Le Mans CLASSICS 2014

[Steve_D]

Ult-Jim said:

Described his hinge repair kit.

Despite our best efforts the repair did not last long so I'm affraid your repair kit will not get you far. The hinge consists of a bonded captive fixing like this


If yours has failed then the nut has broken away from the perforated ring. Once this has happened no amount of epoxy spread around the outside is going to hold for any length of time.

Steve

[Storer]

I had the same issue on my rear clip.

I added 3 pop rivets each side to the new captive nuts (as shown in Steve's post above) to help hold them in place before bonding them in place.

So far so good.


Paul

[Ult-Jim]

Thanks for the info. Mine was not a breakage I don't think, just the surrounding fibre glass on the inside of the shell showed very slight sign of being under stress on one side. I will monitor it and hopefully I was lucky and will be more careful / on my guard next time.

[3Dee]

Steve_D said:

Despite our best efforts the repair did not last long so I'm affraid your repair kit will not get you far. The hinge consists of a bonded captive fixing like this


If yours has failed then the nut has broken away from the perforated ring. Once this has happened no amount of epoxy spread around the outside is going to hold for any length of time.

Steve

I agree... Unless its has broken out altogether, you will not know.. until it keeps cracking... Then you know

Since I got back I commissioned a very nice local engineering guy to make a couple of new plates (slightly thicker) and he turned some new bosses for the bolts, then he fully welded the boss into the plate - the weld quality was pure porn (if that sort of thing 'floats your boat')! Once I got them back, I cut out the old plate, cleaned up, drilled a pattern of holes in the plate with my trusty post drill to allow the sticky stuff through when refitting.

After trial-and-error bending of the plate to match the curve round the bottom of the central rad vent....On this occasion instead of filler, I used GF reinforced filler (got fibres mixed in, and orange in colour (from Halfords), created a bed of this stuff, then pressed the plate into the mix ensuring it squeezed through da holes, then used more of the stuff to form a thin layer over the top. Finally I used two layers of GF matting to wrap the thing and finish. Post-surgery, I resprayed the area with black tuf-stuff.

The result is much stronger and looks no different to t'other side. If t'other side breaks, I have a new plate and boss ready!