August 17th. Fellow backed out of his parking stall with the wheels turned, and nerfed my Super 7’s left rear fender. Dude was honourable, and took ownership of his accident, and we just settled in the parkinglot.
I took it to a local body shop that wanted $525 (off the top of the head) to fix it. I’m pretty sure painting a new fender is going to be cheaper. However, I don’t know if Curtis Unlimited is still around.
Meantime, I bought some fiberglass and some resin, and I’m going to try my hand at fixing it. Not how I expected my day to go, but life is like that.
As of this writing, the defects have been ground down (the fender actually delaminated the front half), and three layers of fiberglass are curing on the inside. I’ll deal with the top tomorrow.
August 18th
August 19th
Driver’s side ready for paint. And I pulled the passenger fender off too, since I can’t have one shiny and new, and one peppered with rock chips….
August 20th
And four coats of Urethane Enamel in 1986 Corolla GTS Red:
August 21st
Sprayed some bedliner, which sucked (next to no texture), so I ended up running a roller over the wet paint to “pull up” some texture. I also made the bedliner taller (16″ measured vertically off the bottomest part of the fender, that’s probably 4 or 5 inches more) and wider (wrapping around the curve) as 14 years of rock chips required.
I bought some cut polish, but haven’t decided if I’m going to bother or not. I hope to install the fenders tomorrow.
And we’re back together!
