Save money by doing your own fibreglass repairs

By cutting and shortening an old truck cap, I saved myself the $1,300 cost of a new one

by KEITH BERGLIND

Working with fibreglass is next on my list of non-metallic repairs, now that we’ve played long enough with the ease of plastic welding.

I always associated fibreglass repairs with fixing boats, which do not interest me. But, last year a special situation led to my doing two major repair projects with fibreglass, and I discovered how easy it is to work with. And I saved money on each project.

The first job was my destroyed race car body, which left me with about 10 chunks of broken fibreglass in a pile.

I procrastinated for weeks, then looked through my shop manual collection and found a John Deere Fundamentals of Service manual (FOS-69) called Fibreglass/plastics. A trip to Canadian Tire produced the resin and hardener, and a package of fibreglass cloth. They even sell the body putty and paint.

I put the car body back together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Mostly, I would fit two pieces together, clamped to a large table. Then I could lay a patch of resin-soaked cloth on the inside, over the crack, where looks and finish didn’t matter. Step by step, over days, I pieced all the pieces in place, and tied together the cracks with the resin and cloth routine. Eventually I bolted the body to the car frame, which locked the shape into place.

Then, I went back inside the body, placing larger pieces of the cloth over all the seams from the first patching routine. Many joints got three or four layers to add rigidity to the body.

I notice that boat builders often add pieces of thin plywood, covered in the cloth and resin, for extra strength at critical places. Then I spray-painted the inside and it looked original.

The outside surface cracks are easy to fill with body filler, then sanded smooth and painted. This body was totally repaired for under $100. My time didn’t count.

There was a 9x4-inch piece missing, so I made a plaster cast of the identical piece on the other side of the body, laid in a triple layer of cloth and then glassed it to the body.

But the real money saver was the truck cap I cut and shortened, saving the $1,300 cost of a new cap.
I have a Dodge Dakota Quad Cab truck for trips. When I tried to buy a cap for it, it was on back-order, and would not come in time for my trip. Then a friend gave me a cap for a S10 Chev, but it was eight inches too long and looked silly on the Dakota.

So, using my hand skill saw, with a carbide blade, I cut an eight-inch section crossways at the centre. After removing the windows, it was easy to mark the two lines and cut away. With a small angle grinder, I cleaned up the surfaces inside where the glass cloth would be laid down.

Then I clamped the two pieces to a large picnic table, getting a near-perfect match on the outer joint surfaces. When I was satisfied, I laid a two-inch-wide strip of cloth and resin. Next day, I overlaid that with a three-inch strip and the following day with a four-inch strip.

When this all was cured, I turned it over and filled the outside joint with  putty. Then I sanded and painted until it looked good. In the picture, you can see the black strip. I couldn’t find the right grey colour, so we just left the strip black. We like it this way because it makes the truck easy to find in parking lots.

I took the aluminum window frames apart and cut out the eight-inches. I left the plexiglass windows stock because they do not matter. This job probably cost less than $50.

In my last article, which was about plastic-welding a combine roof lid, I suggested that it might have been better simply to sheet over the whole roof with a skin of fibreglass. The fibreglass would not stick to the plastic, but the skin could wrap around the edges to lock it on. It wouldn’t be as pretty as before, but the strength would be there. And it wouldn’t leak rain.

For the serious guys, try this. Make a mould for the outside of the roof cap, in a bed of plaster or cement. Then lay in fibreglass cloth and makea whole new roof cap.

Currently, I am teaching myself how to paint these repairs. Maybe the black strip will soon be gone. Or the cap will be all black.

Keith Berglind is a licensed heavy-duty mechanic.