Dec '15 - Starting bodywork

Starting bodywork

To help cope with the depressing, snowy, frigid, Cobraless winter months, I decided to tear into the bodywork and 'finish' the car. Most of the cost of a nice hot rod paint job ($8-10k these days for a basic job!) is labor, and my labor is free. I've done it before, and while it was no car show trophy winner, I was more than happy with the results. At the very least, I'll do the body prep and priming, and possibly farm out the basecoat/clearcoat...we'll see. Right now I'm leaning toward BMW Imola Red with no stripes...but I might opt to do something similar to the job on FFR3144, silver or light blue with a red-white-blue stripe down the middle.

To start things off, I had to remove all of the decals and the red vinyl tape I had covering up the mold parting lines I had quickly ground down. These lines mark where the different pieces of the mold come together as the fiberglass sheets and resin are formed into each new Cobra body, with a red gelcoat that serves as a base for real finish work (or temporary color for impatient builders like me who can't wait to get on the road!)

Overall, the Mark IV kits' parting lines are in much better shape that my earlier projects and didn't need quite as much work to grind down, fill in voids and match all of the curvy contours on a Cobra. Some example shots:

Left Front seam:

Front seam:

This was the only spot that had significant misalignment, and only on this spot right near the right-side headlight. It'll take a bit more grinding and filling here to get a good contour.

Left rear seam:

Gas cap area:

A few voids to fill in along here, but that's typical for the odd shapes.

Right rear door seam:

Right rear fender:

Yes, it was a very hasty and ugly grinding job, that's why I covered it up with the red tape!

No more shiny:

I already removed the hood scoop in this shot - I cut the scoop opening a bit to large and not very cleanly, so It'll take a bit of 3M High Strength Repair Filler to tidy it up and fill in the gap between the upper and lower hood panels.

Time to start scuffing the shiny red gelcoat to prepare for filler work.

Front seam scuffed:

To line things up better here I will have to grind out enough material here I will probably reinforce a bit with HSRF underneath.

Left rear seam:

A little bit of misalignment here, but nothing that the Rage Gold body filler can't take care of.

Right rear seam scuffed:

Body off of the chassis and on the body buck for the time being. Piles of pink dust everywhere, and coating everything. Messy work! Got the first half scuffed by the end of the year. Coming up next year - filling, sanding, filling, sanding, ...