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I need to apply a barrier or inner fender to several fiberglass projects to prevent rocks coming off the tires and starring the body.
Some have very little room, so little that owners resort to just a thick undercoat.
I doubt undercoat really does the job and it is so ugly it offends me on a naturally rust-free fiberglass surface.
On some of my projects providing an exit for heat and under-hood pressure is also an issue.
My stray thought of the night is to use a fairly fine stainless or aluminum mesh, contoured to fit the underside of a wire or small diameter tube form.
Been done? If so, where and when?

1/4" urethane foam glassed to the underside followed by a layer of 6 oz cloth.

Back in the early 1980's Ross Baker created the Heron MJ1, a car very few people both inside and outside of New Zealand will have heard of, however it's distinguishing feature was the all fibreglass monocoque reinforced with a stainless steel mesh in the highly loaded regions. All up weighed 860 Kg.
It worked really well as he developed the technology making orchard spraying machines with a similar construction.


I don't know what type of stainless mesh he used but the regions marked blue in the plans (online at the local museum of technology, MOTAT) just state "including mesh", it was the '80's afterall.

https://heroncars.org.nz/heron_mj1.html

It worked really well for the chassis, Ross said that he never experienced any reliability issues with any of the 24 vehicles made. I don't know about rock impacts but would expect that the load will be distributed a lot better than without, although permanent damage may still occur. Sounds like an ideal candidate for a test panel that then gets subjected to a chipping hammer blow.

I am refining the idea.
For the Europa I have almost no room but the body is thin enough that starring from impacts is a very real concern.
For the El Camino the 'Glass is not particularly thick and I want to protect it, I also want to let heat and pressure out of the engine compartment. Stock type inner fenders do not allow for that.
For the Dio Tipo it is about protecting the 'Glass again.
I would like to end up with easily removed pieces for cleaning and in some applications simple access to the chassis components.