Garage Woolery

Today we laid the beginnings of the passenger side quarter window foundation using bondohair.  This fiberglass reinforced filler will give strength back to the fastback as well as act as a base for the quarter window glass.

Notice the exposed foam underlayer at the middle/top of the glass opening.  The foam acts to support the bondoglass and prevents too much bondoglass from being used, keeping added weight to a minimum.

…and the exposed foam is now covered in a thin, yet strong layer of fiberglass reinforced bondo.

The quarter window glass is covered in layers of tape to simulate the thickness of the adhesive which will be used to mount it later.  Here is the glass on it’s first test fit into the  newly recessed quarter glass opening.

The thicker glass, even with extra padding simulating the adhesive, now fits nice and flush into the fastback!

Next, we’ll be working on cleaning up and smoothing out the foundation and the surrounding areas.  Check back soon!

The foundation for the rear glass has been completed.  Although more cosmetic work will be done to blend things in further on the surface and visible areas, we’re pretty much done shaping the underglass mounting foundation for the rear glass.  Any irregularities between the mounting surface and the glass that are seen here will be filled by the glass adhesive when the glass is installed.  We’ll probably just do some more scuffing of the mounting surface to give the adhesive more surface area to grip.

And with the glass “installed”:

Next step will be to work on making the outside edges of the glass area blend in cleanly with the rest of the fastback.  We’ll be applying a skim coat of bondo and then…lots and lots of block sanding.

Well, after a few evenings of work, we’ve finally laid down the basic foundation for the rear glass.  It looks messy now, but it’ll look better after a lot of sanding and filling cleans it up.

Fiberglass was cut away to make room for the glass, foam was used to fill in the open voids inside the hardtop, and long hair bondoglass was used to build a new foundation for the glass and to strengthen the hardtop.

Prior to laying this foundation, the hardtop had flat areas for mounting the Lexan rear window.  The new foundation has curvature to support the underside of the new glass rear window.  You may notice some crosshatching along the sides and across the top of the fastback.  These were put into place as we anticipate the need to put a skim coat of bondoglass around the edge of the new rear window to smooth everything out.  The crosshatches (combined with sanding with a coarse sandpaper) provide a more porous surface for the skim coat to grip on to.

The new arch of the rear glass will necessitate modifications to the trunklid to keep things looking smooth.  We will be making a foam core skin for the trunklid in this case which blends the rear glass down into the ducktail lip.

The Pitcrew Roadster is DUSTY from all the fiberglass work!

For some time, we’ve thought that the rear of the Pitcrew Roadster was missing something…that certain cue that would make the rear of the car look more vintage or nostalgic.  Although the Garage Vary rear valance does look great, we though that it would really be improved with a little bit of brightwork.  We decided that what would really set off the rear of the car would be trim rings for the tail light lenses!

So, we went to Art 2 Part Manufacturing in Huntington Beach, California, who have an interesting full service design->prototype->manufacturing business model.  They can do it all from design to product in house!  After some discussions and measurements, they designed and rendered a trim ring design for the rear tail lights for us.

This is a digital rendering of the trim ring design. The final piece will be made of polished aluminium, and will not be grey as pictured here.

The rendering also incorporates the “Garage Woolery” text engraved into the trim rings.  We are still on the fence about whether we want to have the engraving in place, or perhaps have some other text engraved.

We are currently working to produce an extremely limited run of these tail light trim rings…only 10 sets will ever be made, and they’ve already been claimed by other Miata/Eunos/Roadster enthusiasts from around the world.

The rear glass piece cracked while doing some fiberglass work this evening.  That’s going to cause some delays while we get another piece made.  Luckily it’s the simplest piece of the three glass pieces, and we’ll still be able to use the piece we have for molding the hard top.  Nothing a little more money and patience can’t fix, but it IS very frustrating…

Today was the hottest day ever recorded in Los Angeles, making for pretty uncomfortable work here at Garage Woolery, but we were so excited about the fastback project that we forged ahead anyway…

Today we added some bulk to the rear glass and did some trimming of foam and fiberglass.  The glass had about 12 layers of tape added to the bottom side, simulating the adhesive which will be used to hold the glass in place later.  This will save work and allow for a closer, more precise fitment of the glass into the top later on.

Two types of tape were used on the glass. Blue painters tape for a low tack base, and duct tape to add bulk.

Added bulk to the bottom of the glass acts to simulate the thickness of the glass mounting adhesive which will be used later.

Fiberglass and foam have been trimmed so that the glass with added thickness of simulated adhesive still sits flush into top.

…oh, and we added a wing.

The wing is an APR GTC-200, utilizing special mounts specifically for use with this fastback.  The plan is for this wing to be used for track days only.  We also have a separate trunklid which will be modified for use with this wing when installed on the car (the trunklid needs to be notched to allow for the wing mounts).  The Pitcrew Roadster will now have a specific setup for use on track days…APR wing, Trap lip, Feed sideskirts, 949 Racing wheels & R compound tires.