Finally the interior is all painted after a good 2wks prepping, primer etc.
I gave it a dust coat to get the panels tacky and ready for next 2x coats of paint, I then mixed that last little bit of paint back into the cup and added clear to about a 80% clear, the rest is color,hardener, thinners and a final coat went on, doing this gets more gloss out and because the colour is still in there it's not a clear cover coat so the paint color only goes a tiny bit darker but almost not noticable, also it doesn't look like those fake show cars mega gloss.
Here's the pics with plastic drop sheets and without..

Bit of a gap today while waiting on CNC components which has a about 24 wires to go but can't connect them till that part has arrived.
Side note is the rally pack is as close to painting as my mk1 is, just shows how much we've been pushing it along.
The Mk1 has been sleeping under a clear car cover for a few weeks but yesterday I had a plan to fit the door on and assess the fglass guard fitment. It's not perfect but needs a bit of fettling to make good gaps and alignment.
Fglass is usually thicker than steel so gaps get smaller or bigger or both. Yesterday arvo I Sika the rear closing panel on and let set overnight but when fitting up to the car it sat out about 5mm, easiest way to rectify was to trim a slot along the flat length of the closing panel allowing the guard to pull in without force. Once I get it level or under level I will glass the cut panel back together, I will do other adjustments this way as needed.
The way I'll be attaching the guards is with metal rivnuts along the old spotweld seam and by the door A post using 6mm stainless button head Allen screws, also I'll spotweld tabs along the front seam where it joins the front apron and rivnuts will be used there to.


I hadn't made the other guard as the paint from the guard decided to connect firmly to the mold, after a bit of research I found that regular paint stripper is safe for gelcoat so I headed to the local Hong Kong hardware where I got 4ltr for $50 . The mold is now cleaned and I'll prep it for production this week.

yep, winters coming along, so I can see a nice little project for members for not too many car $$$.
 
Gives us a week or so for Marty's courier to cross the border with the goodies.

Looking good (as usual).

Really starting to come together now.

Hey Shaun, yes it's closing in on the respray real quick now , car has been on the rotisserie since 2018, very long time... Although I haven't had a car that was on such a bad starting point since the Anglia .
Yeah I used to make and sell fglass escort parts a long time ago. I'm trying to get MK2 dashtop up and available soon.

Managed to get the driver's guard out of the mold and trimmed to sit on the car, the closing panel still needs glueing on once the door is hooked on for gaps etc. Was meant to get a pic but got distracted , tomorrow's episode..

Here's some of the mods I've had to do to allow the guard to release tension. This is a better way than just pulling the panel to line up. The panel has a couple of layers behind the cut to stiffen the panel back to where it was. Doing the filler I'll carve a big V at the cut lines and scruff up the surrounding area for best adhesion, there won't be any evidence it's been cut at all.

Used a sanding block wrapped in plastic as a wedge to keep the panel pushed out, the other bits have a plank of wood while drying


Driver's guard is just sitting there, placed the grill to see if gaps are ok. I measured the guard gap for the bonnet and it's ok, won't know for sure till it's actually on.

Back to the mk1... First job was to turn the car around so the front is facing the door and while it was out, I gave the room a proper sweep up. As I'm happy with how the guard has turned out after being sliced and glassed I've bolted the bonnet on and checked for gaps which are quite even and level, considering being fglass I call that a win. So now it's bolt the guard down with nutserts . I'm thinking to lightly bevel the hole so that the nutsert is level with the mounting panel, it's only a mm height difference. Trick e to use a small socket and support the panel underneath then give the socket a tap with hammer. Anyways will assess that tomorrow, with pics.

Update on my CNC machine it is now alive, I'll add a profile to see if everything is going as planned, had a few hiccups with motors being wired up wrongly, that's now sorted so full steam ahead.

These are the tools I used to install the nutserts, simple and effective, I noticed that some direct brands of nutserts are a different diameter, the ones I used for the guard are for a 9mm hole but the others are 10mm so be aware before drilling!


Since I was doing a bunch of nutserts I had a grand plan to use then for the grill, since I don't like the speed clips and self tapping screw arrangement. Using M5 screws and nutserts only fit to the size of the bolt head ( button head Allen) fits over the grill screw holes, a bit of jiggling with hole placement and it's good