As with most Corvettes that are fifty years old, at one time or another they have seen a collision which will require some level of fiberglass body repair. In the case of our Corvette, we have multiple panels that have been badly damaged at one point and had some fiberglass body repair done. Unfortunately, the quality of the fiberglass body repair was not great, so we will be replacing multiple panels, including the whole front end. We will show the whole process of the fiberglass body repair, starting with the removal of the fiberglass panels.
The rear quarter panel has been damaged and will need to be replaced.
Using a die grinder the fiberglass is ground out at the bonding strip
The fiber glass at the bonding strip is ground down just to the point of hitting the bonding strip behind the panels. A change in color of material indicates you have reached the bonding strip.
After grinding down the fiberglass at the bonding strips, a thin chisel is used to carefully separate the quarter panel from the bonding strips.
The rear tail light panel of our car also has some severe damage and will be replaced.
Here you can see one of multiple fiberglass body repairs that have been done to this car over the years. To properly fix this the entire front end will be removed and replaced.
Here you can see where the fiberglass has been ground down and a chisel is being used to separate the bonding location.
Here the front end has been separated from the rest of the body.
After removing the front end, a few panels will be removed for use in the new front end. The inner fenders and the front lower valence will be used on the new front end.
Here is the body with the front end removed.
The front end after separation from the body.
The rear panel removed.
Next we will need to reinstall the body on the chassis with it’s new set of shims to prep it for the new front end.