1970 Ginetta G15

What are the grub screws for?

Feeling a bit better today so straight up to Itchy's place after work to get stuck into completing the task with the bulkhead. After the obligatory mugs of tea to lubricate the enthusiasm bones it was suiting up and breaking out the die grinder to fully go over the entire area in preparation for glassing.





It was then more arts and crafts with foam board, parcel tape and the hot glue gun to complete the fabrication of the bulkhead panel.





After a few nods of satisfaction on a job well done we retired to the comfy chairs for another brew.

It don't think it will come out noticeably lighter as this car body is really very light anyway - There were rumours in the past of special light weight bodies being made for racing and that may well be the case but this one is just lightweight as that's the way it was fabricated.

The body is not stiff enough to add anything much to the chassis, the way you stiffen the chassis is with the chassis works detailed previously - It's in torsional rigidity that the chassis is deficient and the body is pretty weak in that respect as well, mine being poorer than most in that regard as its so light.

Couple of hours on the G15 this evening saw the body removed from the chassis - just popped of the formers very easily.



Chassis rolled outside and covered up whilst we get on with the rest of the works.



Pulled the arts and crafts off of the body - only stuck where I had used hot glue to hold parts together and that didn't take much effort to remove. Very happy with how it has gone and how stiff the rear bulkhead is with such a light weight lay-up. Another layer of 300gm will be all that is required to complete the works.











We had assembled the rotisserie frame at the weekend so it was a simple enough job to assemble the rest of the parts and drop the body on. Test rolls all good although balance is a bit off so we may address that on Wednesday.











The arch liner popped off the Poly' with ease and we may well lay up another of that side on Wednesday - Depends how we feel - Good to have the bulkhead in, that's a nice milestone reached.

Wednesday work party had commenced somewhat earlier in the day than normal with the good old Captain Itchy dropping a few layers of CSM in the hole that someone had cut in the upper rear bulkhead at some time in the past.




After tea and consideration we figured that rather than get absolutely covered in chips of old glassfibre laminate trimming up the rear of the car and starting on the roof we would leave that for Friday and instead do another wheel arch protection panel.

Same lay-up as before just with some Grey gelcoat and a bit of Grey pigment in the resin mix.



Gelcoat on



Laminated - consolidated - wicked






Leave that to one side until the weekend when we will remove and then swap the shape around and make a couple of the other hand. Really looking forward to getting stuck into the cleaning up of the back of the bulkhead and the prep on the roof as its really moving on now.

I think this point in the build calls for a little Horace Silver number

Watcing all of the glassfibre work has me itching to give it a go myself! First order for that is to make some sort of extended transmission tunnel for my Spit's gearbox. Is the process just cover the thing in closed-cell foam'cardboard, coat that in packaging tape and then blash away? Can't be that simple surely...

On the "how easy is it" front I find it quite easy to do - However, having see some of the repairs on Ginetta's etc. by others, I can also say that it's quite clear that others find it quite easy to do incorrectly.

If you can follow instructions and take care with preparation then it should not be at all difficult - my advice is to practice on a small project first. Main thing is that getting quantities correct is essential.

Got a good few hours on the car today and completed the majority of the work on filling in the sunroof panel. This car left the factory with a Weathershield/Webasto roll back type sunroof the roof popular at the time was then partially filled back in as some stage and a dreadful glass roof was fitted. Okay we may be able to forgive as it was probably the 80's when when fashionable to do such things to classics. .

First round of works was to drill the roof and the mould for fixing screws - Started off marking the roof 1-1/4" from the lip of the hole at 4" spacings around the corners and a 6" spacing along the sides - root diameter of the screws in the roof and a full clearance hole in the mould. so that the roof would be pulled to the mould.





In these pictures you can also see where the body had been ground with a taper back to allow for the material overlaps







And where one of the original Webasto mounting holes had been filled.



The mould was given a quick polish and then four coats of release wax



In between waiting for the wax coats to flash off the 5 separate layers of CSM were trimmed to size.

The repair for the roof comprises of:

Gel coat - A thinnish layer this of gel as the car originally did not have a gel coat but as we have a few layers of paint on the body a thin gel layer does a good job of matching it.

Surface tissue - A very fine CSM layer that prevents print through of the following layers of CSM into the gel.

First CSM layer - 300gm this is the first layer that will bridge the hole by about 3/8-1/2"

Second CSM Layer - 600gm a good solid layer to bulk the panel another 3/8 larger

Third and forth CSM layers - 300gm each one a little larger than the previous to provide our final laminate thickness





The CSM total weight was around 800gms - the Resin approx 2200gms and the gel 300gms - total weight of repair works - 3.3kgs

Fixed in place but before a final once over with a tack cloth



Gel applied



Surface tissue applied to the just tacky gel



As things get really busy at this point and there is quite a lot of resin getting splashed about the camera does not re appear until...



Done - will now be left until Wednesday to fully cure.

Is a fibreglass mug healthy?