Simmering with Rage

We've been working in the early morning and the late evening to avoid the worst of the heat, but I don't think this is slowing us down much. We're to the point where we are applying Rage, then waiting for it to cure before sanding it a bit and applying more. We'll mix 4-5 batches of Rage each time we work on the body, and we figure we're probably sanding almost half of that back off the next time.

Where the fender meets the door, we have a high spot on the door on the top of the fender, and a low spot on the door where it meets the side of the fender. We had to re-install the window frames as they affect where the door sits when it is closed.

Following some advice we found online, we're taping the high spot so we don't add Rage to that part while we build up the low spot. This takes several applications, as a single layer must be thin.



At the front of the doors, both the fender and the door taper inward. Once we bring up the low spots as shown below, we will fill across the door opening to give a nice smooth feel from the door to the fender. Following still more advice we found online, we used an adhesive weatherstrip between the door and fender to keep from filling that gap with Rage. We're not looking to permanently shut the doors!


The bottoms of the hood were pretty rough, so we put a thin coat to give a nice surface for the paint later. On the driver's door, you can see we are one coat further along than was pictured for the passenger door. It is a challenge to skim the Rage to level the door and fender. You have to work quickly to give a smooth finish, but you want to be thorough as well to minimize the number of coats it takes to do the job.


Another week or two of this, and we'll be ready to shoot SlickSand. This is a sprayable surfacer that looks like a primer coats but is actually designed to help us remove any remaining surface imperfections and to give a nice smooth look for the paint. We will need to build a couple of stands for each half of the body, as we will remove the body before spraying it.

Someone send some cooler weather our way, we could sure use it!

Spoiler Alert!

Lots of news this week. First, we finally got enough of a bend into the top exhaust pipe on the driver's side for the pipes to slide onto the exhaust headers. We celebrated, then quickly put the exhaust back into the box. We won't install these until the paint is done.


We've been building up the fender in front of the driver's door to make up for an ill-fitting door skin. This is a common problem with the kits, supposedly addressed with a recent revision to the molding process.


We spent some time on the rear of the car, trimming, fitting, then attaching the rear spoiler. We used a High Strength Resin Filler (HSRF) from 3M to attach the spoiler. Since the HSRF doesn't stick to gel coat, we had to sand all of the gel coat off of the mounting area. The bond is permanent and is VERY strong.


We will be fairing in the edge of the spoiler to the body in all directions to help it blend into the body lines. This is one of the more "artistic" steps we'll have to take with the body work, so wish us luck!

We are fairing in the back of the car, covering up an ugly joint with something a little more pleasing. This will take a couple of rounds of filling and sanding to get it just right.


The lighter color Rage product shows off the low spots in the body. Once filled and sanded, the contour feels just perfect. You can tell that the area around the fuel filler opening was very uneven.


Once we get the spoiler and the back of the care faired in, we will need to re-attach the doors so that we can contour the fender-to-door and door-to-window frame lines. We're also adding some Rage to the inside of the wheel wells. Once we do that, we can sand the edge round. This replaces the thin edge of fiberglass with something more eye-pleasing when you look into the wheel arches.

Stay tuned as we complete these tasks over the next several weeks. We're hoping for a break in the hot weather, as it has been at least 95 degrees for a high for weeks.

More Sanding

We're almost finished with initial sanding of the shiny black gel coat on the body. We have to sand all of it so that the fillers will stick to it.


The first filler we're using is called Rage Gold. You mix some of it with a hardener, then work quickly to spread it before it starts to harden. Between the 100 degree temperatures and trying to get the mix ratio right, we ended up putting a little more of the Rage on than we really needed.

We're getting the hang of mixing and applying it now, but we still have a few areas that will need a significant amount of sanding to get rid of the extra Rage.

We use large sanding blocks to make sure we don't create low spots. In fact, the whole point of Rage is to build up the low spots that came on the car. We're pleased with the results so far.