Fiberglass Advice for Body Edges

[alidbond]

Hi all:

I have quite a bit of rock damage to the front of my Scamp, as well as broken edges on the corners. How easy is it to build up a "new" edge with fiberglass repair and repair the rock pits on the front? I can't see any threads that address this kind of repair.

Thanks!

[HawkBoler72]

The steps to fix it would be: 1. Sand it; 2. Apply fiberglass; 3. Smooth the surface; 4. Paint it. I found the step 3 is the most difficult one. For the low front part, I applied rock guard paint.

[J Ron]

It is not extremely hard to do, especially the rock damage. You can purchase thin sheets of finer glass that are soaked in epoxy and cured. These can be formed around corners. I strongly recommend you get some instruction before attempting it though. A boat yard is a good place to get fiberglass work done and it is worthwhile to shop and get some prices from people to do the job.

[alidbond]

I added photos to my Albums to show what I'm talking about. Maybe its not as bad as I thought. I'd like to give it the old DIY...

[MAP 56]

I use white spray in bed liner workes fine looks good . mask of area to be done, sand with 80 grit spray with white bed liner , brand Gaytor guard for diy guys . It is also tintable .there is youtube stuff out there.did it on my big foot 60 lbs pressure or 4.2 bars and a gavel guard gun. Happy Trails

[stevebaz]

https://www.westmarine.com/WestAdvis...elcoat-Repairs.

https://www.westmarine.com/buy/everc...e-pint--263707

This will work to fill the rock chips. It just takes time and practice making a color match.

[Jan Dyke]

I masked off my front area, used a feathering disk on my 5 inch angle grinder and removed at least 5 layers of #@^&^%$#$%. The deep pits I mixed up some epoxy resin and applied over the pits, re applied till they were filled, sanded yhe repaired areas and applied spray on Rock Guard
Jan

[k corbin]

As I was planning on painting my FGRV I filled the rock chipped areas with epoxy into which I mixed micro balloons. The micro balloons thicken the epoxy so that it acts like using spackle in a dent on drywall.Easy to sand so I do a very slight overfill for an invisible repair avoiding having to do a second application.

Rebuilding edges and corners. It really depends on where it is as to what to do with it. If it is a corner that can be made to look good just by rounding over to create a radius that is what I would do versus trying to repair it. If the edge is slightly damaged but one that typically has some type of vinyl edge trim over it I would do nothing other than smooth off any rough edges because the damage will be hidden under that trim. My last choice would be to use some lightweight fiberglass cloth. If you try to accomplish the task by putting resin onto the trailer and then pressing cloth into it then that would make for a very frustrating, drippy messy so let gravity be your friend and put the resin on the cloth while the cloth is lying on a horizontal surface.

How easy it is to rebuild with fiberglass cloth? The work is not difficult in itself. There is a "trade secret" method to use for applying the cloth that makes it pretty fast to do and not overly messy. Apply the resin to the cloth and spread it into the cloth with a sqeegee while the cloth is lying flat on a table. I cover the table surface by taping down acut open, large plastic garbage bags so that I can toss the mess away afterwards. After your strip is prepared then take it over the the RV and use a small throwaway type of paint chip brush and/or the sqeegee to smooth it onto the surface.

Very thin fiberglass cloth is called E-glass ...that name comes from the electonics industry where they use it to build bases for circuit boards. You can purchase it from places such as Tap Plastics, surf board building shops and some boat building suppliers. You will not find it in auto parts stores, hardware stores or places such as Home Depot. Just do a web search using the keywords "E-glass fiberglass".

[Buggeee]

Use Marine Tex epoxy putty. Here is a link to the product so you can read about it. It's a fiberglass boat repair product.

Marine-Tex® Epoxy Putty | Marine Tex

Its much easier to use than fiberglass resin and gets sanded and polished right into the existing gel coat so it hides real well. You fill the holes with it and then you gently sand with progressively finer grit and then polish with fiberglass gelcoat polishing compound.

It's more like a putty than a liquid so it doesn't sag the way resin does.

It permemantly fills the holes and cracks and then with a polishing of the overall area it blends in nicely. You can get it on Amazon in a small 2 oz set for 15 bucks if you want to try it. 14 oz is only 40 bucks. This is a permenant repair and holds up to even underwater duty on the hull of a boat.