Westy camper top fiberglass top repair & repaint

[MrVWGuy]

This is my first time foray into the world of fiberglass repair, or any kind of real bodywork actually. I purchased this top locally & brought it home. It was in need of some serious love & attention. There were gouges, cracks, poor previous repair work & the finish was shot. Having never done anything like this, I dug right in.

The first order of business was a thorough cleaning. I used a pressure washer, LA Totally awesome degreaser, and a lot of scrubbing. The difference was noticeable:

I then removed all hardware & wiped it down with wax & oil remover. The idea was I didn't want to sand any oils that may be present into the fiberglass. I then went to work removing as much of the previous repairs as I could:

The rear passenger corner was particularly bad. It was cracked and broken and had some unknown to me "repair substance" in it:

I carefully ground out the material & prepped it for repair. I cleaned everything again and put foil tape on the back side to temporarily support the short strand fiberglass filler. I then carefully shaped it until it started to resemble a proper corner again:

Next I removed the foil tape & gave everything on the back side a thorough sanding with 80 grit to help maximize the adhesion. I then used fiberglass cloth & resin & built up a few layers of rear support. I sanded the edges smooth & moved on to the next area.

I used more fiberglass cloth & resin to repair & reinforce the back of the corner of the front luggage tray:

I then used short strand fiberglass filler & Evercoat metal glaze filler for the repair:

Short strand fiberglass filler to fill in the gouges:

Another corner needed rebuilt, again I used fiberglass cloth & resin and the short strand fiberglass filler:

metal glaze for small crack filling:

I then sanded everything with 320 grit. When all of the bodywork was complete, I sprayed each piece with two coats of 2K high-build primer. When it was dry, I sanded it with 400 grit.

Next everything was sprayed with epoxy primer and then two coats of Nissan "White Cotton" paint code 90825. Please note that I left the spraying of the final top coat to my buddy who has done this before:

New stainless cleats for the luggage tray:

Then back onto the bus with a new canvas & seals:

It's not perfect, but I think it turned out really nice. Hope you enjoyed, I am by no means an expert, like I said before I've never done this before.
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'63 Bus (camper of unknown origin)
'62 Beetle
'68 Kombi
'76 Westfalia camper, the wife's

[danfromsyr]

nice job documenting the process and results..
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[Erichthered]

Nice. Have the top of of my Welty right now and should get some paint on this weekend. I hope it looks half as good. We plan on using marine paint.

[macbones]

Were the fiberglass tops originally painted? I have a '74 that I'm about to get back in shape. The top definitely needs some cleaning and new seals but I didn't know if painting it is the best choice?

[notchboy]

That turned out real nice Better than I did years back. I just rolled on some Rustoleum.
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[alman72]

very nice. looks like it only took one episode to get it all done. from wheeling into your yard, to top of the bus.