Repairing Small Holes In Composites With Tim McCamis

There aren’t too many men out there in the chassis building world that I would say can do it all. Typically, a chassis builder tends to focus on building chassis, but wouldn’t be the guy you’d turn to for repairing a composite body panel. However, Tim McAmis, being the expert that he is, can actually do that as well, along with who knows what else.

We’ve seen McAmis share all kinds of tips from his Hawk Point, MO-based shop, but this quick tutorial could come in handy for just about anybody out there who is into cars, specifically if your hotrod has a fiberglass body, which many do. In less than 8 minutes, Tim walks you through the steps involved in repairing small holes in fiberglass.

Not only does Tim share some key pointers that make the process easier and more effective, he delivers it in such a way that makes even myself, who has literally never touched raw fiberglass, feel like I could do this with ease. I’m not going to walk through the whole process, that’s why we’ve attached the video, but just to sum up how quick and easy this is, I’m going to paraphrase the process. It will honestly probably take less time to watch the video and actually complete the repair process than it will for you to head this article.

The first thing you need to do is prepare the hole for repair. Much like in other video’s we’ve seen showing how to repair tires, you can’t just fill the hole as-is, you have to “dig it out” a little and have it ready to be repaired. Then, you’re going to dab a little resin into the hole itself, which is blocked off on the back side with some masking tape. Next, you take some of the fiberglass sheeting itself, which you would have cut up into basically large pieces of fiberglass dust beforehand, and you squish it down into the hole as well. The resin and glass will setup and cure, leaving you with a fresh area of glass to drill out and reinstall the fastener as discussed in the video.

McAmis is the man and clearly knows how to do it all, which is why he’s one of the most popular builders in the country.