I have been messing around a little more with fiberglass lately, and am now wondering if you could just lay resin over plastic, as i have experienced resin is much easier to sand than plastic. I was thinking you may need to drill holes and run it through possibly, or is cracking going to be an issue.
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resin doesn't like to stick to plastic too well... but what you can do is drill several holes through the plastic and put resin on both sides (kinda like a nut and bolt effect).
Dont forget to use matting or fiberglass cloth or its gonna crack to hell and back over time.
ive got a dewalt sander and mmmmmmmmmmmm there is NO competition. i spent a total of about 2 hours sanding one rear panel in my cav and it is almost completely texture-less. just gotta go over the corner part for the 1/4 window by hand cause the sander wouldnt fit back there lol.
i started with 60 grit, went to 120, 220, and lightly with a 400. i might even finish with a 600-800 just for the hell of it. and ive also finished a few other panels from the car already in the same way. and in a week or two im going to strip everything out of the car again and get the lower dash with the sander. should have most everything smooth.
anyway........just sand it.
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man mine just eats through 60 grit i think on one door ive used atleast 4 and its been a few hours.
Think it makes a difference that they were spray painted when I got them? so maybe the paint gums it up a little i guess. I have a craftsman sander just dont know why it seems to take so long
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mine were painted too.....twice! lol. yeah its got red, primer, white, and black all on there. back when i first got the car i didnt do any prep work to the panels and just tossed paint over paint. lets just say thats not a good way to do it lol. and it gummed up my sanding discs a little bit, but not really enough to matter.
maybe the difference is in the years of our cars and the different materials? maybe they upgraded? i know in like 00+ the front panels were all plastic where the older ones had a rubber/vinyl top.
other than that man i really dont know. i still would not recommend using the resin. it might be easier to sand, but its not going to want to stick to those panels at all. the problem is with the flexing....if it flexes its gonna separate from the plastic. even if you sandwich the top and bottom, its still just resin and the resin is brittle.
the only other thing i could think of is a high build primer or a gel coat. maybe if you roughed the plastic up enough you could spray that and it would cover the texture to make it look smooth
good luck either way man
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The top of my 2001 cavy dash has a vinal covering.... door pannels and glove box and that are all plastic covered though.
All my plastic pieces were roughed up with 180 grit then 220 and then got three or four good coats of high build urethane primer. Can't beat the smoothness you get from that.
You are right Tabasco about the 2k plus door panels being plastic on top, they are also one piece instead of two, and the carpet part is much easier to get out as well as re-wrap because that dip isn't near as bad. When I sprayed my doors I switched out my 98 panels to 2k just to make things easier.
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How is mine not doing it right? I know there are a number of ways to do it, but you do not have to start at such a rough grit to remove all the places. Its just a way of saving time. Also starting so rough leaves you with the possibility of having deep grooves still left in it.
The approach you are looking to take isn't wrong, but is alot more time consuming and not really necessary.
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i use 60 to get it down quicker, the grooves are plenty deep, and i dont feel that 120 would even them out as fast as 60.
The point of grits is to take it down faster the lower the number, higher to finish it. Im not sayin you are wrong, but im saying having used 60 and not takingit down very fast, i dont feel that 120 will do the trick since its not as aggressive taking things off.
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http://www.modified-motorsports.com
i prefer to use 80 grit, ive seen some people who have used 60 grit get some deep scratches that were hard to remove. just sand the plastic down. to do fiberglass right is going to take 5x as long because your going to have to wrap the whole panel or drill all the holes and then lay down at least a layer of cloth and then sanding the fiberglass, and then all the filler on top of that. trust me. sanding the plastic is way faster then fiberglassing, and dont be in a big rush, i know i have problaby over 40 hours of sanding time on my interior. my fiberglass sub box problaby has as much sanding time as well and thats allot smaller then my interior is.
ben. dont bother going higher then 400. heck for my pieces i didnt do more then 300 on the plastic, when u prime it use a high build primer and wetsand it with 400 and it will be plenty fine.
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You don't need to take it down with an aggressive grit when using a high build primer is what I am saying. With things scuffed up and sanded lightly, the primer does the rest. Theres nothing wrong with what you are doing I was just trying to help you in saving time. Take a look at my interior if you don't think that does the job, my interior say no less than 180 unless it was places I fiberglassed.
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