Fibreglass Fairing repairs

Wardy

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Hi, just wondering if any of you clever guys have ever done fibre glass repairs. Long story short, recently purchased a touratech fairing, but it got bashed in delivery, basically it's flexed and cracked the gel coat in a few places. Do I use ordinary car filler ? or gel coat ? or is there a flexible filler as I'm bound to bin it sometime? Thanks in advance.
 
It's never a quick repair of fibreglass,

Is it just gelcoat cracks / crazing? Has the fibreglass spit / cracked? is it's structural integrity affected? is it flexing more than it should


Unless you have the same pigments & gelcoat, any repair wwill look shite / bodged.


Send it back
 
Thanks for replies guys, was thinking gelcoat filler - jersey. Santa, it's just the gel coat cracked, fibreglass is still in tact, although it does flex a bit on bottom half. It will need a paint after repair, was wondering if there was a flexible filler that would help with any flexing, etc.
 
Did you buy it new and if so where from?


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Nah didn't buy new, searched high and low, eventually found one in Spain, then went missing in delivery, eventually turned up box open and bashed. Its only the gel coat thats cracked where its flexed probably from being stacked up, with weighton top.
 
Thanks jersey, thought there had to something out there. Going to brace the flexing area with bit of aluminium on the inside, so job should be a good un. Thanks for all the response.
 
Just remember what your dealing with


Fibreglass products are arse about face so your top coat (gelcoat) is the botton / start of the process


in a typical painted panel you have

Base substrate (metal plate)

E coat or similar (corrosion preventer)

Primer (one or two coats )

Top colour ( multiple coats )

Lacquer ( multiple coats )

to make a repair you rub through the lacquer, top coats & at worst back to primer


Firbreglasss is different you start with

Gelcoat/ pigment (top layer / visible surface)

Resin/ Mat (multiple layers) (substrate)

and thats it .

Rub through your gelcoat, and you will expose the glass fibres, get these wet, and you will get osmosis , so you nice repair may blister and pop some months later

any filler you use will not be the same colour as the Gelcoat , and you cant just whack a coat of paint over the gelcoat, as it may react & pickle

Ideally you need to remove all the loose and flaking gelcoat, and or rake any cracks back out to solid gelcoat

Think of a capital V thats what each line of the crack should look like

You then need to fill the repair with a blend of glass powder & gelcoat colour pigmented resin, this means you will get a near on ideal match to your original gelcoat.

you need to fill sightly overflush to allow for wet and drying back to level.

The you need to polish your repair to blend it in .

To do a simple repair you will need the following


Pigmented Resin & catylst

Fibreglass powder

Filling knife

Wet and dry paper

Fibreglass wax polish

you can buy ready mixed filler in a tin, but you still have the problem of you have to paint & colour match your gelcoat


You will need some glass fibre mat resin & catylst if your going to brace the inside with ally plate,

you will need to abrade the fibreglass otherwise the new resin will not stick eaither, and the first time you flex it it will pop the plate off the back

dont do it outdoors , the humidity is to high & the tamp too low at the moment, so it wil take ages to go off

if you do it indoors it will stink the place out ;)
:)
 
Wow Santa, thanks for that. I have got a bit of experience boat repairing, canoes, etc, so know roughly what's what, even built a catamaran barge for lifting sunken boats, fibreglassed the hulls, was just interested to see about flexible gel coat as I'm bound to bin it sooner or later, and anything flexible might help. Big thanks for your response, loads of great info there, thanks for sharing.
 
Wow Santa, thanks for that. I have got a bit of experience boat repairing, canoes, etc, so know roughly what's what, even built a catamaran barge for lifting sunken boats, fibreglassed the hulls, was just interested to see about flexible gel coat as I'm bound to bin it sooner or later, and anything flexible might help. Big thanks for your response, loads of great info there, thanks for sharing.

For my sins i spent 6+ years doing fibreglass bench work, before moving onto building lifeboats, which takes things into a whole new ballgame ;)

so as you've got experiance, it shouldnt be too difficult.

if you have a GRP place near you tap them up for some offcuts / resin etc ;)

All gelcoat is to some extent flexible, it's finding it's flex limit is the fun part lol
 


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