Right, thats advice I can work with. But does anyone knows what kind of material is used, PVC, ABS or another kind of plastic?
Thanks in advance,
Rick
A majority of the hard plastics used on all bikes is ABS. That means it is easy to fix... to an extent. You can get up to about 80% strength using the method I've used and the guys at the shop used to repair plastics.
Get a wood burner or soldering gun, not a little iron like you'd use for small work, the old style Weller that looked like a gun. Get some scrap plastic from a junk cover. Then you carefully melt and sort of cross stitch the plastic along the crack and slightly beyond the end adding additional plastic from say an old Honda side cover - after all, that's all a Honda is good for, right? Maybe even a VMax tank cover! The contamination will only knock a tenth or so off your Eliminator's quarter.
Definitely lightly sand and clean off the area to get rid of any substance that might affect the process. Get it down to clean plastic, then start the melting process.
We melted broken pegs back on that way too, including slathering on some of that black plumbing ABS glue, the black is actually melted ABS. But there's no substituting for the wood burner job.
The shop and a couple of the guys did a number of "totalled" sportbikes we got, sometimes even cutting and fitting pieces in where bits were missing. We always let the customers know the bike body had repairs, we didn't screw with our livelihood by misleading people. There was a couple of CBRs and an Interceptor I remember. Some customers bikes too.
If you're really careful and don't melt too deep you can actually repair a crack that's started, but not to noticable on the paint side without repaint. If you're repainting you can really plow on the plastic and make it strong.
I actually took a CB900 tail and added plastic to it to fit it onto a modified SR500 seat to blend it for an RS750 flat track look seat.
Here's a shot showing I welded in thinner stock, the second shot shows you can't tell where it was done from the outside after sanding and a spot of glaze for a few pinholes.
Under no conditions did we ever use an epoxy or any sort of glue other than the ABS cement on hard plastic body parts. It didn't adhere on customers' bikes and we figured why screw with what works for us to experiment with what didn't work for others.
Hope that helps a bit. Be careful and methodic and you'll do well.
