiberglass filler and a little glass cloth to patch the holes.





I shot myself in the foot and created some pretty big places that needed repair when I used a plastic brush attachment on an air grinder intended for stripping surfaces to try and remove some of the silicone that had been slathered all over the body as glue. I had to repair those spots. The plastic brush gouged the gel coat, but the silicone refused to give up! I finally found the right combination of a medium coarse wire brush in a cordless drill that stripped the silicone right off. I swear I wish I knew the brand of the silicone that was used. It was some hellaciously tenacious stuff!

Also, there were several places where the doors had gouged the gel coat. The door gaps were set way too tight. I have opened them up, but the damage had to be repaired.





Here is a shot of the front. Every light colored area was a repair. There is some glare in this picture around the grille opening. There were holes for driving light wires and leather straps for hood hold downs, as well as gel coat repairs. The gel coat repairs were from driving over something like a parking lot divider.

I suppose I should talk a little about my use of gel coat. I wrangled with whether to use it or some of the available fillers. I read as much as I could find and talked to a couple of guys that had done some fiberglass repairs on street rod bodies. They said that if you don’t put gel coat back over the bare glass, you run the risk of having the repair print through the paint eventually. That agrees with a book I have on composites. Printing apparently doesn’t always happen, but it can. Gel coat gives a homogenous surface for the paint and filler to lay on so that everything expands and contracts at the same rate. I experienced printing on some Harley Davidson saddle bags many years ago. I sanded through the gel coat and just used primer over it. The repair could be seen through the paint even though the primer was sanded smooth. Some body men on the internet claim that certain brands of fillers can be used over raw glass, but I wasn’t willing to take that chance.

The gel coat I used is from a company called Total Boat and is intended for repair work on boats. It has wax in the mix just like the fiberglass resin that comes in the repair kits. The wax migrates to the surface as the resin is curing and insulates it from air. Resin and gel coat will not harden properly if air can get to them and will remain tacky for a long time. If you order some, be aware that it is available without wax, too. If you’re doing mold work, you don’t need wax since the fiberglass insulates it from air. Professional fiberglass people use PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) as a mold release and to seal the top surface from the air while curing. They don’t use wax in their resin, it’s mainly added to resin for repair work only.



I also bought a tub of silica filler (also from Total Boat) that can be added to the gel coat to thicken it. Gel coat is thin and trying to brush it on anything but a horizontal surface doesn’t work very well. You add the silica to thicken the gel coat as much as needed. I kept a some in a cup near where I was working and added as needed. Just small warning about the silica. It's very fine and fluffy. It will dust up the air quickly when you are trying to get it into the gel coat. Probably best to wear a dust mask.

This is the meager collection tools I use to sand and shape my repairs. I made these many years ago. The blocks are just wood with sticky sand paper that is used on a DA sander. I use these for the majority of my shaping and only use rubber blocks to blend right at the end. I was cautioned long ago about using rubber blocks causing imperfect surfaces. I had an experienced body man recommend using nothing but hard blocks for shaping. The cheese grater is used to rough shape filler before it completely sets up. Saves a lot of sanding. I rarely use power tools for finish shaping, since I wind up taking off too much. Hand sanding lets me work slower and sneak up on the right contour. I’m not saying this is the right way to do things, but have found that it works best for me and my skill level. A pro can use a DA sander for fine finish work, and I have one, but have only had success with it for rough work. It is simply too easy for me to go too far with one. There again, it’s an experience thing.

I did have a few setbacks during the body work. One was the hood. I bought this hood off of an individual on another site and I’ve had it for a couple of years. The hood my car came with has fake louvers molded into it and the I wanted the one with the original Healey scoop. That hood was an option when the kits were sold.

