Twin_Turbo

Okay,

I have a little bit of a problem here. I am doing fiberglass work on my car and on the front everything is going very well. The front is aftermarket, just fiberglass and I'm using polyester resins to do the work. The crushed fibers will only release the bonding agent in them with styrene, only present in polyester resins. Epoxy is a no no there.

Then, I also did some repairs (structural) on the rest of the body. I used uni and bi directional woven matte with epoxy and it works like a champ, very solid, very tough.
Now here comes the problem, I want to do some outer body work like flares and such and I want to use the crushed fibers because the woven stuff can be seen through the paint. However, since it's SMC (the body) I can't use the polyester but must use some kind of epoxy, and this doesn't have the styrene in it. :(

I tried some epoxy on a piece and it seems to hold up fine, the color is fine (consistent, no white fibers, nice and translucent) but it took longer to cure (longer than w/ polyester) and it took quite some time for the fibers to get saturated (some hefty rolling w/ roller helped a lot there)

I'm not 100% convinced I can use this on the body. I contacted AdTech since they have some special formulated stuff they make for Ecklers. Of course they didn't reply (why the hell don't companies reply to honest questions?) I told them I was willing to buy it from them or ecklers but it's impossible to ship that stuff to me (netherlands), I tried a couple of times and the package got intercepted as containing hazardous materials :)

I am about to mix some styrene into the epoxy, I did some research on it and can't seem to find 1 reason why not to do it. Just need to figure out the percentage to be mixed.

Does anyone know what to do? Maybe there's a much better solution to this.

Luckily I still have my old SMC hood so I can do some testing on it to see if it cures well and if there are any other problems.

Thanks,

Marck





[Modified by Twin_Turbo, 3:14 AM 8/4/2003]

74-Roadster

I'm not sure what you're referring to with the styrene, but you should be able to use fiberglass matt with the SMC resin. Is the crushed fibers your referring to the same stuff as the fiberglass matt? It sounds like you're making this too hard.

Are you buying pre-made flares? If so, call Ecklers and tell them you have an SMC body and want to bond on the ZL-1 flares they sell. Ask them what resin and what type of fiberglass do they recommend. My guess is they'll tell you SMC resin (I think that's polyester) and the chopped fiberglass matt, not cloth.

Twin_Turbo

the crushed fiberglass is the same as chopped fibers, the other stuff is uni and bi directional woven.

The problem is I CAN'T buy the resin from ecklers or AdTech, if I could I would have. I have asked them but somehow they won't reply and I'm at a loss here.

I don't know what the SMC resin is made of, I know it's epoxy based but don't know what they added to make it compatible with the crushed fibers.

Here's some pics to illustrate what I mean:

bi directional woven:


crushed fibers:

spinedoc

on my 80, i had similar difficulties. regular fiberglass resin, wouldn't stick to the SMC. I spokw with some vette restorers and was directed to a product called FUSOR, mfg by LORD corporation, amazingly enough right here in my hometown!

The stuff cures with heat, works great and has given me no problems. I am not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but maybe this will help. If you need more info or anything, let me know.

eric

Twin_Turbo

interesting, I'm doing a search on that stuff. Do yous till have the can? if so, what does the label read about the contents?
http://www.fusor.com , that it?

Twin_Turbo

hey cool, they have good articles on their site. :thumbs:


Is it for bonding panels? I have epoxy based bonding stuff for that, the problem is, can I laminate glass with this stuff.. time to do some reading I guess :)


[Modified by Twin_Turbo, 2:05 PM 8/4/2003]

74-Roadster

Fiberglass cloth

Fiberglass Matt



Is there any way one of us could buy what you need and ship it to you? Or is there still a chance it'd get intercepted?

I'll read on the back of my SMC Resin can tonight and see what it says exactly. I used the stuff when I reworked my nose and I used the matt without any problem.

WashingtonRacer

Unless the Resin is strictly prohibited in the Netherlands, You shouldn't have a problem if they "PROPERLY ship the stuff to you" That being they have the proper hasmat documintation with it.

Twin_Turbo

I have tried it before, the stuff is not prohibited here at all. The problem is, shipping stuff like that will get pcked out when shipping by air. Maybe sea is an option but that takes so long and in fact, it's BS. The stuff needed HAS to be available here. I have had someone try to ship me some of that stuff (I tihnk it was Evercoat) and it came back as hazardous materials, not to be shipped by air.

