The answer is "No". End of this month's article.

Moving back to last month, I found an interesting article. It says the same things I said last month but a bit differently. Some of you will relate to it. Go to http://www.autobody101.com/articles. Then look under 'Misc.' and click on the item that begins with 'confessions'. And by the way, he is correct about the economics. You really have to want to do old cars because the money is in collision work, not restoration.

OK, back to fiberglass. I thought now that I gave you the answer, I would tell you how we deal with fiberglass cars. And mostly this will be about Corvettes. In the four years I have had the shop, we have done about 45 Corvettes ranging from 1956 to 2006. Most of them have been complete paint jobs, although a few have been partial paints, or 'spots'.

First of all the best behaved fiberglass car we have ever done was a '64 Studebaker Avanti. A a side note, the car was originally owned by Rod Serling, the creator of Twilight Zone. In any event we only painted it once, which is unique as you wIll see below. More typical is a car that belonged to an individual who shall remain unnamed and to whom I shall simply refer as 'El Presidente'.

When we estimate the cost of doing a fiberglass car, we expect and plan to paint it twice. Take El Presidente's Corvette. When it came to us, it was bubbling all over the car. It had an excellent selection of fisheyes too. Lots of potential problems for sure.
Here are four common sources of problems:
1. Replacement of a panel which has fiberglass of low quality and therefore has air pockets
2. Poor repair of existing fiberglass creating air pockets
3. Improper mixing of materials
4. Incompatible materials

With the exception of #4, problems come not from the manufacturer but from repairs, either prior or current. (I will discuss incompatibility in another column). The issues with El PresidenteÕs car all came from previous repairs and here is what we did:
1. Repair all the bubbling areas and prime
2. After sanding (not quite a strip, but close to it), prime the entire car again with polyester primer. (We do not recommend taking a fiberglass car to a stripper, by the way)
3. Sand and prime again
4. Sand and paint the car and let it air dry (no baking like we do with regular cars)

Between each of those steps there were days, and sometimes weeks, when we had the car sitting in the sun. We did this not because we were looking for another deposit, but to see if any bubbles would appear. And since El Presidente's car was going black it would get very, very hot in the sun giving any pockets of air are nice opportunity to make some new bubbles. Further, El Presidente was going to have some fancy graphics on his car and would not be happy if Sam's paint bubbled.

After weeks, no problem. Should be OK right? Nope. After we painted the car, a bubble appeared in an area that we did NOT repair. It was a previous repair. So we repaired the area and painted it again. It came back again. So we repaired again but significantly expanded the repair area. This time it worked. Why did this happen? I confess we actually do not know why the previous repair decided to act up, just that it did. What we know is that if you do not give up, you will get it. The Gods of Fibreglass do what they want to do, but they always will yield.

I can keep writing this stuff probably forever. However... If you have something you would like me to talk or write about, email me at smhedgpeth@sbcglobal.net.

Article by guest columnist, Sam Hedgpeth, owner, North Highlands Maaco www.SacAutoBodyShop.com Email: smhedgpeth@sbcglobal.net or phone: (916) 334-5556