Body Work Concerns

[CPsholka]

Hi guys, this is my first post on the forum and I look forward to hearing and learning from you guys. Let me give you a quick background on myself. I'm a Aerospace Manufacturing Engineer and a car guy through and through. When i was 18 I bought a C3 Corvette that i literally dragged out of the woods, spent 2.5 years wrenching on it and sold it to by a C5. I've since rebuilt the entire drive line and suspension on the C5 (bare engine block, bare transmission case, both subframes out and stripped etc.) I was fortunate enough to all the machine work, including making custom parts, myself. With the C5 finally running and driving like i want it to I'm sizing up my next project and the GTM has always been on my radar as the ultimate DIY car guy project.

My only real concern is the body work aspect. I think i still have nightmares of sanding my C3 that needed full body and paint. Granted that car was in the woods for god knows how long. (the gel coat was gone fiberglass was bare and delaminating etc. What i'm hoping to get from you guys is an idea of just how much body work the car needs out of the box, I understand that it'll increase with the modifications that i decide to make, but also an idea of what products and process steps you guys have taken to get the amazing results i've seen on some of the build threads on this forum. Any info, processes and product suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks, Charlie

[beeman]

What's your goal for the car? How 'perfect' do you want the bodywork to be? Do you care if it ends up looking like a 'kit car' or do you want a production car finish on the panels? We're talking $2k vs $15-20k and quite a difference in hours.

[CPsholka]

Well I'm defiantly a bit of a perfectionist, but I'd also plan to do all of the work myself so it's not really cost i'm concerned about its the condition of the body from the factory. How well do body lines and panels line up and how straight are they? Lets pretend I'm not adding anything additional to the body (roof scoop etc) and i just want to prep the body as is. This certainly wont be the case, but i'll know what i'm signing up for for each intentional modification for the body. Are we talking simply talking blocking down mold lines, skim coat of filler to block the body straight and high build primer? Or is there re-glassing and significant alterations necessary to get straight body lines and decent panel gaps?

My goal for the car is to make it the absolute best representation of what I'm personally capable of building. No shortcuts on my end but I'd rather see imperfections caused by my own to hands than pay someone else to do the work, thats for sure.

[beeman]

Remember, it's not just FFR cars that need bodywork for the fiberglass bodies to look great. Other manufacturers claim "Just buff out the clear coat for an awesome finish". Look at their cars on the road and 90+% of them have professional bodywork done for $$$ because the 'buff the clear coat and drive' idea just doesn't give a good satisfactory finish. And look at the panel gap on the other competitive kit cars too...

[CPsholka]

Oh absolutely, understood. No matter what my next project will be its going to need body work. If i go the kit car route then it'll be a GTM or F9R. Being a Vette guy with a ton of C5 experience who feels betrayed by Chevy my not putting a manual in a C8 I'm leaning towards the GTM so i can build the car that Chevy should have, haha. But my other option would be to retro-mod something older. I could conceivably find a decent car to start with going that way. It'll still need body work I'm sure. Just trying to get an idea of what i'm in for so i can weight my options properly. I don't have any kit car experience that's why i'm looking for some input form the community here.

[Keith1]

I'm not an experienced car guy but I did refinish a '68 Firebird in my youth and I have built a GTM. I did a bit of the body work myself but not much. I had a body shop do all the finish work and painting and if I remember correctly is took them a couple months to get it done right. There were issues with the doors being different widths, asymetry of the main body and lines not matching. It cost over $14K for the work they did but they did a great job. I did the vast majority of the work on the doors and windows myself but I had them fine tune that, and THAT was a bugger for them. Its a real pain to get the doors and windows to line up and work smoothly.

[HardRocker]

On the paint scheme, race car stripes and contrasting colors are easier to have come out decent because it breaks up the lines the eye sees. Doing a complete 1 color job it’s much easier to see imperfections.

[VRaptor SpeedWorks, LLC]

To make these cars as close to perfect as possible does take considerable work. Probably the biggest "time suckers" of the bodywork are:

1. The doors/windows. If you didn't have to worry about the windows fitting or working, the doors would not be all that bad.....but if you want actual working power windows, there is A LOT of work to do there to both the door and the main body.
2. Where the hood meets the main body. Usually, the gap where the body and hood meet is too big/cut at an angle from the factory. You can't close the gap up without the rear corner of the hood hitting the A-pillar, so you have to build that edge of the hood down to close the gap. Where the rear of the hood meets the body and the wheel arch of the hood meets the wheel arch of the body.....none of that really matches up at all. Usually, we try to get one area to match (LH rear, LH wheel arch, RH rear or RH wheel arch) and then "fix" the other 3 areas so they match.
3. Hatch glass. You can't change the size of the glass because it's tempered....but it's too big to properly fit the hatch opening, so if you want it to fit and look right and not scrape the paint off every time you open and close the hatch, you'll have to modify the hatch opening accordingly.

[Presto51]

What Shane said, plus watch the GTM build series that another forum member Fastthings did. It will give you a pretty good representation of what to look forward to.

Can start with episode one :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQLWQK9jBYk&list=PLflVMbU1I2N2VG0cRGTW9T6mrnLLEUnVP

Ron

[Ajzride]

What Shane said, plus watch the GTM build series that another forum member Fastthings did. It will give you a pretty good representation of what to look forward to.

Can start with episode one :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQLWQK9jBYk&list=PLflVMbU1I2N2VG0cRGTW9T6mrnLLEUnVP

Ron

I watched this last year, it’s a great series to go through.

[CPsholka]

Awesome, thanks for the info guys! This is exactly what i wanted to know. I still have a bit of time before I make my decision on what my next project will be, but it good to know that theres a responsive community out there for the GTM if i do decide to go that direction. I'll defiantly be watching fastthings' build over the next few months to see if i'm ready to jump into building on of these cars.

- Charlie