Thread: 130 Station Wagon with side fold pop top build

Awesome work. Makes the pop-top conversion of the 110 look like a piece of cake in comparison...

Great work.
Not sure how much you've worked with foam core panels, but you might be interested in threaded inserts that are available for bonding into the panels.
PDF here to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.
http://www.aviaquip.com.au/pdf/panel...ationchart.PDF

Thats aviation spec hardware but I'm sure they are available elsewhere.

Steve

Inspiring work, Alan!
You could package this with schematics to pay for the build!
Thanks for taking the time to do such a detailed tutorial.

Thanks TeamFA. Yes doing the 110 pop top on Jaffle was a piece of cake in comparison. 2 days at the sheet metal place, 2 days at the paint shop, and 2 days at the canvas place. Pretty much all done and dusted in 2weeks. This is turning into a bit of saga...

Thanks for that Steve, I'll check out those inserts. I've never had anything to do with foam core composite panels or fibreglassing before. My friend who used to make gyrocopters out of this stuff is in Northern Africa at the moment, so I am pretty much making it up as I go along. I was planning on using a bent bit of wire in a drill to scoop out the foam under the fibreglass where the bolt holes will go then fill with a resin/403 mix.

I am currently searching for a hinge. Anyone know of a heavy duty nylon continuous (piano) hinge? The stainless steel ones weigh a ton, and I'm not sure I have the energy to make the fibreglass one I had planned.

Originally Posted by Barefoot Dave

Inspiring work, Alan!
You could package this with schematics to pay for the build!
Thanks for taking the time to do such a detailed tutorial.

Thanks BDave. It would be nice to recoup some costs, but not sure anyone would pay anything for it. Plus with Land Rovers build tolerances you would need to have the measurements in whole centimetres! Hopefully someone gets some ideas out of all of this and it helps with their project.

The pieces all laid out ready for gluing. There was many hours spent sanding the surfaces ready before glueing with resin/403. The top of the roof is shorter due to the windscreen taper.

After leaving it a day for the sides to fully harden and much more sanding, I was ready to start fibreglassing. That is after I spent a couple of hours chopping the 330g woven roving fibreglass mat into strips. Two strips with 25mm overlap at each end with the top layer the widest. The roof has an approx 10m circumference times the two layers.

Probably should have left it there, as I'd like to forget the next few hours.

The bureau reckons the wind speed was only 17knots but it was certainly windier at my place with my plastic outdoor furniture overturned and tumbled around my back yard from one end to the other. It was also around lunchtime and nice and warm by now, so all in all perfect conditions to do my first ever fibreglassing project on the extremely expensive roof of my car - NOT!!!

The resin has a hardener which should go off in about an hour. The first mix went off in just 10min, with the resin getting to hot to hold and started smoking!! Once chopped the woven fibreglass matt likes to come unravelled, not helped by the gale force winds or sticky fingers covered in resin - that stuff is worse than sikaflex. The loose strands then loved to stick into the setting resin too.

The concrete on the back veranda is now covered in resin too. I'll have to add that to the lists of jobs to do once this is finished.

The next day after letting it dry properly, I then had to sand off the resin drips, loose strands etc from where they shouldn't be.

All in all ended up fairly neat I think.

Then I turned the roof over to start on the outside.

First I chopped off about 20mm of fibreglass on the edges to save on some sanding.

Then using a "surform" file (which is just like a big cheese grater with sturdy handles) I shaped the roof to give the edges a curve

I then made up some curved sanding forms out of PVC pipe to get a neat uniform radius curve on each of the sides.

More sanding (god so much sanding!!) to give a good surface for the fibreglass to stick to. Never doing fibreglassing I never realised that the dust contains little bits of glass which stick into your skin. Doesn't bother me too much but its like having a thousand prickles in your skin. The backs of my hands and ankles seem to be the most sensitive. Only lasts a couple of days. Later I read that putting on baby powder beforehand clogs up the pores, reducing the amount of glass that can get in. Seems to work, but makes you sweat much more.

All edges and corners done, ready for fibreglassing. As by now it was night and a tad cooler I decided to kick on and do the fibreglassing. That is after another 2 hours of chopping up the woven roving fibreglass mat. This went much better. Not being so delicate pouring the resin on and spreading it out was quicker. I also had drawn lines to get the matting as straight as posible, and spent more time taping the areas where I didn't want resin (poor veranda suffered again, but all those rags in the garage are clean!?). Somewhere in the middle of this I actually found myself enjoying doing the fibreglassing!

That was short lived though and by after midnight when I finished I was well and truely over it. The end of a 14 hour day.