The hood consists of a top and bottom section that is glued together to form a rigid structure. As I was fairing the glued seam out for paint, I noticed that the bonding was failing in several places. It was literally crumbling and coming out in large chunks. Some of it was stuck solid, while other areas split with almost no force. It looks like whoever glued this up, just used fiberglass resin with no actual glass fibers added of any kind. I can only guess that where the parts actually touched, and were roughed up to expose some fibers, they stuck hard, as they should. Other areas where the gap was larger, the resin just filled the space with nothing to reinforce it. As with gel coat, resin with no glass is brittle and that is just what happened here. I attempted to separate the parts so that I could reglue them, but didn’t have any luck. I was destroying the glass in the areas where it actually bonded, but that wasn’t enough area to hold the parts together except for display purposes, IMO.

I plan to open the fake hood scoop for fresh air intake and that will, most likely, expose the cavity between the hood sections to internal air pressure at highway speed. This would be constantly flexing that glued joint. I wasn’t willing to take a chance on the hood partially or completely blowing apart on the road. Even if that didn’t happen, there would forever be pieces of the old resin crumbling off and ruining the painted surface. Even short or long hair fiberglass filler (kitty or tiger hair), on a properly prepared surface, would have been way better than the crap job someone did on this thing.

Here are a few shots of the old hood.







Luckily, there is a fellow in Oregon that has bought all the molds (that were left) from the last manufacturer of this body and he has recently started offering replacement parts. I called him up and ordered new hood sections. They weren’t cheap, but at least when I glue them up, I will know what is holding them together. I will be using a modern panel bonding epoxy to glue mine up. The downside is that I will have to wait until I get the body back on the chassis to actually glue them up. The body sections are pretty flexible and I have them resting on wooden stands. I’m sure they are not exactly as they will be on the chassis, but close. If I glue the hood up now to fit the body as it rests, the contours may not match up. The hood sections are pretty flexible themselves and could easily be twisted out of alignment.

And here is the new hood sitting on the body. It fits well enough, but I want to try and get it closer during the glue up.





As a side note, the parts guy told me he had received several body parts that were already glued up along with the molds. Nearly all of the parts were glued up as I described. Resin only, making them unusable unless repaired. Apparently, the last manufacturer of these cars cut a lot of corners toward the end of his business. More on that later.

Very nice work and thanks for the info. Funny you should post this. I have had regrets of selling my vette and just recently I found another 69 shell. It has some spots where the bare glass has been setting exposed and repairs will be need. The gel coat is one of the items needed to make repairs to it if I decide to further my project hoar.

40, I actually looked at a 69 Corvette roadster before I bought this car. It was a 350/4 speed car with a new top. Trouble was the guy wanted way too much money for it. Paint was bad, interior was totally shot, and the bumpers were pitted. I didn't even get to check if it was numbers matching. He was asking Barrett Jackson money. No thanks. Good luck if you get it.

Here is some more body working fun.

I redrilled the trunk (boot) hinge holes and remounted the lid. I did get lucky and drilled them correct the first time. I thought I might have to drill them out a little to give me some adjustment, but they dropped right into place. I replaced the old pitted and cracked hinges with some new reproductions.





I also replaced the latch handle with a new one. The light colored spot is where a big chunk of gel coat had popped off. I re-gel coated the spot and reshaped it with some filler. It was in a bad place to sand and an odd shape to boot. I had to break out my contour gauge to get the shape right.



The lid also had several areas where the gel coat had popped off along the edge. Those places got new gel coat. Places like this are where the silica thickener comes in handy.



I said I would talk more about Classic Roadsters apparently cutting corners toward the end of production and my trunk lid looks like it was a victim of that. My lid is only a single thickness of fiberglass and I have always thought that was odd. It is pretty flexible even though it is a heavy layup and had sagged bad where it follows the contour of the body. I could have added rubber bumpers like a hood rests on and corrected the sag, but that seemed like a band aid fix. During a conversation with the parts guy in Oregon, I asked about the trunk lid and he confirmed that it was supposed to have an inner liner bonded on. That would make it a structure like the hood and much stiffer. As far as I know, the parts like the doors, hood and trunk lid were bonded at the factory, so that means my parts weren’t finished before shipping and sent out with the inner liner missing.

