resin or bondo...

I stripped the paint from my sidecovers, and will soon be doing the tail and tank as well. What should I use to fill imperfections in the plastic, fiberglass resin, or bondo? I was thinking resin for the plastic and bondo for the tank.

How deep are the imperfections you're speaking of?

If not deep: For plastics, adhesion promoter ALWAYS then use the primer with filler then wet sand smooth once cured...

It will be like glass for your paint then clear coat....

Gregg should be able to provide some further insight for deep scratch preps...

For the most part they are small, and once I sand it down some more to smooth it most of them will go away, but there are a couple gouges in the tail that will need a little more than a high solids primer. The tank is mostly ok, so I think I will do the filler primer on the tank, it's just the scrapes on the tail mainly.

One other thing I need help with is one of the push-in prongs that hold the side covers to the bike has broken off. Luckily I still ahve it, and a PO had used a piece of cork and glued it to the back of the side cover. Would fiberflass bond to the plastic well enough to build up a base for the prong to stay in? I would post a pic, but I am at my desk...

For the prong, Bill has a tutorial on plastic repair. If I recall that would involve some fiberglass mesh and abs Cement. Good luck!

I looked through all the filebase, and found nothing on plastic repair, where can I find this tutorial? thanks

found it, thanks

As Dave mentioned an adhesion promoter is wise to use. One or two light coats is ample. If you have a local auto paint supply store they can advise you on what to use for plastic repairs. Although for as little an area your dealing with that might get expensive. Sometimes regular body fillers will work fine. I would use a 2k urethane primer though. It will fill imperfections with minimal coats. Let primers cure well though. This will avoid shrinking later. Always good to double prime to eliminate that problem. Bill did a piece on plastic repair using an ABS cement. I have seen it and it seems to work fine. You can also find some epoxies at auto parts stores that are made for plastics. I have used them on occasion and also on my own bike. Holds well and did the trick for me.

What we use at work in the bodyshop for plastic repairs is Lord Fusor 100EZ after that stuff dries its on there and you dont have to worry about it breaking again. You can get it at an automotive paint store.

Sounds like Lord Fusor 100EZ is the way to go,...
but bondo seems to work well too.
I went as far as to use bondo to level out the indentations from when I removed the Kawasaki emblems off of the gas tank & both side covers.
It has held the paint well so far.
It has been 18 months to two years.

Qdude wrote:

Sounds like Lord Fusor 100EZ is the way to go,...
but bondo seems to work well too.
I went as far as to use bondo to level out the indentations from when I removed the Kawasaki emblems off of the gas tank & both side covers.
It has held the paint well so far.
It has been 18 months to two years.

No doubt when you need to do fill work on metal bondo is the only way to go. The Fusor is just for glueing broken tabs and stuff like that on plastic

ive got some sidecovers i eliminated the emblems on more than 25 years ago.i beveled out the holes then filled em in with a hot glue gun and sanded em down,dont laugh the imron is still on that bike. the guy who painted it thought i was nuts too ! :laugh:

I got some ABS cement, after cleaning my plastic off with brake cleaner I used the cement to stick the tab back on and it worked really well. I tried to move it around and it is really solid. I ended up using adhesion promoter and filler primer on the plastic side covers. Most of the scratches came out nicely with the 400 grit paper, and whatever was left will go away after the primer gets sanded down.





Thanks for all the help guys. will use bondo on the tank, and follow it up with the filler primer as it seems to look like it is really wasy to shape and smooth out.