Date:         Sat, 22 Mar 1997 14:22:33 -0500
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "John Graham" <johntandy@j3com.net>
Subject:      Westi Skylight Repair

Hi all,

I'm a newbie to your list.  Just became a VW camper owner for the third
time, so I guess I do have some idea of what I'm in for.  I've got a few
'details' on the van to tweak/understand, but I've ordered a Bentley Manual
so I'll be patient til it arrives.  One of the first things that I needed
to do though was to repair the plastic skylight cover on the pop top.  I'll
save my 'buy a replacement money' for something more inscrutable; since I
know that these things are fragile and expensive, I thought I'd volunteer
details of a simple repair.  Had not seen much about them in the archives.

I had a corner of the skylight that was missing and numerous cracks
throughout the rest.  I just bought a fiberglass kit to do the repair job,
because it's cheap (just a little messy), but the end result is a layer
that stabilizes what you have AND is mostly transparent!  The biggest
problem that I had was how to shape up the missing corner so it would seal
with the top.  Since I had 3 good corners, I got a 'Bondo Kit' (body repair
plastic) at the parts store (actually Wal-Mart) and used that to make a
'corner mold' from one of the good corners that I could then stick in the
missing corner and 'glass' over it.  I lined the skylight corner with
'kitchen plastic wrap' when laying the Bondo in there to form the mold, so
that it popped loose without a hitch and then of course used the same
material to keep the fiberglass from sticking to my bondo corner.  When the
fiberglass was set, I popped the bondo out of the new corner, and trimmed
the edges with a Dremel tool and put it back on the pop-top - yes of course
you DO TAKE IT OFF the pop-top.  

Total cost of materials was about 12 dollars and yes, I had worked with
both materials before, but if you are new to them, you just can mix up a
little of each and see what kind of set times you have.

John Graham

88 GL Westi

ps.  Are the vehicle lists at the bottom of each msg that I see, a
historical list or current possessions?  I do have a few other 4 wheeled
things.  I'm new to this...  :-)