Topic: side cover repair

[BeSeeingYou]

I cracked the left sidecover on my 76F so here is what I did.


I used regular PVC cement (the stuff for PVC plumbing pipes) to weld the crack closed and also drilled a small hole at the end of the crack to stop it going further.  The cement made a strong bond, better than I expected.


Used fiberglass cloth and epoxy to beef up the area of the crack.


I decided to beef up the backside along the top and at the tabs.  Using epoxy thickened with a high density filler I filled  in the area around the tabs  .



Used some glazing putty to smooth out the welded crack and gave it a shot of primer while my helper checked out my work.


Sanded the whole cover with 400 grit and gave it a few coats of primer.  Crack is now invisible and the I feel the cover a bit stronger overall.

[rickmoore24]

Good stuff. I'll be tackling this issue on my left side cover as well. One of the last things that need to be done on my little project and I'm trying to decide what method to use. Thanks!

rick

[att_cowan]

Hi. This looks like a good repair. Do they always break at this location. Mine broke at the same place.

[KRONUS0100]

same bike...mine is cracked in same spot

[BeSeeingYou]

I think the lesson is to pull on the cover from inside the tabs and not at the ends of the cover.  The rubber in the mounting holes gets hard too and a little lube may also help.  The rubber on mine is fine though.  Just impatience caused my problem.

Here is the finished cover.  I used Duplicolor T169 Black Metallic with a clearcoat.  It was just a bit more black the my stock side cover which were more charcoal than black but all the charcoal colors I found were too light.

One other thing.  I found a set of side covers for a 71 SL70 that had a small crack.  The PVC glue would not work on those covers.  It may be that different plastics were used on different bikes over the years so you may have to try cement for PVC, ABS, or CPVC.  I know the PVC cement worked on the 76 F1 cover.