The last bit

With the hood done, there is only one part of major bodywork left on the Viper.  When this car hit whatever it hit(probably a pole), it slid along the driver's door and into the quarter panel.  The side sill had already been replaced when I got the car.  The door was a total loss.  Even a cheap bastard like me could see that it was more trouble that it was worth to try to fix.  The quarter panel is another matter.  It could be replaced, but the damage wasn't too bad and I'm me.

Let's have a look at the damage, shall we?  You can see from the panel gap that the bottom of the quarter is shoved back almost 3/4".

The quarter is shoved back to the point where the quarter is almost touching the sill.  It's also got some cracking along the edges where it flexed too much, and you can see from here the split in the sill.

The inner sill is all cracked up too.  None of the underlying metal is bent, but the fiberglass is cracked in several places.  You can kind of see how the bottom of the sill is shoved back a bit too.

Here's the main crack in the quarter panel.  You can see that it's buckled a bit just below where it's riveted on.  You can also see the spalling radiating out from around the visible crack indicating that the crack extends under the paint a ways.

 
Fixing these areas will be just like all the other areas, with one minor addition.  But we'll get to that next time :)

All bondo'd out

I joked earlier about having the Viper out again before finishing last fall's updates.  Turns out it wasn't that funny, because it's true.  In my last post I started bondoing the hood.  It's time to finish it off.  One of the most prominent features of the Gen II Viper is the hood scoop.  The scoop is a plastic part, and after 15 years in the sun it's not the same shape it originally was.  Additionally, the scoop on my car isn't from my car.  I assume that the original was damaged in the crash so it was replaced.  What all this adds up to is a scoop that doesn't fit like it did when it was new.  The shape doesn't quite match the hood, and, since I re-fiberglassed almost the whole perimeter of the scoop hole, the gaps are all over the place.  Since I have the bondo out already, now's the time to fix it.  The easiest thing to do is to just bondo over the whole thing and sand it down.  First I covered the scoop in blue painter's tape, then I bondoed over the whole area.  The tape both keeps the bondo from sticking to the scoop, and provides some protection so it doesn't get too scratched up while sanding.

The bondoed area is so big because it needs to blend smoothly into the rest of the hood.  We don't want the scoop area to be a distinct high spot.  You also have to make sure to allow enough room in the panel gap for primer and paint.  If your gap is too small, the scoop won't fit once the primer and paint are applied.  After blocking the area down, and some minor tweaking of the panel gap, the scoop fits good as new(actually, probably better than new).

With all the bondo done on the hood, it's time for more Dura-tec.  If you remember back when I first described Dura-tec, you'll know that it's very similar to fiberglass resin.  It catalyzes differently than standard paints and primers.  When you mix regular car paint or primer with catalyst, while the work time, or "pot life" is only an hour or so, it can still take a few days for a cup full of liquid to actually start to solidify.  Dura-tec isn't like that.  Much like fiberglass resin, once it starts to cure, it gels up quick, and the more catalyst you use, the faster it kicks off.  If it does solidify in your paint gun, you go buy a new paint gun.  Why am I mentioning this?  Because when I Dura-tec'd the hood, I had a VERY close call.  My gun started spraying like it was empty, but it wasn't.  The Dura-tec started to gel up in the paint gun.  It took a few minutes of frantic acetone scrubbing to get my gun clean before the stuff turned solid.  At any rate, I did get my hood covered, and the hood is done until it's time for final primer and paint :)

I heart bondo

Seriously, at this rate I'll have the car out again before I'm done posting all the stuff I did last fall...  With the hood fiberglass done, it's time for bondo.  I've already posted why Bondo brand bondo is terrible and should be avoided at all costs.  My biggest complaints are that it spreads poorly, and sands hard.  I mean, it works, but you end up using more effort and going through more sandpaper than with other fillers.  There are much, much better products for not a whole lot more money.  My filler of choice is Evercoat Rage Gold.  It's about $20 more per gallon than Bondo, but the time and sandpaper it saves are well worth it.  Concidering the $800 I'm likely to spend on just primer, paint, and clear, an extra $20/gallon for filler is nothing.

The first thing I did was sand down all the fiberglass with 80 grit sandpaper.  All the 'glass was sanded close to the final panel height, and all the left over paint was removed from the repair area.  Then I mixed up a big batch of bondo and covered the whole area in one go.  The big blue tarp not only helps keep the dust out of the engine compartment, it also catches drips in the bondo.

If you catch the filler at just the right point while it's hardening, you can remove a whole lot of material very quickly.  Using my longest sanding block and 80 grit paper, I sanded the whole area down.  You want to use the longest sanding block you can because you'll end up with a flatter result.  NEVER use power tools for your final filler work.  If you do bodywork all day every day, you're probably good enough to get away with it, but if you're inexperienced, power sanders will leave you with a very wavy surface.  It quickly becomes apparent when sanding where the highs and lows are.  The highs get sanded down some more, and the lows get more filler.  Ideally, you want no more than 1/8" of filler thickness, any deeper than that could conceivably crack(though that's unlikely) and should be filled with fiberglass instead.  Pinholes in the fiberglass should be ground out too, to avoid problems down the road.

You'll notice that I bondoed right over the edge of the hood scoop hole too.  Since much of that area is new too, it also needed some work.  With the scoop as a guide, I used my die grinder, some square files, and a sandpaper covered popsicle stick to remake the scoop relief.  Here it is in progress:

I want to be sure that the curve of the hood matches the curve in the fascia.  To make sure they match, I made a simple template with foam core posterboard.  It'll get me closer than I can eyeball(and no, I'm not holding it straight in the top pic).

