I'm a sick sick puppy

[Alex]

Even though I'm going to end up painting it (either a white or silver), I just can't stand the thought of looking at plain gelcoat sitting there for the next 1-2yrs, sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

unpolished gelcoat - note the dull reflection of the hallogen light and micro-marring in surrounding areas (it's white, so you arn't going to see micromarring well in photos, esp. with a cheap camera)

mmmmm, polished gelcoat. Note that distinct lack of micromarring in the first picture at the camera flash, as well as the depth/clarity of the 1000watt hallogen reflections. I meant to take some pictures with it on the car to show the night/day difference, but I forget until after I had stuff off. Oh well, there's always later.

The micromarring is easy to see in person; in photos, the best way to tell is just from the reflection of the hallogens - 1st picture you can see them, but kind of fuzzy (not perfect clarity); perfect clarity in the last pictures though.

Incase anybody is wondering (I know i was), polishing gelcoat is really just like single stage paint, except it's got more mils.

I found that for seams it was easy to knock them down with 1000, 1500, 2000, 3000. Then for select areas around the body, just 1500, 2000, 3000 to knock down certain defects.

Polishing it out was fairly easy - i'm using a flex 3401 (far mroe powerful than a pc, not quite as powerful/hot as a rotary); pfw (purple foamed wool) and menzerna SIP to remove the wetsanding scratches, then a white pad and menzerna powerfinish (finish, not gloss) to remove micromarring from the rest of the body.

Nothing like spending the next month sanding and polishing gelcoat that will eventually get painted ....... who says I need mental help :lipsrsealed::drunk::drunk::lipsrsealed:

:stunned:

 

[Doug S.]

Looks nice, Alex. I use to work in a "cultured marble" shop, we used a power buffer to polish the panels and sinks we made. They could be used aggressively enough to "polish" through the gel-coat, and particularly if we didn't empty the moisture separator at the compressor and got some water droplets into the gel-coat, but we were generally very pleased with the finishes we got.

I've seen some of the RCR offerings in polished gel-coat, it was very convincing!

Doug

 

[Alex]

Cultured marble....ooooooh, I polished my c.m bathroom tops - last owner really killed them. From my (limitd) experience and research, it seems c.m is relatively easy to polish - just you don't have mils of thickness to work with, so you don't want to be doing it over and over.....

However, regular marble and granite are a whole other story, haha. You need some serious equipment to do that.


.....I think Fran should hire me to do all his gelcoat polishings; he can pay me in 917s :stunned:

 

[Doug S.]

yeah, the gelcoat on the C.M. is pretty thin. We had to spray the forms with polyvinyl alcohol as a release agent, that left a fairly "grainy" texture onto which to spray the gelcoat. All we wanted to do was get the finish to look smooth, and at times it was a delicate balancing act b/c of the thin nature of the gelcoat. You are right, don't plan on being able to polish your C.M. sink/countertops too many times, you'll be through the gelcoat! Ask the domestic godess to keep the fingernail polish remover away from them, we used acetone to clean out the spray equipment (the gelcoat had to be catylized before we sprayed it), it'll eat holes in that thin gelcoat.

I agree, Fran should pay you in 917's, maybe even P-4's??

Doug

 

[Martin]

Won't you have to rough it all up again to get a good key when you do eventually paint the car ?
Looks good though.

 

[Alex]

Won't you have to rough it all up again to get a good key when you do eventually paint the car ?
Looks good though.

Yep - but while you're building, you don't really want to look at unpolished gelcoat, do you :drunk::drunk:

 

[Martin]

You get used to it. Mine is multi coloured anyhow as my body needed a fair bit of alterations. I chose to do the body first as i didn't want to get glassfibre dust on and in my mechanical bits. It will be a dramatic transformation when it gets paint that's for sure.
I know what you mean though, that glossy gelcoat will make it look like it's finished and that will give you a boost not to mention a lot of admiring glances.

Martin

 

[Alex]

Alrighty; a week laterish and I finally wetsanded and polished the entire body. Came out great.

Blah, white is too hard to photograph well to show the difference, especially with a crappy camera.

because I'm a sucker for punishment I started polishing the dash. The first person to point out that I'm going to spend 12+hrs wetsanding and polishign the dash, only to cover it with leather when I'm finished, is going to get a swift kick in the groin :lipsrsealed:

Unpolished

Mmmm, polished piece

 

[Doc Kaler]

Admirable job Alex!

 

[Jack]

Looking good Alex, worth the effort on the body..

 

[Brian Hamilton]

Hey Alex, aren't you going to cover that dash in lea...

Nevermind.

Looking fantastic! Wish I had an SLC of my very own to play with. LOL Keep up the great work.

