I AM REPAINTING A 1977 C3 CORVETTE AND HAVE STRIPPED THE BODY TO THE GLASS ,I WANT TO GEL COAT THE BODY BEFORE I PAINT IT AND THEN PAINT BASE COAT CLEAR COAT OVER THE GEL COAT. IS THERE ANY THING I NEED TO DO TO THE EPOXY GEL COAT BESIDES SANDING WITH 320 GRIT ? I AM A NOVICE BUT I FIGURE WHAT THE HELL NOTHING VENTURED NOTHING GAINED LOL.
CAN I PAINT BASE COAT CLEAR COAT OVER EPOXY GEL COAT
- Thread starter vetteking
- Start date
Why gel coat?
Only vette with gel coat was 1953 and the first part of 54.
Gel coat is not for the faint-hearted.
You are asking for a real headache,
Short-term and long-term.
Jbl specialty
New Member
I would not gel coat SMC fiberglass. It has a much surface than earlier Corvette fiberglass. I would do this, apply 3 or 4 coats of SPI epoxy ,the next day apply Slicksand or Featherfill. Allow to dry about a week then block out ,starting with 120 and go down to 400. Seal with 3 or 4 coats of epoxy and allow to dry several days. Wet block with 600 and paint. That will give you a solid foundation without shrinkage.
I did a lot of research and talked with a number of painters before painting my 68 Corvette. It was interesting to me how adamant some painters are about using gel coat and saying that you are doomed for failure if you do not use gel coat. I concluded gel coat was a very old school technique, likely used then because they had nothing better (ck lars paint papers on the Corvette Forum). I used SPI epoxy per the perfect paint job paper and results came out great. This is an over simplification; but gel coat is an epoxy and SPI epoxy is, well, an epoxy, eh?
Look up some of shines posts about why he uses only spi epoxy on the older vettes he used to do. There is years of experience in his words of wisdom. Do exactly as he says to do and save yourself lots of problems and headaches. The man has I think almost 50 years in so he has seen and done a lot.
crashtech
Combo Man & Mod
Standard gel coat is just a variation on a polyester/styrene product, it's something like a super thick, dense, MEKP activated polyester paint than anything else. The neat thing about it is it will accept a polish and wax, so it's great to use in molds. Bad thing about it is it does not resist cracking very well, and when sparayed on an exterior it has horrendous orange peel. Oh, and it sands like rock.
shine
Member
in the old days all we had was lacquer and featherfil . neither would stop mapping of repair work. so in comes gelcoat. it put an end to mapping but was a nightmare to apply until you got a handle on it. i've spent many hrs blocking orange peel from hell out of gelcoat . i learned early on to use a marine epoxy as a base which was also a little tricky to use at times. barrys epoxy has eliminated all of those problems. i prefer epoxy only but on a very rough car i might use slicksand.