Thanks to all. To BobK....We would NEVER had even considered this had there not been aftermaket parts. Although we are doing a little fab work there is no way on god's green earth we could've accomplished ANY of this without new sheetmetal. Now if only we could get some EFFING FENDERS!!!!!!!!
Any whooooo......................this winter I started repairning the grill surrounds. I started with the typical glues and epoxies. I finally found some plastic epoxy that actually bonded the plastic chemically. It seemed to work pretty good so I went ahead and primed everything. As I was painting the grill surround snaps and smashes to the ground (it was hanging from one of the screw holes with a wire hanger) and snaps in half. I said to myself "self, what bad luck you have. Gosh darn it think of all the time wasted repairing that". At least I
think that is what I said as I don't remember the next hour because I was blind with $%^king rage. I did notice though that the repaired areas were quite visible through the primer and the more I sanded to get them smooth the weaker the areas got and wouldn't stay bonded. I then had an idea and decided to see I could "weld" the pieces together using plastic from some other busted up inserts I have. It seems to have worked out great.
When I started I had an idea to help strengthen the repairs. At places that would be hidden by the chrome I drilled two small holes, at the tops and bottoms of the cracks, and threaded through some cotton string and tied it as tight as I could. My idea was that not only would the string help hold the pieces together but that the epoxy would soak into the thread to stiffen it up.
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After the fiasco in the paint booth I decided to try to weld the pieces together. The first thing I did was get the tip of a screwdriver scorching hot.
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I then melted a trough half way through the plastic along both sides of the crack and then filled the trough with plastic from another surround
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I then sanded everything down, added some epoxy on the surface to fill low spots and sanded again. Bet you wish I had some pics of them finished don't cha? Well, maybe next time. The surrounds aren't here. I'll get some pics of them this weekend when I'm over working on the car.
