goodbye bubbling sail panel, hello ghetto (tons of pictures)

[creeper]

so this is what my sail panel looked like 2 years ago, since then I've sanded/bondo'd/spray painted it navy blue twice, but spray paint never comes out glossy or matches right so it never looked very good, and the bubbles came back within a few weeks of each painting



so I chopped this off of a car being parted out, and spent about 8 hours removing it from the roof itself. I broke it into 2 pieces so on the right you can see where I fiberglasssed (technically SMC) it



I painted it with "plasti dip" which is a matte black spray type "paint" that never really adheres to the surface, so whenever you're sick of it you can just scratch a hole and peel it right off



here's the "point of no return" shot



I'd really like to ship this to GM



here it is drying, I shaved off some of the glue and reattached it as per the service bulletin



and I polished these guys up quick while they were off, the before picture didn't save for some reason but they were really scratched up and faded. there's still some scratches but oh well



here's a semi-finished shot, still have to attach the triangle pieces



the car simply looked too crappy with the messed up sail panel and rock chipped flat hood so I did the sail panel like this and also the ws6 hood I'm repairing with the plasti dip also. I'm going to respray them both matte black again and take my time so they look more decent. the roof is off a 99' so it will bubble eventually and I didn't spend much time on the body work knowing that I'll be replacing it again someday but I can't justify the cost of a $600 6le sail panel, and $2000 to paint the hood and roof, when it's a 120k mile daily driver that I have to park next to people like this every single day for school:



I think it might look better with the hatch tinted like this guy from tech:





thanks for looking!

[LTb1ow]

Looks real nice, good work!

[LS1ow]

gotta let me know about how the finish stands in weather and what not. my car might be completly plasti dipped lmao


looks really good with the NBM thou !

[creeper]

Thanks! It wasnt meant to be perfect, just better

Ive had the plasti dip on the hood for 3 weeks no problems so far, on the one side of the sail panel I got a fingerprint of urethane on it so without thinking I ran for the goo gone and it ate through the plasti dip instantly so just be careful what it comes in contact with

[maroman88]

so theres a problem with the roof panels bubbling? never heard of this or had it happen to any of my cars.

whered u get a number like $2k to paint a hood and that little piece?

[sweetbmxrider]

Nice dude, I really need to get my hands on some plasti dip.

[creeper]

Originally Posted by maroman88

so theres a problem with the roof panels bubbling? never heard of this or had it happen to any of my cars.

whered u get a number like $2k to paint a hood and that little piece?

really? pretty much every 98.5+ fbody will do it. there's about a 80 page long thread on tech about it hahah and GM released a technical service bulletin on it

just the hood and roof wouldn't be $2k, but I'm not going to paint just the hood when the bumper and headlight lids are all chipped up also, and it's a metallic color that spent 8 years in the florida sun so I would want it blended into the fenders, plus the roof panel makes it come out to respraying half of the car. I would also want to fix the bubbling on the hatch and chips in the spoiler if I'm going to be painting, plus the one quarter panel appars to have been repainted with the molding still on, and then had the molding removed by the previous owner. I guess when I think about paint I just kind of add up all the little things I know it needs and it turns into almost a complete paint job hahah.

[creeper]

Originally Posted by sweetbmxrider

Nice dude, I really need to get my hands on some plasti dip.

I think I bought out all of it that the home depot on 23 had

[MyFirstZ]

my car is bubbling but nothing to that extent. mine looks like it is just in the clear coat but i have been wondering what it takes to remove that panel to re do it

thanks for the pictures

[creeper]

it's a bit of a pain but it only took 2 or 3 hours by myself, most cars I see barely have any bubbling at all and the owners usually don't even notice it until I decide to be a jerk and point it out to them hahah. this car was from florida so maybe the heat expediated it a bit, although there's cars in all different climates that get it pretty bad.

[maroman88]

thats crazy... my newest 4th gen was a 98 TA... it had no issues... i wonder what changed in 98.5, i had a 95 formy with 176k miles on it and not a problem... my 97 TA with 140k is perfect also... weirdddd

[sweetbmxrider]

Its only the later ls cars as he said.

[The Fixer]

Good job man! Plastidip is cool stuff - I've never used it, but seen pics where guys use it to paint emblems. They come out great because you just spray all around the letters and then peel off where you don't want the paint to be.

[WiMiMc]

nice job, i'm def going to get some plasti dip for some projects. though i heard you can just use a heat gun and fishing line to get the panel up/off

[creeper]

I used a 12" long prybar to remove the one off of my car and it was still a chore, that windshield urethane is really tough stuff. A heat gun would work if you chopped away the 2 or 3 extra layers of structural sheet metal from the inside and then pulled as you heated it but I didn't have any cut off wheels so I used the guitar string method which was a huge PIA

[Jersey Mike]

[cough] 1000 Grit. [/cough]