Update by Tim Suddard to the
Chevrolet Corvette Coupe project car
Jun 17, 2024
|
Chevrolet,
Corvette,
Restoration,
C2 Corvette
Photography by Tim Suddard
The restorer’s work is never done. When we bought our 1965 Corvette, we noticed that the hood was a bit out of adjustment: It was too close to the headlights with a bit of a gap at the back.
Upon closer inspection, we also noticed a bulge at the left-front corner of the hood.
With the hood removed, we noticed that the metal frame had partially separated from the rest of the hood.
We glued the hood back together using 3M 08115 bonding agent. While this would have originally been done with fiberglass, we felt this modern bonding agent would do an even better job with a lot less mess. To clamp the repair while the adhesive dried, we sanded a piece of 2x4 to fit.
[Video: Easily repair fiberglass at home]
As we dove further into the job, we noticed that nearly the entire fiberglass hood had separated from the steel frame. We grabbed some paint sticks to lift the hood up off the metal frame and then applied the bonding agent to all of the resulting cavities.
We then used some solvent to clean up any excess. (We don’t think the factory was this neat.)
We then set the hood on some sawhorses so the adhesive could dry, using towels to protect the paint and some weight to prevent any gaps.
When we were all done, we painted the underside of the hood with Eastwood Chassis Black paint while making sure not to lose any of the original manufacturing marks.
We then used some Nassau Blue touch-up paint to cover the seam on our initial repair.
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