West Systems G-Flex is pretty awesome stuff. I’ve used it for bonding plastics to metal before. No idea if it would be good on the RZR plastic.

I have a couple plastic tabs I need to fix so I’ll be watching this close.

 

I ripped off my front fender flare tabs. I used a plastic welding iron and melted wire mesh into the plastic on both sides and then melted a rod all over to add strength.

Post a picture of your damage.

 

Howdy snow!

Yea, I bumper into that one too. It's listed for PolyE, which is pretty impressive, but not PolyP. So I don't know. I'm taking mine down to an auto body shop tomorrow that has nitrogen welding and seeing what they'll charge me.

My thinking is whatever result I get I'm going to try to get a second layer/skin bonded on to increase the strength. This as it's a bolt attachment, so I can increase depth with no real penalty. Assuming that happens I'll either do a home hot-weld for the second layer or use one of the liquid welds.

 

I've done welding using a heat gun and strips cut from a milk bottle.

 

Another option better than glueing and melting plastic, is to pop rivet a thin piece of sheet metal to bridge the tab . You will have a much stronger mounting point

 

Anxious to see how how it turns out, I have a crack in a fender from the previous owner. I also want to give a shout out to dafish, your posts are always helpful and informative, with well thought out and researched answers!

 

Imma zip tie kinda guy lol. I feel like I will just break it again. My left side of the bed is all stitched up with zip ties. Been seriously considering going tube chassis and sheet metal because of cheap plastics. @RWB713 looking forward to following your build if you get around to it.


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My left side of the bed is all stitched up with zip ties.

FRANKENRZR!

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Depending on the situation the original 24 hrs JB Weld can work very well in some cases.
Here are a couple of pictures of JB Weld repairs I have done ...I am not real proud of it but they are strong and have held up well ...plus I can be a real cheap ass sometimes!

One picture is a Polaris XXL fender flare that had about a 6 inch long crack in it. I sanded the edges wiped the plastic with MEK to soften it , then I added the JB weld from the back side and heated it with a heat gun till it ran out the front.
Once it hardened I sanded the lip of JB and painted it back. It cam out super strong.

The other picture is where a stick came up thru my floor board . It was a pretty big crack, same procedure as above soften it with MEK load it full of JB weld heat gun and then I added a piece of .125 aluminum and pop riveted it down and reinforce it

All the more reason I need to buy a real skid plate !!

 

I have fixed cracks in car radiators with a zip tie and soldering iron if that helps. I'm talking about the plastic on the sides not the aluminum part.

 

Hello all, and thanks to each of you for the kind words and suggestions. Sorry I've been away a bit. A few distractions here and there.

I did take it to a body shape that did nitrogen welding. They has an hourly rate of $56 an hour, so.. Then they quoted me $350 to fix it. Uh-no. Heck I can buy new parts for that (which is what I told them).

So yea, DIY here we go.

It's fixed, and based on no small part to the feedback from this forum. I'll post a video in a minute, but in short I used the $17 harbor freight welding kit with my own donor plastic. Having had no experience I made a few mistakes in the first attempt, and a wiser man would have experimented/practiced first (advice hereby given).

I quickly learned these things:
* You can fix a lot with these.
* Donor plastic should match, or be less than, what you are welding to in thickness.
* Let the iron get hot before you start! 5 minutes is a reasonable warm up time.
* Hold the iron in place to get the donor plastic and the target to near liquid state, then start "ironing" the area.
* Don't start out on a thin piece. I did, and while I recovered my mistakes just fine, thin plastic isn't the place to learn. (liquid state happens faster, and you go from soft to running to burning with only a few seconds of difference!)
* Just like any other solder or welding exercise, if you get a cold joint it will have no strength. (it flakes or chips off under stress.)
* For thin tabs, like on my fender, I found using small (1/4") zip ties held by the every edge with a needle nose allowed me to control heat and not burn through to be the way to go. When I did the rear storage area plastic, which is quite a bit thicker, I was able to use a small long piece of matching donor plastic and basically "melt" off small sections as a went. (I'd also gained a little experience by then too.)
* Key: Learn to manage the heat. To cold is weak, to hot will ruin the original plastic. You want soft near-liquid.