 

[Alex]

Looking good Alex, worth the effort on the body..

Without a doubt!

My only experience with gelcoat on cars has been Factory Five (no comment :lipsrsealed: ), so I was fully expecting to paint my car. However, when I saw the rcr gelcoat quality I figured 'hey, this isn't that bad actually, will probably polish up pretty good'. Andddddddd, it sure does. If i ever get a better camera/lighting I'll try to take decent pics, but in person it looks just as good as professional paint job. Very glossy/deep reflection/etc.....

As long as it doesn't oxidize in a matter of weeks (boats do that; but they're constantly in water, so........), I'll probably just leave it polished gelcoat forever - I do a light polish on all my cars once a year, so doing that wouldn't be anything new; plus gelcoat has the benefit of being mils thick instead of just microns, so I could probably lightly polish for a hundred years and never strike-through.

Hey Alex, aren't you going to cover that dash in lea...

//slowly approaches you from behind, foot twitching

:laugh:

 

[Allen English]

Alex that looks great man. I would still like to do a full carbon fiber SL-C all buffed up like what you did. Think about the $ you will save by not painting the car. It sure is nice to see a company that takes the time to have a high quality mold made. After owning and doing my own body work on a Factory Five Roadster I can see how you can appreciate your new RCR build. I am impressed...

 

[Alex]

Alex that looks great man. I would still like to do a full carbon fiber SL-C all buffed up like what you did. Think about the $ you will save by not painting the car. It sure is nice to see a company that takes the time to have a high quality mold made. After owning and doing my own body work on a Factory Five Roadster I can see how you can appreciate your new RCR build. I am impressed...

Still going to have to output some $ for bodywork (there are a few places along the seams where, even before I started sanding, you could see the underlying fiberglass - I guess sometimes the gelcoat doesn't fully penetrate the mold seams), but I found a local shop that does outstanding show-boat restorations. After practicing I can do decent gelcoat repair (dremel/re-gelcoat/sand/polish), but not perfectly seamless (sometimes I can in my practice pieces, but not having much luck on the real deal), so when I'm finished, as long as the gelcoat doesn't oxidize like crazy in a matter of months, probably will indeed leave it as such for a while to come.

Full carbon sl-c would be drooooltastic if it were anywhere as good as the wing. But $$$$$$$. Still, not certain I would go for it - with gelcoat, if it's damaged you can repair it. With paint, same story. With carbon, welllllll, I'd imagine it's a replace and not a repair issue, heh.

 

[Alex]

I never want to see this dash again, lol. All finished. I hate being obsessive compulsive :laugh:

nb: on the digidash barnacle, that isn't burnthrough; that's something trapped in the gelcoat itself. I swacked it with 600 and it didn't budge, so I figured rather than obsess over it, who cares, the dash will be covered in the end.


Mmmmm, but car is shineeeee

 

[Jack]

Looks great Alex..

 

[Dave Lindemann]

Alex -

Very nice work! I had contemplated going the polished gel coat route (black) with mine but have since decided to go with a metallic silver color so it'll be getting painted. Your polishing efforts really show the excellent quality of the RCR body panels.

Just curious - was the engine cover opening cut out by RCR? All of the SLC's I've seen have what appears to be a fairly wide flange for mounting the Lexan. Just wondering if it needs to be that wide?

Regards,
Dave L

 

[Jack]

Dave, I cut mine 1-1/2 inches all around.

 

[Alex]

Alex -

Very nice work! I had contemplated going the polished gel coat route (black) with mine but have since decided to go with a metallic silver color so it'll be getting painted. Your polishing efforts really show the excellent quality of the RCR body panels.

Just curious - was the engine cover opening cut out by RCR? All of the SLC's I've seen have what appears to be a fairly wide flange for mounting the Lexan. Just wondering if it needs to be that wide?

Regards,
Dave L

I will never ever ever ever ever ever evvvvver own a dark colored car again - I hate micromarring (swirls et al.) with a passion, and as we all know, you arn't getting away from them on a black car; no matter how good your wash technique is, you can't maintain black to 100% all the time.

So good call on going silver :thumbsup:


Fran cutout the enginebay window, so I'm thinking that's the proper width (atleast I hope it is, heh). I'll measure after and let you know the width of the cutout.

 

[Allen English]

Quote:By Alex

Full carbon sl-c would be drooooltastic if it were anywhere as good as the wing. But $$$$$$$. Still, not certain I would go for it - with gelcoat, if it's damaged you can repair it. With paint, same story. With carbon, welllllll, I'd imagine it's a replace and not a repair issue, heh.

Alex - If the carbon fiber ever got damaged enough I would probably just repair it and paint the car at that point. You would still have a SSL-C (Super Special Lite Coupe) :uneasy: