Sealing underneath

Time to do underneath the car, mainly under the 4 arches and the axle tunnel. So far i got one side finished. I got 6 (1KG)tins of 3M black stone chip which should help protect the fiberglass tub from flying stones.
I also got the Farcela G6 today so plenty of time over xmas will be spent sanding and buffing the shell, then I'll tackle the doors bonnet and boot.
One thing for sure you don't want to be standing still in the workshop to long with this weather, its been white around here for a few days now :)

Roll hoops

Decided this evening to fill the roll hoops with foam and leave them for a day, then go back and remove any excess. Best thing to do with expanding foam is use it and leave, its very sticky and messy in liquid form :)

With the hoops done I decided to meaure and drill the holes in the shell for the harness anchor points.

The G6 didnt come in to the motor factors today so hopefully tmw as I would like to get the main part of the shell buffed up to a mirror finish.

Next on the list of jobs will be to tackle under the arches and inner wings, coating them with stone chip to protect the glass fiber from stones pleting those areas.

Panels

It was hard to get into the swing of things today, I got up, looked outside and the place was white :) with snow. Managed after a couple of cups of coffee to get ventured out into the workshop.
I got stuck into the doors and boot today sanding down the edges with a file to remove the mould lines. Took a picture but its hard to get a good picture. One thing that i notice happening, when the mould edges are filed and sanded there still seems to be pinholes here and there, they look worse than they are when they fill with rubbing compound :(
They are really small but plenty of them, not sure on a solution, any ideas ??
Tmw should see all the edges finished from a filing and sanding point of view, there are a few bits on the doors that will need some gel but I'll get to that at a later date,

Well another few days and a wee bit more done, forgot to add a pic of the metal work sprayed so added it this time.

The sanding and buffing of the shell is moving on slowly, i,m waiting on my supplier getting in some Farcela G6 as I only have g3 here and its really not up to the job at this point, just takes way to long.

So while waiting on the G6 to arrive I started to do the bonnet and door mould edges. I started removing the edge with a file until it was well down then just used some 400 and 800 grit to finish of before the 1500 and G3 to bring up a nice shine.

So far so good and not many problems though there will be a few areas that will need some gel repairs which will take a while.

OOOOOOooo and its soooooo cold today lol

Time flies by and I have not updated the blog in 2 months, thats bad. Other things took over for a while and not much was done :(

Anyways the metal work has now all been top coated and put away until its needed.

The shell I started to get into but soon realised it was going to be a long haul job finishing it, the previous sanding of the flash lines left some deepish scratch marks. To remove these plenty of sanding will be required with 1500 and 2000 grit around these areas, Then it will require loads of buffing

The snag in this will be, once these areas are sanded and made mirror flat the rest of the shell will seem a tad rippley even though its very minor. So in order to get it perfect the whole shell will need flatted with 2000 and buffed.

Well on the bright side its a very good way to get rid of the extra calories we all consume at this time of the year :)

Metal Work

Well another bit coming along nicely, all the normal steel metal work has been sanded where required and treated with some metal ready from http://www.frost.co.uk/ which is the same as jenolite. great stuff and removes any iron oxide thats left and leaves the metal with a phosphate coating.

The metal work then got a couple of coats of 2 pack primer, ready now for the top coats. If you have no spraying equiptment POR15 is a really great paint to use on these parts,

The body got a wee bit done but not much, just the job of removing the sticky tape that held the bonnet and boot on whilst the kit was transported home. Petrol or white spirt works :)

Metal work

Well another bit coming along nicely, all the normal steel metal work has been sanded where required and treated with some metal ready from http://www.frost.co.uk/ which is the same as jenolite. great stuff and removes any iron oxide thats left and leaves the metal with a phosphate coating.

The metal work then got a couple of coats of 2 pack primer, ready now for the top coats.

The body got a wee bit done but not much, just the job of removing the sticky tape that held the bonnet and boot on whilst the kit was transported home. Petrol or white spirt works :)

Where we are now

As I said in my last post the kit is now home, the chassis I will be going back to the start and going through everything so its 100% and the way I want it.

Body wise loads of sanding and buffing to do in order to get the flash lines polished out before I start to build parts into it.

Along with some sanding and buffing the first job is to get all the metal work sanded and ready for some 2 pack primer, then top coated in 2 pack black.

When we collected the car from GD we got about 8k of parts which was the handiest option living in N'Ireland rather than getting bits shipped now and then, also I didnt like the thoughts of having a screen shipped and arriving in 100 pieces :(

So here goes the fun begins

My kit

A bit different than normal, within a few days of deciding to build Gardner Douglas Cobra a fellow GD enthusiast who had started building a kit had decided time was against his dream. He decided to sell the new parts he had acquired with his kit, along with all the Jag donor parts which were all overhauled by ward engineering etc.
At the same time buying an already built car from GD.

This ticked quite a few boxes for me as the project so far was along the lines of what I was aspiring to,

Colour Black
Engine LS series 400BHP ++
Everything else either new or refurbished.

So 15k later out of pocket I had the beginning to my dream. I first saw my project at GD when we called into when on holiday July 2009 and met Andy for the first time, you could just tell how much he lived the cars by his enjoyment to talk about tech stuff and show people around the factory, whilst enjoying coffee :)

I was supposed to get back over for the project around the start of September but life in general took over, as it does.
So it wasnt until 8th October the trip was taken from N,Ireland to newark to pick up the project and take it to its new home :)

The blog begins

Hopefully this will work out ok, this is my first blog and the aim of it is to show the journey of my Gardner Douglas Cobra build.

The end goal is to have the Cobra looking something along these lines :)

My journey started out around 6 months ago with a very hard search on which kit to build and after many inspections and questions the path was clear Gardner Douglas.