Thread: Project $ 3 K Is Underway

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Don---In everything I have ever read about reinforcing fiberglass bodies with wood, It has said that if you fit the wood right up tight to the fiberglass, with no gap, it will create a "shadow" on the outside of the body when the body is finish painted with high gloss paint. Any time I have reinforced a body, as you are doing, I made sure to leave a 1/8" gap between the wood and the body, and glass in both sides of the wood to the body by using a 2" wide strip of mat, half onto the body and half onto the wood reinforcing on each side of the wood. I hope that what you are doing does not give this "shadow" effect that I have heard of. I will be interested to see how it turns out---Brian

Great question Brian, and one that I've wrestled with also. I have heard and read exactly the same things, and was careful to leave that gap when intalling the floor. The plywood is about that far away from the body. But for the stringers I had to put them up against the fiberglass outer shell as there was no way to stiffen the body or attach them without glassing them right to the shell.

I did put two to four layers of mat as a cushion between each stinger and the body, and wetted it out so it is bonding the wood to the glass. I did the same thing on my '27 and never got any shadowing. I went one step further on the '27 that I won't be doing on this one. I glassed an outer piece of 1/4 plywood to make an inner shell, and then poured in expandible foam between the two layers. The thinking was that it would make a rock solid body. I guess it worked, as the car never got any stress cracks, but in hindsight was overkill.

I think as long as I paint everything between the stringers with the black bed liner it should provide enough of a light screen that there should be no problems. At least I hope so.

Just don't know another way to do it, and even Total Performance, in their wooding kit, provide instructions how to bond pieces of wood to the interior of the body. (by the way, don't ever buy their wooding kit. I got one with the T bucket I bought a long time ago from some guy, and it is nothing but cheap, crooked firring strips. And they get big money for them.)

Yeah, I know this sort of contradicts that rule you and I have come to accept, but since most boat have wood glassed up tight against the hulls, and I have also done this on my '27, I think it will be ok.

Time will tell.

Don

Oh, BTW, I mentioned that I put expandible foam in the hollow sections of my '27 body. Funny story related to that.

If you have never seen this expandible foam, it is a two part epoxy that boat builders use to add floatation to their boats. You take a hollow cavity, mix up the two parts, and dump it into the cavity. As the name implys, it expands to like 3 times it's size and fills every little nook and cranny. I have always joked that you mix it up and RUN.

So, I took a little hole saw and punched a hole into the inner liner, dumped in some foam , replaced the wooden plug I had cut out, and glassed it back in place. Later on I told my Son about the great thing I had done, and he said, "you really better check, because that foam will expand and push your body out of shape."

I walked out into the garage, and the door area of the body was bowed out about an inch from the pressure of the foam expanding. This stuff was swelling my body outward. In a panic I took the holesaw and cut a few more holes, and all this pressure escaped, and the body luckily went back to it's original shape.

If he hadn't said that I would have had the fattest 1927 Ford in history.

Live and learn.

Don