Project cap acquired!

Well, I guess I'm dead cause I'm too pooped. I need to fill a couple voids I found under the factory gelcoat and I don't have enough light to do that and get it wiped and coated tonight.

On no planet is a 1/4 sheet palm sander the appropriate tool for this scale of work. I need a big orbital for doing this to the truck.

 

First coat. Second goes on when dry to touch.

 

Second coat. I am inclined to accept this pending another good look in an hour or two.

 

Yeah you know what, I'll take it. Are there some bugs? Yep. But I dug them out as best I could by checking every few minutes and doing a round with the fine tweezers, and I didn't see any that were deep enough to make me think fucking with them would do more good than harm.



The mask lines came out way, way better than I was expecting, I really pulled the tape at the perfect time. Only a few tape floofs to carefully pick away from the wet edge. The seams will be getting a seam of FIPG on the exterior after painting the frame (with a perpendicular mask line to the durabak)



Bonus shot, look at how ugly the front face was in the 1st coat pics. It turned out perfectly acceptable. There was a minor amount of fussing with it after the 1st coat pic was taken, but not enough to make me want to take another Pic.

I can put one more coat on the corners and edges tomorrow morning, I'll update if I do. I'll let this cure for a week at least before I do any more exterior work. This will give me time to get the liner made and installed.

 

I picked up these rubber grommet style T10 sockets to run in the chase lights, and a 10 pack of T10 LED license plate lights. You can see side by side here that the rubber trimmed nicely into an integral gasket. It will not need the backside support of the tapered style grommet in this application.

That "gasket" will go between the Floorplate of the light, which has a slight recess, and the face of the shell. We will see if the socket connectors withstand the force of me smashing the "gasket" down to fit the shallower recessed space.

The lights also came with lightly rubberized fiber gaskets that fit the footprint. I'm going to install those as well, doped with FIPG on both faces.

 

With the lamp back plates drilled to 1/2" and deburred, and the lamp gaskets (lens and back) in place, it's a perfect fit.

I'll drill the center holes on the shell, scare up some brass hardware that fits, and get them mounted.

 

Looking good

 

Cleaned up the 8-32 x 3/4" brass screws with 400 grit and gave them a hit of clear.



The fiber gasket seals to the shell with FIPG on both sides, since the surface is slightly curved and the plates are flat. Used decorative washers on both sides with Nylock nuts on the interior. The decorative washers are for two reasons - firstly and primarily, because fancy. The only rule about being extra (which these lights are) is if you're going to do it, do it all the way. The second reason is that I can torque these just until the decorative washer begins to deform, which will spring load the fastener and put a consistent pressure on the fiber gasket and FIPG.




This interior gasket seals the lens to the front face of the backing plate. No leak path. The outer body of the shell has drain holes. Doing it this way is clever - less to seal, less to leak.



Tidy up FIPG while it's wet with a paper towel well wet with denatured alcohol. I will point out that I was extremely anal retentive here - note the screw head directions as well as the orientation of all of the SAE markings. If you're going to be extra, do it all the way.



The money shots.

This project can go to sleep for a little while until I'm ready for windows. Thanks to everyone who's been following so far.