And a hole is no more....

Remember the hole left in the top of passenger footwell when I removed the old fusebox from the Plus 2? Here's a reminder:

Well, its no longer there. Glass fibre is a great material to make a car body from - rust free, strong but a bit flexible, and easy to modify. If the car had been steel, then I would have had to fabricate a plate to fill the hole, then weld, rivet or bolt it in place. Glass fibre - well cut some 3 oz matt to size, put a bit of stiff card covered with cling film behind it then slather (sorry, carefully hand lay) matt and resin over the hole. I'd had my resin in its can for some time so I did do a test batch to make sure it and my hardener was still ok. The resin had developed some globules so it was pretty close to its end of life, but when it was thoroughly mixed with the hardener was ok for this repair. The result - a reasonably neat, waterproof repair which will with a spot of rubbing down and coat of paint will be all but invisible. So here is the process in pictures:

First of all prepare the hole by grinding back the sides to give a decent area for the repair to stick to the existing bodywork. There was a fair amount of filler on top of the glass fibre substructure here so lots of dust was produced:

Then get the backing piece in the hole so you have something to support the repair - as the resin doesn't stick to clingfilm it can be easily removed when the resin has cured:

Thirdly cut some mat to size and then mix the resin - I use an electronic scale so I can measure the right weight of hardener into the resin and use a disposable wooden tongue depressor to mix up the resin and hardener.

Then its just a case of layering resin and matt, making sure you get all the air out of the matt. I use a brush to stipple the surface of each sheet of mat before popping some more resin on top and adding the next sheet. And here is the completed repair with four layers of mat plus a few offcuts added to use them up:

Finally its just sit back and wait for the resin to go off. So now I can fit the new fuse box and continue with the rewire.