Parts guy will be laying me up an inner trunk lid and shipping soon. Sure is nice to have these parts available. Otherwise I would have to try and locate someone with an unfinished kit that wanted to part it out. I might as well do it right the first time before the car is painted.

It's great watching you do the right things for this car Mike. The thought comes to mind about all the other ones out there that haven't fallen into the hands of a skilled and dedicated owner that are just languishing under a pile of debris in the garage fulfilling the mythology of "kit cars are junk". If a caring craftsman happens upon them they might get transformed into auto art, but alas, you're the unicorn (in a good way).

Thanks for the kind words, Bob. I'm glad that folks are enjoying this trip down the rabbit hole.

I agree with what you said about all the unfinished kits most likely languishing away in garages or barns. I read and hear folks at shows talking all the time about there being no affordable cool cars to hot rod any more. That's true if all you're looking for is a '67 Fastback Mustang or a 1st Gen Camaro or a host of other cars that you see on Barrett Jackson going for scary five figure prices.

I've never quite understood why someone would pay thousands of dollars for a rusted out hull of a car and then spend thousands more buying and installing repair panels. Most of those cars are never going to be worth what you have to put into them.

Many kit cars truly are junk, but there are a few with real potential. Of course Cobra's are always going to be cool and there must be hundreds of those unfinished out there since they have been copied at least since the 70's.

There were MG TD kits made with Pinto engines and suspension. TD's have a long history of being hot rodded. It was very common to see an American engine swapped into one in the 50's. Take one of the front engine kits, swap in a V6 or hot modern 4 banger and you would have a fun, cool car that you wouldn't see a dozen of at every car show. There is still a lot of stuff available for those cars.

Another would be the 356 Porsche replicas. They are the only kits that could truly pull off the VW power thing because they were little more than factory hot rodded VW's to start with. But, how about swapping in a real modern Porsche drive train? Or maybe a hot Subaru turbo, if you could work out the cooling? It would be a genuine rocketship and the California Speedster version looks killer.

All it takes is a little "out of the box" thinking. I learned this from following the hot rod exploits of Lil John Buttera in the car mags when I was a kid. If there was ever an out of the box car guy, it was him.

Thanks again.

With most of the body repair work done, I moved on to some modifications I wanted to do.

As I’ve said before, I’m taking some of my styling cues from the rally cars that came out of the Healey Factory Works. Some of those cars had oil coolers installed and had air holes for the cooler cut into the chin below the grille opening. I wanted them on my car to go along with the rally car theme.

I have seen pictures of several cars with the cooler openings. I don’t think there was a real standard opening, but most seem to have two oval holes with a solid bar between them. I have the dimensions for this type of opening that was on a Healey Factory car, but when I tried to lay them out on my car, they didn’t look right. The proportions were wrong. This has to be because the Sebring body is wider and has a taller grille opening than a real Healey.

I had to resort to covering the chin with masking tape and trying several different looks with a Sharpie to find something that looked right to my eye. I would lay out a pattern and then walk about 20 or 30 feet back and see what it looked like.

I finally settled on two openings 2 ½ x 6 inches with a 1 ¼ bar separating them. That looks about right compared the pictures I’ve seen. Kind of makes the car look racey, I think. I have some stainless mesh that I intend to make protective inserts with.

I’m not sure I will actually add an oil cooler, but do plan to glass in some mounting pads for one. Even with no cooler, they will allow more air through to the radiator and AC condenser. My radiator is as tall as I could mount and hangs below the grille opening. Even with a cooler, the extra air will still make it to the radiator, even if it’s a little hotter.

Here's a before and after.

Yes!
That really does look as though they're meant to be there.
And yes; it does add to the 'Rally Car' theme.

Thanks Johnboy.

While I’m discussing the front end, I might as well go back to some of the old stuff I was posting before I got started on body work. This goes back to my final mockup, before I tore it down.

I have never really liked the grille that Classic Roadsters put in these cars. Here is the original grille that came in my car.



