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Reply to "Maui garage find Intermeccanica rebuild"

Here's help for those poor fools who have shaved all or part of the windshield wiper eyebrows off while repainting. For whatever reason, my disk sander has a magnetic attraction to the eyebrows and my reaction time is exactly in the "Oh sh*t" range. In the unlikely event that anyone else experiences this event, here's what I did to extract the bullet from my foot. no-brow

Only evidence of an eyebrow is the blonde crescent behind the hole where the wipers are attached. Note that is on the passenger side. I scrubbed off the driver side eyebrow first, said a few choice words and then went over the passenger side and did it again. This should be a caution to those who are lulled into having a good opinion of my skills and judgement.

Since the little eyebrows are just a hair taller than the round washers that are used to attach the wiper system, I placed the washers in the sad gully that was left in the body and got an idea about how tall the eyebrow needed to be. I then mixed up some bondo and filled up the bottom half of an eggshell that had been sprayed with cooking spray. When the bondo egg was pretty hardboiled, I broke the eggshell off and decided it was a good starting point. I used a dremel tool to cut the half-egg into two cowl shaped parts and then trimmed off the very ends at a length that matched the shadows of the trimmed off parts. I drilled several small holes in the eyebrow piece and in the fiberglass that it would sit on. I smeared fresh bondo into the holes I drilled, applied a thin layer on top of the hood area and pressed the new piece on top. I then used acetone to wipe the piece down to help it blend in well.

IMG_20190302_140333

Part of the bondo egg left after I trimmed off the replacement eyebrow piece.

When it was dry, I use the washer to help match the angle needed on the new piece (using a dremel disk to do the cutting). I then just whittled the eyebrows down until they looked right using a piece of 120 grit sandpaper.IMG_20190302_140153

Replacement eyebrow before painting with fiberglass resin

When it looked right, I painted a thin coat of fiberglass resin on top of the eyebrows and blended them into the surrounding fiberglass. When dry, I smoothed them out using 100 grit paper in preparation for the epoxy primer painting step for the rest of the car. What a pain. Let this be a warning to those with short attention spans like me...

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  • no-brow
  • IMG_20190302_140333
  • IMG_20190302_140153
  • IMG_20190302_140211
Last edited by Michael Pickett
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