Fall Time.

The season for biking is  closing.  Bikers are disappearing from the roads as they put their bikes to bed until next year. It is now the time  to put right all the bits of damage you picked up on your plastic through the summer.  If you leave it, you will forget untill it is time to  take the bike out for the new season. loosing days that could be better spent riding your favorite roads.

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Old Friend.

  

GSXR nose cone custom

 

Alan and myself have been friends for a long time. But for some unknown reason lost touch some years back. 

 It all started with a phone call on the merits of  fiberglass over molded plastic for motor bike custom work. This conversation came about due to an accident that damaged the nose cone to his bike. After a long chat  Alan decided to convert his Suzi GSXR 1100 nose cone to accept a set of  Honda Foxeyes. 

Over the following months as I sculpted the faring to take its new head lights, Alan visited with the rest of the bike to test fit  the nose cone; we became good friends.  Little did I know that this would be just the start. 

It is funny how things happen, one of my other friends who knew Alan got in touch recently saying he had just been in contact with him. The next thing I knew Alan had left an email.

Skin Deep.

 

 Are you getting what you pay for?

It seems that you are not. We had a gent in the Monday before the start of TT week, he had his Ducatti re-sprayed ready for the trip. It had some cracks in the plastic that the sprayer said he would plastic weld.

 

The spray job was great but there was a problem with the so called plastic welding. It was a bit of filler and fiber glass smeared across the back for support hence it had re-cracked, no surprise there!

 

Just recently another customer was almost suckered by a spray shop saying they could plastic weld. When they started talking about reinforcing the break to stop it cracking further, he decided not to go back because he had lost trust in them. He felt they did not know what they were doing.

 

Plastic welding has been around for a long time. Is recognised by insurance companies as a proper repair meeting their very high standards, it is also part of the NVQ, SNVQ, National diploma, Higher National diploma and Foundation degree for motor vehicle engineering and yet some repair shops still bodge repairs; there is no call for it; this is part of the reason we do not spray, you can see we have given you the ‘real deal’!

 

 

We have seen over time repairs using super glue, rivets with metal support, soldering iron and super glue, filler and fiberglass and wire ties. All valid temporary repairs by the DIYer but have no place in the professional workshop.

 

If you are paying large amounts of money for a repair you should expect the best, it’s not always a good idea to go to a one stop shop; once the paint is on you do not know what you have paid for. It may be a great Finish but will it be let down by the foundation crumbling?

 

Bags of Trouble.

Contents of the plastic shopping bags

 

A distressed looking man is walking towards the doors of the workshop, in his hands are two plastic shopping bags. We unpacked the bags and laid out the contents piece by piece on to the work bench. I started placing the jigsaw of a faring together, the shape it  formed was that of a Honda CBR 600F side panel. On closer inspection it became more complicated, there were a number of pieces missing, some of these major.     

I looked at him, he said “I was told it could not be done” I replied ” The only limiting factor is price”  A smile crossed his face the first bit of good news in his quest to put his pride and joy back on the road. ” This is why we say bring it in let us see it in the flesh.” It was not a lost cause. After fixing the price, he left with a happier look, to return in a couple of weeks.     

We had our work cut out, first thing to do was to fix all the bits together so the main part of the faring was in one piece, then we could start fabricating the missing parts, these would be cut from sheet plastic of the same material, if it is not the same type it will not weld together.     

We are not like other repairers in that, we do not use two pack  fillers to replace parts that are missing in thermoplastic products which a lot of faring’s are made from. Other repairers will do this were they can get away with it or say it cannot be done. If you have a vintage farings on your bike would you not want the best repair possible for this rare item? I know I would!     

When you use the same material to repair a breakage it should act in the same way that it did before it was broken. If you introduce another part whether it’s filler or fiberglass it will change the way the panel acts and can cause the repair to fail in the future.       

When the man returned he did not believe that it was the same panel until I showed him the back with it’s fine lines of weld. He was very pleased with the result.

Plastic in the cold

Welcome to a freezing start to the new year.

  

This weather has implications for automotive plastic ( farings, bumpers, etc,etc ). Plastic looses its elastic properties when the temperature drops making it hard and brittle but this does depend on the plastic material used.

 

There are two main categories of plastic hard and soft. Hard plastics like ABS  used  in motor bike farings, can become very brittle and break easily. Soft materials like Polyprop , being more flexible , will not creak but will show signs of stress in the cold.

 

With the weather as cold as it is, it means that any damage your plastic receives will be twice as bad. So take a bit more care around that bike stored in the garage.