Canopy is now Structurally Sound

It was another hot, sticky and stinky day of fiberglass work on the canopy.  After I finished the short-strand filler on Saturday it left Sunday as a day to bust out the fiberglass matt/cloth and start sealing in the frame.

The filler work that I did on Saturday worked like a charm.  I started off with the top of the windows and cut a bunch of small strips of fiberglass matt that fit between the screws.  I made sure that the screw heads were raised up off the metal so that the resin could soak around them but still be able to get the screws back out.

Although with all the goop that got all over everything those screws will take a little bit of work to remove.  I tried 2-3 of them to see how much trouble they would be.  Nothing too terrible bad… just more annoying than anything.

I made sure to soak all of the matt right out over the edge of the steel frame.  Once I had the tops of the window frames sealed in I used the cutting wheel to cut off all of the excess just like I did when covering the cabin walls.

When the sides were trimmed I lay down some more fiberglass on the edge of the window frame.  This sealed in the metal frame from all angles and provided the solid window sill I wanted around the window.

Here’s an example of the window sill that goes around the windows of the actual car:

After that was finished, I started work on the bottom of the windows.  This area had sharper contours than the top of the windows so instead of using fiberglass matt I used cloth which wasn’t as thick and would bend around the angles better.

I then repeated the same steps to apply resin, trim the excess and seal in the window sill for the bottom of the window .  Once everything was completed I crossed my fingers and removed the bolts that were holding the steel frame to the canopy’s outer shell.

Voila! they came out without any kind of creaking or cracking and the metal frame is now sealed to the outer shell!  This thing is solid as a rock with no flex at all.

Now for even more good news!  Starting on Wednesday I have a week of vacation and my Dad is coming down to help me out with the car.  Hopefully we’ll make some swift progress 🙂