Fiberglass Fender Repair

My original fender was in need of some work. When I bought it I thought I can repair this easy. I had repaired surf board in college working with Sanding Resin glass and cloth. My work was good and clean, but after speaking to my parent's neighbor Jack, who was a professional with glass and epoxy, and learned what was needed to properly repair this fender I knew it was beyond what I preferred to tackle.

Luckily, Jack offered to take it on. He uses the West System Epoxy. He is a glider instructor and built his own glider. Aircraft folks use this system and he referred to it as aircraft epoxy.

He told me it something like 100 times stronger than fiberglass. Hell the Lammy fender is referred to as "chopper" work in the fiberglass community. It is cheap and fast to produce many many fenders. Jack had to cut back and rebuild the area around the crack by hand. It looks great!

The fender overall was in fair shape.

There were noticeable chips and even stress cracks.

There were chips and the mounting holes had cracked and became too large for the hardware.

I will dry fit the bike after body work and before paint and then line these holes up and re-drill them.

The nose was misshaped a hair and Jack rebuild that as well.

Jack said he had to "feather" (this he said is the lay-man's term. I forgot the glass worker term for it) to build layers for maximum strength.

He reinforced all areas that would be stressed by a vibrating Lambretta.

It feels so good to know the job was done right.

Jack found stress cracks and explained that they would only get worse, so he cut back the source and rebuilt it and reinforced it. It will no longer stress crack.

I am amazed at his precision and accuracy. He told me the entire fender took him two hours.

Looking at it before one last time shows it was decent, but now the fender is something I will not have to worry about thanks to Jack.


Jack is "retired" he says and "not for hire". He is eighty years old. He said he'd do my fender at costs, which was $12.00 (yes, twelve dollars).

Above is a soap box derby car Jack build from scratch with epoxy. Even the steering column and frame he welded. The only thing he bought was the tires.

These old school fabricators are hard to come by now and I hope to get some garage time with Jack and learn at least a little.

For $12.00, a nice bottle of wine, and a framed picture of his soap box derby car winning a race I have an original fiberglass front fender ready to go to the body shop, who will sand it down and fill it up (little to none will be required) where necessary, prime and paint.

In early 2012 I will work with Jack and my dad to learn how to work with the epoxy and repair my dad's Sun Fish sail boat. After that experience I should be confident working with the epoxy and have the ability to make repairs to fenders and such -- of course not as good as Jack did.

Bodywork home repairs

BEFORE you do anything go to the following web forum and classroom at:
http://www.autobodystore.com/

Ask about "moving metal" and show them a picture of your problem area. These guys know their stuff and many are ol'schoolers that pratice the "art" of bodywork. They would be the experts I'd ask first. I was turned on to these guys by Christopher Markley of www.motorapido.net, who worked on my wife's 1967 Vespa SS180.

On the Bajaj Yahoo Group today, Mark emailed and said his scoot was dented by a hit-&-run and he wanted suggestions for repairs. His cowl was damaged.
This dent is somewhat creased and that is not a good sign for an ameteur home repair. The more it is creased the harder it will be to repair without needing to repaint.
On the flip side if he can manage to bump the dent back out he may get away without re-painting the cowl, because the paint is in decent shape currently.
For smaller dents without creases I recommend either buying or building your own Ding King from "As Seen on TV". If you visit your local Harbor Freight Tools, Home Depot, and Dollar Tree (for mini hot glue gun and glue) I am sure you could easily make your own dent remover that is even more versatile than the Ding King.
In the photo you can see it's an easy 3-step process using a Ding King.

For this dent this approach would be my first line of defense. ALWAYS use the way of least resistance and work your way up. Hammers are almost always a BAD idea.

With a friend applying hand-pressure to the back of the dent and you working your Ding King try to pull out the dent while your friend pushes you guys may get it to pop back out and look somewhat decent (not perfect). You never know. Research heating and cooling the metal too for expansion and shrinkage. You can heat it with a Harbor Freight Tool's heat gun (cost about $10 on sale) -- just check on how it will affect the paint first. This is a much better approach than a dent puller, which requires you to drill a hole into the metal and then pull it out.

Your next line of defense is hammer & dolly (costs $16 on sale at Harbor Freight Tools).