Plastic repair

[gaj1917]

A number of posts on this site, and others, provide some pretty good guidance on repairing the brittle plastic that these old Ventures are covered with. Using that info, I had my wife tackle some tab repairs, seeing as she has a lot more finesse with her hands than I.

 

Here's a picture of necessary materials - ABS plastic sheet, epoxy, and fibreglass. Missing from photo is a can of ABS cement, and a fine tip, electric soldering iron.

 

 

Cracks can be repaired using a combination of soldering iron to widen and deepen cracks, fill with ABS cement, and then fibreglass-epoxy backing for added strength. Where pieces, such as tabs, are missing completely, replacements can be cut and fashioned from the ABS sheet, and then attached with ABS cement and fibreglass. Hopefully you can use any existing, complete tabs as a template.

 

Here are some repair results on lower fairing tabs.

 

 

This seems to have worked well. It will be interesting to see how these hold up.

[Flyinfool]

I have been using the ABS cement and glass cloth for many years and have not had one repair fail.

 

Tell your wife she does good work.

[gaj1917]

My wife has continued to work repairing plastic parts on my '84 Venture. I thought I'd illustrate how she was able to repair a major break on the right-side upper panel. At the rear end of these panels are two grommet holes that hold the body side panels in place. On the right-side panel, the plastic containing the holes had completely broken off. See pic of unbroken left side and broken right side.

 

 

 

Using the unbroken left side panel, and some non-hardening modelling clay, she was able to make a mold of the missing part. With the mold as a guide she cut a template using a thin sheet of clear plastic.

 

 

 

 

With the template as a guide she cut out the repair piece from a sheet of ABS using a scroll saw. Then, using ABS cement, glued it to the panel, and eventually backed it with fibreglass and epoxy. The slot for the spring washer had to cut out with a Dremel tool.

 

 

 

 

All I need do now, is order up a couple of grommets and a spring washer.

Edited February 20, 2017 by gaj1917

[Flyinfool]

I was able to find grommets that work at the local hardware store.

[gaj1917]

I was able to find grommets that work at the local hardware store.

 

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

[gaj1917]

This is a final posting on my experiences repairing Venture plastic.

 

Along with repairing broken tabs and cracks in various plastic parts, as described earlier, this last post deals with fixing/replacing broken posts on the side covers. broken posts are not an uncommon occurrence, especially if you replace the old rubber grommets with new ones. These will hold the side cover posts much more firmly, and increase the risk of breaking a post, as I did, when removing the cover.

 

I purchased a bag of plastic rivets from Napa. These are commonly used these days to hold all and sundry plastic parts together of ATVs and autos.

 

 

First cut the head off the rivet plug, and push it in somewhat to expand the rivet. Test fit the rivet in a rubber grommet to make sure the fit is snug, but not too snug. It's then a matter of gluing the rivet to the side cover mounting base, perhaps using a small hand-held grinder, or file to make sure the surface of the rivet and the mounting base are flat. I used Chem-weld for gluing the two together, as the rivet didn't seem to be ABS plastic. Once that set, a layer of fibre glass and epoxy was wrapped around the post base. Hopefully that will hold the rivet securely in place.