Kawasaki Z900 Side Cover Repair

Hey folks,
The covers are ABS plastic. ABS plumbing pipe glue perfectly well welds ABS to ABS. Epoxy, of any sort does a poor job of connecting ABS plastic to any kind of plastic.

Did I mention that black ABS pipe cement is available at any lumber yard, Home Depot, Lowes or Ma and Pa hardware store for a FRACTION of the cost of any epoxy. Probably not.

Of course if you need to spend money to be sure you're doing a bang up job go out and special order any epoxy you fancy.

KZCSI

Post edited by: KZCSI, at: 2007/01/30 21:31

hmmmmm......mod vs mod , maybe some pics would help, or a series of tests....email the idea to mythbusters:P :silly:
Scott

Hi George,
No disrespect intended. I'm just trying to point out that most of the time the simplest solution is the best solution.

KZCSI

Hi Scott,

So you want pics heh?

How about this project? It's not a side cover tab repair but I have used this method to do just that.

I'm presently remodeling a 1985 Six cylinder Voyager. I had hoped to eliminate the fairing entirely but eventually decided that I liked all the digital instrumentation so I ended up chopping the fairing down to a bare minimum. Unfortunately, the fairing had several areas where the vibration and perhaps some crashing had taken it's toll, leaving some pretty bad cracks.



I cleaned the whole area with denatured alcohol and wetted the area with plain old ABS pipe cement. On top of this I laid a first layer of fiberglass repair
fabric.




Another layer of pipe cement.



Same thing on the inside.



Second layer of pipe cement on the inside.



I know that this repair is stronger than the original construction.

The problem with most epoxies is that they do not bond chemically to plastic. They depend on mechanical adhesion, ie. you have to rough it up to have something to bond to. If you can find an epoxy that does bond to plastics, I'll wager it costs ten times what ABS cement does.

Except for my time, the total cost of this repair was less than $3.00.

My $0.02

KZCSI

Post edited by: KZCSI, at: 2007/01/31 07:24

That's pretty awesome..can you use pipe cement for general glass work, or is it best to stick with the normal resins for everything else?

I've gotta relocate the tabs to mount the side covers I have to my bike..or make new ones. Think I could just dremel them off, and shift them over?

Pipecement between the tab and cover, with a bit of pipe cement and fiberglass cloth around the base to hold it on?

Hi pyxen,
The use of glass fabric lends itself to many types of resins. ABS pipe cement works in this case because the base material is ABS. If you're really working with fiberglass which commonly uses polyester resin, then you should use polyester resin. When I repaired a broken tab for a side cover I just opened the weave of the fabric and shoved the point of the tab through. The pieces of fabric I used were about 1.5" square. That repair is still better than new.

KZCSI

Nice work KZCSI, you definatly know your stuff