1980 Viper Rebirth

[Hippie459MN]

Thats looking really good!

[BostonViper]

Great thread. What is the status of this build? Just about to pick up my first hydrostream resto project. This thread was inspiring

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[AdamDK]

Great thread. What is the status of this build? Just about to pick up my first hydrostream resto project. This thread was inspiring

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The status remains the same. There's nothing i can do to the hull in the winter as its outside in an unheated portable shelter.

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[AdamDK]

Sunday February 16th, 2020:

Got a couple degrees above freezing today, so I figured I'd plow the snow around my deck and do some gelcoat stripping.









Don't eat it.



@alaskastreamin, Ron, i dunno how you did your deck in a single day. I needed to rest my arms every 10 minutes. They're like Jello now.

[tnelson77]

Great progress! What do you plan to finish it with? Why take all the gel off?

[AdamDK]

Great progress! What do you plan to finish it with? Why take all the gel off?

Half the clearcoat was gone, and the remaining was badly UV damaged. I hated the colour anyways.
Hopefully I'll be spraying new gel. I wasn't sure about the science of spraying gelcoat over older metalflake, so I just figured i'll just strip it all off and spray the bare surface. Orbital sanding with 24-grit pads. Will be a good rough surface for gel to bond to.
This is the new 2020 Toyota Tundra in Voodoo Blue. I'd like to get as close to this as possible.

[Hippie459MN]

I like that blue! Make sure to put lots of flake in it.

[AdamDK]

Wednesday March 25th, 2020:

Weather still hasn't warmed up enough for glass work, so sanding the deck continues.
Most sanding done with a variable speed 7" orbital sander running around 3000rpm using 24grit pads. I would do small manageable sections at a time, first sanding the clearcoat (what was left of it), then the flake down to the black tooling gelcoat, then finally the black gelcoat down to the glass.













You can see below where I went a little too deep with the sanding. I will be going over the entire deck again using a 4" DA sander using 60/80grit pads to smooth out the grooves where needed, rounding edges, etc.








For the windshield frame notches, I needed to use my triangle rasp on my oscillating tool.
These chopper-gun layups leave lots of air bubbles.




Until next time...

[tnelson77]

Make any progress on this over summer?

[AdamDK]

Make any progress on this over summer?

I had a kid, so no.