I had originally intended to just add some more bars to the CR grille and run that. I even made a mesh grille, but didn't really like it in the end. I kept looking for other options. Every time I found an old junk original Healey grille on EBAY, I would buy it, if it was cheap. Cheap parts don’t show up often on EBAY, but if you wait long enough, something usually turns up. The cheap parts more often than not need repair work, though.

I looked at the original 100-4 grille, but it was too radically different than the opening in the Sebring. I bought an original 3000 grille next. This would have been a late model grille with the vertical slats that the Sebring grille was trying to mimic. I probably could have made the grille work with some tweaking, but the chrome surround was a no go. The original Healey opening is slightly smaller than the Sebring and the front contours are different enough that it would have taken a lot of cutting, fiberglassing and reshaping to make work.

The next grille that came available was a 100-6 part. The 100-6 had horizontal slats with scallops and only had a chrome “eyebrow” over the opening. The lower part of the grille opening was framed by a simple round rod that was bent to the contour of the opening. The only parts on EBAY were the actual slats. This looked like it might be doable. Here is a picture of a 100-6. This grille was also used on the first one or two years of the 3000 designation, too.



When the grille came in, I was pleased that it was wide enough to cover the opening. It wasn’t, however, quite tall enough. The Sebring opening was made larger most likely to keep the proportions looking right for the widened body. The 100-6 grille had 10 bars. I figured out that if I added one more bar, I could get it to work out. I reasoned that the lower grille trim should be easy to fabricate out of aluminum tubing. The main problem was the upper chrome eyebrow. The 3000 grille surround is actually two parts and the upper section of that looked pretty close to the shape of the 100-6 upper part. I tried it out and found that didn’t quite fit, but looked like I could tweak it and make it work. I wasn’t sure just what I would have to do to, so I sent it out to be dechromed.

In the meantime, another pretty decrepit 100-6 grille popped up on EBAY and I bought that one to get the extra slat that I needed. I should add for any collector types that might be reading this, the grille parts I used were in very poor shape, so it wasn’t like I was cutting up valuable parts.

The 100-6 grille is made of thin brass sheet that is stamped into the scalloped slat, chrome plated and then riveted to 3 vertical bars to hold everything together. I drilled out the existing rivets. These should have been solid rivets, but they were ordinary pop rivets on my parts. Someone had disassembled this one before. The rivets are hidden so it really doesn’t matter. I have to say that the slats cleaned up so well that no rechroming will be needed, just a good polish.

I made new longer vertical bars and incorporated one extra slat and reinstalled the pop rivets. I was pleased that it fit the body opening just as it should.



When the upper eyebrow returned from being dechromed, I set to work reshaping it. It took a little shrinker and stretcher work, as well as some plain old hand twisting, but I finally wrestled it into a reasonable shape to match the Sebring body. I did have to fabricate some folded sheet metal “clamps” that slip over the body opening and eyebrow flange to help hold it to the opening flange.

The lower trim I made out of ½” 6061 aluminum tubing. I milled a slot down one side that was approximately the same as the lower flange on the grille opening. Then I made a cardboard pattern of the open shape and transferred that shape to a piece of scrap plywood. This gave me a male die to form the tubing around. The whole process actually went a lot easier than I thought it might. After a lot of trimming and hand tweaking, the trim piece snapped into place very snuggly.





With the whole shebang assembled, I think it gives a reasonable impersonation of the original 100-6 grille. Here is a shot of the front end. Also in this picture are the 59 Healey Sprite bumperettes that I fitted. These are the same parts that the Healey Works fitted to most of the factory rally cars. Not shown in this shot is the lower driving lights. I made some mounts, but can’t seem to locate a picture. I may not have taken one. Most of the rally cars had some kind of low mounted auxiliary lighting. I really want a couple of Cibie Oscars with the white plastic covers. They would be perfect period correct parts. I’ll keep looking for some, but they are very expensive. Everything has been rechromed since this shot was taken. You'll also notice a wire mesh headlight cover. I'm still on the fence about them. They're not hard to install, so if I decide I don't like them, they remove easily.