74-Roadster

Have you tried any local boating supply stores? I have no idea if they use SMC on any boats though. :confused:

joe73vette

I don't get why the woven cloth will work but the matt fibers will not. Aren't they the same glass? But anyway, if the cloth does work but you don't want to see the "grain", put a skim coat of regular bondo over the final joint. Then prime and sand as usual. Joe

spinedoc

I used the Fusor 100EZ. you need a special 'caulking style' gun to administer it, which I got at a body shop supply store. do you think i could ship it to you?

Twin_Turbo

Woven cloth has structural strength because it is woven, crushed fibers doesn't.

For crushed fiber matte to become strong and form a matrix you need styrene wich is responsible for forming crosslinks. Epoxy doesn't contain styrene, polyesther resin does.

Without styrene it just becomes hardened resin with fibers floating in it and the fibers would not conribute to material strength.

Twin_Turbo

Fusor is for bonding, not for laminating right??? If that's the case I don't need it, I only need resin for laminating, thanks for the offer though

Marck

CF6873

I am not familiar with styrene but you state that matte has no structural strength? If you repair something with 3 layers of saturated matte and roll each layer before applying the next you will have a very strong repair. The older Vettes were hand layed with matte and boats are made with spraying chopped glass and they have plenty of structural strength. You can do what you like but as was stated above I think you are making this more difficult than it is. Craig

loose nut

I use fusor127ez for bonding and 100ez for building up bonding strip areas etc. Fiberglass evercoat makes a smc resin that will work very well for customizing it works just like conventional resin and bonds so much better to smc or regular fiberglass. You will need to use cream hardener with it.
I prefer the white hardener , as you mix it the resin turns a shade of light green. It works great with mat or cloth. I have done alot of smc work if I can help you E mail me at morzel7@cs.com

74-Roadster

Hmmm, didn't know the details like you do.

I read on the can of Evercoat SMC fiberglass resin and it's clearly for use on SMC panels and fiberglass mat (I checked the spelling and everywhere I looked it's "MAT"). The ingredients include polyester and styrene.

But back to the main issue, where do you get some of the proper resin? Sure wish I could help but I'm at a loss and no more ideas. :confused:

74-Roadster

Okay, I just answered your question in my previous post above, the polyester resin for SMC panels and mat made by Evercoat contain styrene, I bet other brands do too. Let us know what you find.

Twin_Turbo

Ahhh we're getting closer. So the evercoat SMC stuff is polyester and not epoxy based??? Now we need to know what they did to the polyester to make it stick good to SMC since normal polyester doesn't do that all to well

@CF6873:

a couple of layers of crushed mat ( :) ) makes for strong repair with polyester because there's crosslinks due to styrene, try it with epoxy resin and you will notice that the fibers are loose in the matrix.

I wish I was making things too difficult but I tried it on a test panel and the result sucked the big one :(

@79L82hatch:

Interesting, I could use every bit of info about the subject you might think is usefulll. I don't want to do this job again due to crappy work/ wrong materials

I need to get me some of that evercoat stuff. What if someone puts a "white beans in tomato sauce" wrapper around the can, that might work??????? :) :D

Thanks for the help so far guys, we're gtiing there.

BTW, this sort of stuff should be available online somewhere, like in the corvettefaq because there's nothing on SMC anywhere on the internet and also not in the Ecklers fiberglass repair manual.

EDIT:
Here's the difference of styrene being present and not. The first pic is of mat laminated with polyester resin (styrene), it forms a good matrix that can be sanded smooth with a uniform structure. No loose fibers that can be pulled out.

The second pic is my test piece on an SMC hood. At first it looks like a successfull repair. The resin adheres, the fibers don't and when you start grinding and shaping you can see the fibers start to pull out, they are not crosslinked at all.

Polyester and mat on hand laminated front



Epoxy & mat on SMC hood



Marck

[Modified by Twin_Turbo, 1:58 AM 8/5/2003]


[Modified by Twin_Turbo, 3:26 AM 8/5/2003]

NHvette

No help here - I'm just glad I don't have to deal with the SMC stuff.
It seems a pain - even if you CAN buy the right materials.

Good luck Marck - sounds like you need to keep looking locally - or wait
for your 'ship to come in'.

I would look into the suggestion to call some marine stores - or places that
do boat repairs. They might point you in a promising direction.

:seeya