I don’t know of a source for replacement body panels. Do you know the manufacturer of your replica? The parts don’t necessarily interchange between them.

The good news: it’s only fiberglass. Some cloth, resin and a squeegee, then some sandpaper, and you’ll be good as new.

Oh, and hey: Welcome to the club! TD Replicas are Unmatched fun-per-$

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by edward ericson.

Have to agree with Edsnova.  I had cut too much out of my hood and made it too thin.  My body shop told me it would crack, so I had to reinforce it, but they weren’t really interested in helping.  OK, I had never worked with fiberglass before — was scared to try it, but someone had to do it.  I read a lot and watched a lot of YouTube videos, and in the end I found out that was actually really easy.  I am totally sure everyone here probably has a better way, but this is how a complete, rank amateur did it.  Note that 99% of this is just preparation that is not nerve-wracking.  It’s only the actual fiberglass work that is nerve-wracking, and it wasn’t all that nerve-wracking anyway because I was prepared.

Obviously the first step was to clean and prepare the hood where I was doing the reinforcement.  To actually do the work, I bought resin, hardener, fiberglass cloth, and disposable gloves at Home Depot.  I also got a cheap aluminum pan, a disposable plastic cup, a lot of cardboard for protection, some old rags, and a putty knife.  Before doing anything else, I read the formulas on the resin and hardener stuff.  It takes X number of drops of hardener for Y ounces of resin.  I knew I’d never figure it out if I started out working with the resin and hardener, so I made all my calculations like this:  First I filled the disposable cup with water in about the same amount of resin that I wanted to make, and marked the cup with a Sharpie.  I measured that water with a measuring cup to know exactly how many ounces there would be, then I used the formula to calculate how many drops of resin I would need.  I also cut my fiberglass cloth to the size I would need in order to reinforce my repair, and laid it flat in the aluminum pan, right next to my project.  I laid out all my protective cardboard and got my rags handy, then put on the disposable gloves.  Thus, at this point I hadn’t even opened either the resin or the hardener.  Still time to back out if I wanted to, so no worries so far.

Finally I got my nerve up and was ready to take the plunge.  I poured resin into the cup up to the mark, added the prescribed number of drops of hardener, stirred vigorously with an old pencil, and poured the resin + hardener mix into the pan on top of the fiberglass cloth.  It pours like honey.  I pushed the cloth into the mix with my fingers and flipped it over in the pan for better coverage, and I just laid it in place with my hands (that’s why I had the disposable gloves).  I used the putty knife to smooth it out, then I took off the gloves, threw them away and cleaned everything up.  End of story, except that since the fiberglass cloth still stuck out a little bit afterwards, I later repeated the process without more fiberglass cloth in order to make the repair thicker.  Then I just waited until it was really hard and sanded it down.  It is easy to sand down and came out really nice and strong.  No worries about cracking.

Sorry for the long story.  I am not good at things like this, I have no training and no guts, and I was just proud that I was able to overcome my fears and actually do it.  So, I think Edsnova is right — you can do it.

Welcome aboard!

Looks like you’re doing what I did, Jim. You uploaded the pics and then grabbed the url from the browser window on top. That don’t work. But if you right-click the photo you’ll get a little menu which includes the url. THAT’s the one to paste into that “source” pane here.

This method is new to all of us. You timed your arrival perfectly!