It doesn't look too tragic, and in fact wasn't too bad. Bent the horns on the rear clip. One need replacing, the other just a little straightening. The fiberglass on the other hand was a bit more of a challenge. The break was on the corner, and went through to the corner of the hatch opening. There was a fair bit of fiberglass missing in the corner so was a bit of a guess to get into place while patching together.
To add to that challenge, there is a nice rounded moulding just under the hatch opening that had a chunk missing. If it had been just nice flat surfaces, no problem. This was a beast to piece back together.
I finally finished the fiberglass and bondo work on the rear left corner. Of course I had to throw a coat of paint on it tonight to see how it turned out. Naturally I didn't prep the surface very well. Bought the tack clothes and didn't use them. Too much of a hurry to see how it looked with paint on it. Even got some runs in it... OK, so tomorrow I'll be spending some time wet sanding the whole area to get all the dust and hairs and runs and whatever else is stuck into the paint cleaned off. That's OK, because I'm thrilled with how the repair worked out. Damn I do good work. It's like nothing was ever damaged. I love it when it comes together.
Once I've got the outside all pretty again, I'm going to remove some of the excess fiberglass patching from the inside of that corner. It would appear that this wasn't the first time that corner took a hit. The glass work must be three times thicker than original. In one spot, there was at least 3/8 inch of bondo on top of 3/8 inch of fiberglass. Nasty! Going to bring it down to thiner than original, then add a new layer of matt cloth to clean it all up and make sure it's going to be strong. May even lose 1 or 2 pounds of ugly patch work that way! For those Inex inspectors out there, not to worry, I don't intend to shave it thiner than original, just clean off the old patch work!
Here's what it looks like today!
OK, stop snickering at the hairs and blemishes in the paint. At least the fiberglass work is impeccable!
I know I've probably spent way too much time on this repair already, and that once the season is on, I'll have to get used to quick sloppy repairs. So here's a questing for all you long time racers that are used to doing fiberglass fixes... What kind of short cuts do you guys use to get a repair job like this patched up?
Mike