hi there i was just woundering if any of you have applied gel coat to you body kits, if so what kind have you used, the reason y im askin is im in the process of painting my car, i took off the body kit sanded it down, there are lots of little pin holes, i have been using fiberglass filler thats reinforced with kevlar to fill these holes, i spoke to a friend and they recommend using gel coat to go over the body kit, i was woundering what you guys think any suggestions are greatly appreciated
when you buy a kit, it usually comes w/ a gel coat on it
never used it yet, but id like to know the same thing.......im going to have to gel coat my rear seat setup when im done....anyone got some info??
From what I understand after speaking with the guys at the refinishing store all gel coat is is resin with pigment in it, nothing more.
Basically when they get ready to lay up a part they spray their colored resin (gel coat) in the mold first (actually second because first goes a bunch of mold release so they can get it out!) usually fairly thick then they lay in sheets of fiberglass or use a choppergun to spray in little bits of fiberglass then they drown that with unpigmented resin to smooth out the inside of the boat, body kit, whatever.
So, in short unless you want to spend a lot of money making a mold the only way to reproduce this is to resin your part and then block sand it out and paint it, if you tryed to get colored resins like the stripes on the side of a Baja boat it would be hard to make it not wavy and crappy looking.
Hope this helps you guys out, I am by no means an expert but this is what I have learned from college and my experience
i dont think you need to make a mold of something just to use a gel coat. even if it is just a pigmented resin, it would allow you to see uneven spots unlike raw resin, which would be helpful. i wouldnt doubt that is the process for a mold, but i dont see how a gelcoat could only be used for a mold of something. that dosent make much sense. also ive heard of gel coat being applied after a mold of something has been produced.
Well, I meant that if you just applied it it would have brush strokes unless you can figure some way to spray it and I am not sure if you could wet sand and buff it out to be shiny again so you would have to paint it like you would if you were fiberglassing a dash.
from what i was told the other night its very sticky @!#$, that can be applied with a special spray gun, the idea is that it is very strong and hides lots of minor imperfections, the body kit that i had bought was only primed and there were lots of little air bubbles. im sick of spending hours and hours putting fiberglass filler in these little holes,
alright well i just picked some up im hopeing to spray some or all of the body kit tonight ill let you guys no how it went
i picked up some gel coat from a boat store, i first applied it with a small gun, the spray nozzle was to small and didnt work because the gel is to thick, i then used a larger gun, it worked awsome, looks great , and is fairly easy to sand, it shows exactly where you need to make any changes, i love it. when you spray it you reduce it by 10 percent,
