Today I finally got everything finished up that needed to be done in the way of preparation on the fascias, louvers, and engine cover to be able to break open the tube of windshield urethane and apply all the fixes/reinforcements that I have for those parts in preparation for the fascias going off to be refinished and repainting the louvers & engine cover myself.
The front fascia was pretty standard in the way of fixes- steel bars to straighten out the eyebrows a bit (I'd done a good bit of straightening with the heat gun, a plank, and a lot of clamps earlier) and aluminum bars under the lights to reinforce/straighten that.
On the rear fascia, I'd snapped almost all (only one survived...) of the studs, so I had cut/ground out the rusted remains of the old studs. I had originally planned on just holding the new stainless ones in with the urethane alone... but I'm an engineer, and a structural analyst at that- and adhesive is generally not the best in pure tension like it would be in this application. So I dug through my assorted fasteners and found some small 3/8" screws that with two washers held the new studs on nicely without going through the fascia. I drilled a VERY shallow pilot hole for each one to start it. I installed all of the screws initially, and then backed them out most of the way and pressed the urethane tube tip up to the holes in the stud backs to get it under the studs and then tightened the screws back down before covering all of it up with a substantial amount of urethane.
On the engine cover, the vertical flange of fiberglass at the very front of the car had split on the passenger side meaning that I couldn't use the stock prop and have had to use other means to prop it up whenever I have it open. I took an aluminum angle and cut a notch for the rib down the center of the cover and ground depressions in for the manufacturing points about halfway out from the center, and also added flat bars beside the angle to give it a bit more reinforcement (since I had them left over from the fascia).
The louvers had cracked all the way through the channel between the two vents. I had picked up an aluminum channel to urethane in to reinforce/repair it, but found that it was too wide and that the bottom of the channel in the louvers wasn't flat. So I cut the channel in half and ground it down a bit so the two halves fit snugly.
We'll see tomorrow (if I have time...) how well it all worked, but it was really nice to finally get all of it done! This means in particular that I can take the fascias to have them repainted now- there's still some things to be done, but they're things better or as easily done after their being painted.
