Dec 9 2021

Repairing the body parts:

Got a new plastic welding kit I’m dying to try out.  However the welder uses butane… lots of butane.  So I’m not super impressed..  But I can use the mesh and the rods.  I have a cheap soldering gun with a flat shoe …and that works great.

Here’s the worst crack.  Front fender …left side.  I use the heat gun to soften the plastic and re – align the crack.  Then weld the backside to make it strong.

Then weld the good side.. but it never comes out perfect  with colored plastic.  But it’s repaired and strong .   This process works very good with the black plastic parts.  When melting the PE plastic some of it evaporates into the air.. So it’s necessary to ad more plastic .  Hard to do when it’s a color.

Here’s a bad one on the foot well.  Same process but looks much better.  The foot wells take a beating.  Even if you are careful…

There is the same crack on the other foot well too.  And a crack on the front bumper.  All easy to fix.  However lots of work needed on the rear fenders.

Two of the tabs under the seat were broken off. These are the front ones..  of the six along the upper frame.  When these broke it allowed the plastic to get too close to the exhaust pipe and melted the broken parts.. I had to re construct some parts..

I use paper clips embedded in the plastic.   It’s not pretty but works.  And it is under the seat so no problem.   That’s about it for repairing plastic parts.  Finally I’m trying different ways of polishing out some of the scratches.

Here I tried wet sanding with very fine grit. works but leaves a dull finish.  Power polishing with cut polish could bring the shine back.  This is much the same as restoring headlights.  One thing for sure it gets the years of grime off.

As a final step I use this ultra protectant.   Looks new.  But I haven’t dealt with the scratches on this yet..  So you know I’ll make the body parts nice again..  And I may just see about making my own side panels too.  Some of the parts may take a while to come..  So I’m going to start a third page on the ATVs that I have had, fixed and rode.   PAGE 3  My ATV history..