Certainly things as minor as my tabs are an easy fix. You could do floors, rear storage, etc fairly easily, although I think I'd suggest either briefly riveting in some sheet metal, or getting the bottom (relative to gravity) clean and applying some aluminized tape (like you use on dryer vents, not like HVAC duct tape). This as the plastic, to get a good "attachment" between pieces, needs to be pretty darn near liguid. It would sag towards the ground if a very long area was heated (or a very large gap filled).

It's actually the "liquid" state that is the art. You need to get there, let it flow a little, and get the heat off before it either sunders to gravity and runs or burns up. ( I learned both the hard way). The triangular "shoe" on the HF melting iron is a major help. Highly recommended!! 80 watts worked out well too. Hotter is tempting, but controlling it would take more skill.

As you'll see I leaned towards reinforcing the spots that had failed.

My thanks to all again, and good luck!

-D


PS:
(Will it assemble? Will it hold? Time will tell!)

 

And the video's both before and after:

Before

Welded:

 

Going together well. I did learn one has to bend out the metal spring tabs a surprising amount. Who knew?

 

Do you put clips onto fender, and install assembly into sockets, or put clips into sockets and push fender into clips?

And it looks like you came up with answer while I was replying to original question.

Well crum, the plastic fender won't stay on. The metal clips seem to not grab/catch the rear cargo area. Are these one time use only or something? they seem to be spring steel, don't seem to want to bend, and don't seem to have a missing receptacle. Yet not a one of them wants to hold well...

 

And to answer your question in other thread, partno is. . . .

 

Thanks for your reply. Yep, it's as simple as bending the shit out of them. I'd feared they break, but once I saw clips could be replaced it was on.

Thanks again,

-d

 

Here's a new learning, and yet another lesson in "man, I really like the $17 harbor freight plastic welding kit".

My SDI rear crossover rings have failed, threads stripped out, twice now. One on each side. The fronts have been fine, so perhaps the tap or screws were bad in the rear batch I got. None the less I'd never buy them again.

But the story is this: I melted the thread hole down until it collapsed, then fill it up with donor material until it was completely solid. Then I drilled it back out with a .34 drill bit and tapped it with a 6-32 tap. Then I used one size longer cap head screw (roughly 1/8 longer). Perfect repair, and appears to be viable now.

Mind you I've keeping a pair of Eibach two peice aluminum ones on hand now too, so...

 

So what donor material are you using? I want to try this plastic weld, but don't know what kind of filler to get.

 

Amazon.com: Jounjip Plastic Welding Rods for TPO TEO & PP Bumper Kayak Repairs, Flat Ribbon - Black (40 pack): Home Improvement

Would this work? @dafish Do you know what plastic they use for the body panels?

 

I don’t. I went to my local dealer who had some wrecked/broken plastic around. I got a few small pieces of the bed, and it’s worked perfectly.

 

I picked up the Harbor Freight plastic welder today and some donor plastics. Thanks for the tip. Will see what I can melt tonight.

 

A few tips:

1) Let the iron get hot for maybe 3 minutes before you use it.
2) Have a safe place to set it down.
3) Orient the work so that the plastic will sag/flow/melt into place via gravity.
4) Apply heat in small steps until you get a sense of what's going on.

1. The transition from solid to liquid state is fairly fast.
2. Once you get the plastic hot and flowing you can apply much less heat in short applications to move it, smooth it, etc.
3. Once hot, you can sort of "iron" the filled area's to make it look almost factory. The idea is to get the fill-in work done in small steps, and to make sure it's flowing well as you built it up (you don't want a cold/poor joint). Once the fill is complete and the "weld joint" is full then you can make it pretty. That's easy, and while you need warm plastic and a hot iron, you're not getting to plastic sag, so it's pretty easy.

It all comes together in only a few minutes of use.

Luck to you!

-d