Aaaaaaaarrrgghhhhhh. Yesterday was nice enough to allow me to take the car for a drive (i live in the pacific nw). anyway, i make a stop at a store and as i'm walking back to my 79 something catches my eye at the bottom rear edge of the drivers door jam. Turns out that at the bottom of the jam the fiberglass has pulled away from the door jam for about 1.25 inches. there is a gap about 1/8" wide.
Talk about ruining my day. The paint on my car is in good shape so I'm not in a hurry to have any body work done, but this????? I know it was not there last summer. i have only driven a handful of times since september. What is going on? I am afraid of it spreading. Anybody ever have this problem?
I woke up at 4 am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep because of this.....

Are you saying the damage is on the door or the body?If its on the door ,its not uncommon for them to separate.There are professional adhesives to put this back together but they arent much different than JB weld or a simalar product.You need to clean and sand the best you can both sides and squirt some adhesive in there and clamp it back together and let it sit for a few hours.

|UPDATED|1/25/2004 9:26:32 AM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

I agree with paintdaddy, the same thing happened on Ian's passeger door, I used epoxy adhesive on it, when I clamped with a large c clamp I put a towel folded over between the clamp and inner metal and outside fiberglasspanel and didn't crank it down tightly, just enough to join the parts. It worked with no damge to the paint.


|UPDATED|1/25/2004 6:36:44 PM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

The damage is on the body. It appears to be where the rear panel would be bonded to the door jam. It's at the very bottom. I ran by the local Corvette specialist shop and had their body man look at it. He said it was the first time he had seen such a crack but thought the area was a low stress area. If it doesn't spread I should be allright but if it does start to spread I will be one sad dude.

Get the proper epoxy in there and it won't spread. The stuff they now use on many new cars is remarkable stuff. In many cases it's stronger than the panel. Any good body shop supply has it. Leave the surface just a bit rough to allow more grip surface area when applying the epoxy.

Ken Styer