I Spent This Evening Sniffing Glue

Inside Fairling Repair
Originally uploaded by Jack Crossen

I should say - I did some plastic repairs on the Conk.

I used ABS cement, ABS cleaning solvent, fiberglass cloth and cut up an ABS pipe fitting to repair the upper fairing crack, missing fairing piece and a broken plastic screw tab for the right turn signal.

This is a picture of the inside of the fairing. You can see the fiberglass cloth on the crack on the upper left - it goes diagonally behind that bracket, to the opening for the turn-signal, the broken screw tab is just to the left of the turn-signal cutout and the fiberglass cloth for the piece I fabricated from ABS pipe is just below the rear view mirror. I cut the ABS pipe with a hacksaw and used the plastic dust mixed with the cement to make a little thicker consistency material to fill the crack. This stuff is harder to work with than Bondo or epoxy type material but from what I gather ABS cement is the best thing for repairing these fairings. This type of repair is really cheap - the ABS cement, cleaner and an ABS pipe fitting cost me about 8 bucks at Lowes.

I don't care what the inside of the fairing looks like so I'll just trim the fiberglass after the ABS cement dries and call that part good.

Outside Fairing Repair

Originally uploaded by Jack Crossen

I'm not sure what I'll do with the outside of the fairing. I might sand it a bit and use some touchup paint and clearcoat on it. The ABS repair is visible - it's the black diagonal line and that black rectangle it connects to. It looks okay to me as-is and the main thing I wanted was to stop the right turn-signal from flopping around and firm up the right side of the fairing so the windshield doesn't vibrate quite so much.

Getting to the back side of the upper fairing was easy - just remove the windshield, the fairing pockets, unscrew the one screw behind the windshield that holds the instrument cover and lift it out of the way.

That ABS cement and the cleaning solvent are some really noxious stuff. The cleaner evaporates into the air really quick - and gives off a really strong odor that will make your head spin. I made sure I had plenty of ventilation and wore some rubber gloves to keep that stuff from absorbing into my skin.

_________________________________________