LEDing the way

The headlights on my '95 Impala SS are just awful.  The combination of poor lens design and barely adequate wiring makes for little light down the road.  They are so bad that I can drive around with my high beams on without passing drivers flashing their lights at me.  Generally speaking, upgrading the headlights is a lot of work.  The wiring is sized just big enough for standard wattage lamps, switching to higher watt bulbs requires relays be added or risk melting the wiring.  I'm also on my 3rd dimmer switch in this car, the previous two melted.  I've avoided upgrading the headlights partly because of cost, and mostly out of laziness.  But I came across a new solution, LED bulbs.  The price of LEDs has dropped significantly over the past few years, and they now make drop in replacements.  LEDs also use much less power for the same(or more) light output than standard bulbs, which greatly reduces strain on the wiring and switches.  So I took the plunge and bought some.

To my surprise, the headlights already in the car were already upgraded to PIAA "Star White" bulbs(which explains my melted dimmer switches).  Far from being white, they put off a fairly standard yellowish beam.  You can also see that around the base of the bulb the plastic is charred and melted a bit.  These bulbs run HOT.  I bought the LEDs on e-bay for around the same price as many of the "upgraded" standard bulbs.  They are 80w 8000Lm bulbs, that's an entire 50 watts less than the PIAAs, and they put out more light.   Here's what the new bulb looks like.  The old bulb is on the left, the new LED bulb on the right:

Installation is as simple as removing the old bulb, putting in the new one, and plugging the harness into the existing plug.  It's immediately apparent that the new bulbs are brighter.  Once again, old on the left, new on the right:

So, how do they actually work?  Well, the jury is still out on that one.  There is no question that they put out more light, but how they put it out leaves me a bit underwhelmed.  The pattern is much more diffuse with the LEDs.  They light up the sides of the road better, but don't seem to project out as far.  Since half my driving is at night down country roads, my biggest concern when driving is deer jumping out in front of me.  Having the sides of the road illuminated better could help avoid them.  Though the highs are definitely brighter, there isn't as distinct a difference between the high beams and low beams either. 

Lows:

Highs:

I'll give it awhile to get used to them, but for now I'd call it a wash.  On the plus side, I shouldn't melt any more dimmer switches :)

This just in...three months ago...

From time to time, I fall off the face of the internet and people won't hear from me for weeks or months at the time...  At this rate, it'll be warm again before I get all the work I did last fall posted.  Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program...

I saved the biggest crack in the Viper's hood for last.  This crack goes all the way across the hood from the scoop to the headlight.  The lower corner was cracked off too.

Like everything else, this giant crack was never repaired right.  Even though the crack was actually fixed with fiberglass, all the damage wasn't removed.  There is still a lot of delamination along the edges of the crack.

The surprises never end when redoing someone else's work, you never know what you're going to find.  In this case, a lag bolt, just chillin' between the top and bottom layers of fiberglass.  No reason for it to be there, it wasn't holding anything.  This is about as far down as I ground the fiberglass too.  While it's still mostly solid, it's paper thin and is only there to provide enough backing to keep the new fiberglass from sagging.

While I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure if I ever explained why I'm using fiberglass mat instead of woven cloth.  Thickness for thickness, woven cloth is stronger than mat but it's harder to work with.  It doesn't go around corners as well as mat does.  Being easier to work with isn't the primary reason through, the real reason is shrinkage.  Fiberglass and bondo shrink a tiny bit for awhile after they set up.  If you don't properly cure, then post cure your work it will shrink more.  Even if you do it right, fiberglass and bondo will still shrink a tiny bit over time as the remaining VOCs slowly evaporate out.  This is the biggest reason why I wanted to get the fiberglass and major bodywork work done last fall, and wait to paint it next summer with many hot days in the sun in between, to give the bodywork time to shrink before final sanding, priming, and painting.  If/when the bodywork does shrink, the weave of the fiberglass may become visible.  Our eyes and brains are GREAT at picking out patterns.  If you use woven cloth, your eye will be drawn to the obviously square weave pattern of the cloth, and it will be very noticeable under the paint.  Mat on the other hand has fibers meshed in a random pattern.  If you do get enough shrinkage to see the weave, the random pattern will be much less noticeable.  It won't draw the eye like woven cloth will.

For this repair, I used pieces of fiberglass big enough to cover the whole area.  Generally speaking, the bigger the piece you can use, the better.  On things like the bottom of the hood with all it's curves big sheets just don't work, but on big flat outer surfaces, they work great.  I used an entire 8 sq/ft package of fiberglass mat on just this one layup.  This is part of the reason I did all the small spots first, so the top layers of fiberglass could be done in big sheets.

After grinding that down, it was time for the last bit of fiberglass work on the hood.  You'll remember from earlier posts that the front lip was pretty cracked up.  When I did the back, I ground the lip to a very thin outer shell and layed 'glass in behind it.  For the topside, I ground it back until I hit the new 'glass I put in, then layed full length strips across the nose. 

With just some more grinding and trimming, that's about it for the fiberglass repairs on the hood.  Everything else from here on out is body filler work.  Also keep in mind that even though I layed fiberglass over existing paint, it's a huge no-no for finish work.  Anyplace there is fiberglass over paint, it's still higher than the finished surface needs to be.  Before adding bondo and doing the final bodywork, all the high spots in the fiberglass(where it's overlapping any paint) will be sanded down and ALL of the paint will be sanded off the repair areas.  But more on that later...