What are you guys doing to prevent damage to your Fiberglass fenders? Years ago I glued insulation material (double sided foil with the bubble material inside) and under coated them heavy. I went to the hardware store yesterday to get some but what they had was ti thin, it has been over 20 years ago. So thought I would get some advice before Igo looking. Thanks That's Fiberglass not feberplass
Those are gelcoat fractures and are caused by stones impacting the inside of the fender. If the fenders are made with chop (no mat or cloth in the laminate) it will be worse.The other thing that would make it worse was if the laminate is resin ritch,that is chopped and sprayed with additional resin to make it easy to roll the air out during production. The fenders on my 28 chev were layed up in 1965 and dont have any stars as you call them,but are relitivily heavy and consist of mulitiple mat/cloth laminations. The under coat helps,but makes it all but impossible to make repairs on them in the event of a collision. Measure the thickness of the fender,if its less than 3/16" you will always have these issues with them. If they were not undercoated you could scuff the inside with a 24 grit disc and add a layer of 1and 1/2 oz mat,then 10 oz cloth,and finish up with another 1 or 1 and 1/2 oz mat. To really make them bullet/stone proof,use 24 oz woven roving,laid on a bias instead of the cloth.Doing this down the center where the tires throw stones would work,but maybe more work than you want to get into. I guess the basic thing is that it sounds like they were made a bit thin in the first place. edit) when I was building front ends for KW the fender area had to be 5/16" minimum and gel coated both sides for this very reason.They were laminated with woven roving too. It was the same uith the ups truck fenders except that they only wanted 1/4" part thickness.
Staring happens on all fenders not just glass. Some of the fellas have sprayed bed liner on with good sucess. I came from an odd family, I was taught that stars meant it got driven and not just hauled around on a trailer.
My pal Dave always takes his to the local truck bed liner guy and has them sprayed,,seems to work great. HRP
x2 on the spray bed liner. you can buy a kit at the local paint store and should be enough for all 4 fenders. read the directions for prep.
Yep! The tops of my fenders have a few "stars" in them courtesy of the pits at the one track I raced at last season. My car is all steel.
Is that traditional feberplass? As others have said - spray bedliner on the underside and you can color tint it to match the paint on the top side. Eastwoods sells it....
Bed liner helps, but what I did works great. Go to a sporting goods store, or maybe even walmart, and look for a pad that campers use under their sleeping bags. It's made of the same material as those "fun noodles" pool floats, so it doesn't absorb water, it's about 1/2" thick, what I used was even black. Then cut it to fit, and use a GOOD contact cement, or maybe even weatherstrip adhesive (test it first) to glue it in place. Mine's been there (on steel fenders) for over 20 yrs now.
They are new fenders so I don't have any problems now, they are pretty thin and made using a chopper gun, that's why I'm wanting to use something pretty thick I put quiet a few miles on my 35 5-window without any stars or delamination, I thought a bought bed liner but wasn't sure if it would have enough cushion effect. Thanks guys
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