Are these the worst body seams you've seen?

[GT_Rich]

I received my kit this week and the main body is a bit of a disappointment. The nose looks great. I visited FFR in July and the bodies I saw there all looked great as well, but this seems pretty bad. This is an R model so I have to stretch the body quite a bit to clear the side impact bars. It flexes right in this area. This problem goes from the windshield all the way to the back of the rear hatch.
Furthermore, when doing a tap test, areas of this feel hollow. Any advice? Is this worth discussing with FFR or is it par for the course?172302172303172304172305172306

[cob427sc]

It is a little sloppy but I'm positive I have seen worse. This is a joint where the mould pieces come together. I built an early coupe and along the rear quarter seam there was a 3/8" difference in height between adjoining panels. I would expect this is something that will clean up as the body work progresses, but make sure the seam is solid below the gelcoat. Haven't built a coupe in almost 20 years but I would guess this is not unusual.

[Jeff Kleiner]

The worst? No, far from it although at first look it isn't pretty. That body is from the new molds that went on line in the Spring. It's worlds better that the previous Gen3 molds and has fewer parting lines (they aren't seams). The flashing that you see is the easy part and a non-issue; the difficulties arise if there is panel misalignment from one side of the mold line to the other (the previous Gen3 bodies had that in spades, especially where the rear quarter meets the roof). It's hard to judge the alignment of yours in these photos. As for the "tap test" try poking around in the suspect areas with the sharp end of an awl. If you break through the gelcoat into a void beneath then yes, those areas will have to be addressed. The areas where this is most likely to show up is along outside radius such as the door or window openings.

Good luck and let us know if you have other questions.

Jeff

[Blueblood]

Mine looked pretty similar to your seam issue. As I understand it this is par for the course as you said. After some proper filler you won’t be able to tell the difference. Of all the systems to build the body work seemed to take forever. It probably didn’t help that I am not fond of body work to begin with but very satisfying when it is done. Keep motivated and you will like the results. Good luck

[GoDadGo]

Fibertech is a great filler if you need to build up an area.
Here is a a video on all of Evercoat's different fillers.

https://youtu.be/tY3E0ztz8SY

Happy Filling & Sanding!

[Alphamacaroon]

That area is notorious. But I hate to say it, yours looks new and improved compared to the way it was done when mine was laid up. The area highlighted below was a total nightmare:

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As you can see from the following photo, this area was a good 1/4" higher than the part towards the rear of the car. Regular body filler would never work in that situation so liberal amounts of Fibertech was the only solution.

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I probably spent 40 hours on each side alone just to get these areas smoothed out.

I don't see this mold line on your shell, so I think you are actually ahead of the game. But as others have mentioned, Fibertech is a tried and true solution to these massive low-spots.

[Alphamacaroon]

Actually I just found some pictures of what it took to fill that area in. I also made a cardboard jig to help keep the lines crisp. Maybe something like this would help in your situation?

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You can see from the above how much filler was required to just rough this area out.

The final result:

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Just keep up the faith. I had never done body work in my life and this was probably not the best car to learn on, but I just kept going until it felt right. I learned so much— mostly that I never want to do so much body work again in my life ;)

[GT_Rich]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I've done lots of bodywork so I am not scared of it. I just expected better. Again, when I visited FFR in July I saw bodies from the new molds and they looked great. See attached pic. The issue is not tooling, it's workmanship.172329

[Skuzzy]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I've done lots of bodywork so I am not scared of it. I just expected better. Again, when I visited FFR in July I saw bodies from the new molds and they looked great. See attached pic. The issue is not tooling, it's workmanship.172329

I was also surprised by the issues I found with my body. Inconsistent thickness (varies from 1/16" to 1/4"), lack of fiberglass in some areas (eight different spots varying from 1" to 3" in diameter, inconsistent gel coat coverage, and an apparent lack of a roving layer.

Each time I have mentioned it people just jumped on me and told me I was full of it and how great the fiberglass work is on their car. So, I just stopped talking about it and will just try and fix it. Luckily, I have worked with glass, quite a bit. Even so, it will be a challenge.

Good luck with yours.

[GT_Rich]

Thanks for chiming in! I had a few extra minutes today so I started cleaning the wax out of the passenger side mold line and realized a big portion of the windshield channel was gel coat with a big void behind it. I'm sure I'll find more as I go.

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