Club 80-90 Forums

Has anybody had the guts to take off the plastic arch extensions??? My rear ones have started coming away from the arch (due to the bolts on the inside rusting away!!!!) Do I take the bull by the horns and take it completely off and try and repair or is this going to start a lot of problems?? I will be respraying the van soon so advice would be very much appreciated. I have seen sets of these arches at Vanvest and going for about £400 so would rather try and use my existing ones if poss.

Thanks again

Lloydie

I am just about to put mine back on. They are easy to take off, I used a 1/4 inch drive 7mm socket on a short handle, wire-brushed inside the wheel arch, soaked in WD-40, and very gently undid the nuts. I had a small patch of rust under one rear one, but the others were fine.

The short front sections have 4 nuts, the rear have 8, and the door sections come off by drilling the rivets.

Me and syncroswede in his 16" put his front ones back on a couple of weekends ago, after repairing minor cracks in the plastic. Popped back on in minutes.

Vw used a silicon sealant to stick mine on with, with a date written in china-graph.





A previous re-sprayer had rubbed smooth the dimpling on the front spats, I have sprayed them with Plastikote stone touch effect paint, then rubbed it down a bit, and sprayed with combicolour satin black. They all look excellent now.

Here are the re-painted spats, they were real tired before, this is only one coat of combicolour, as I have run out temporarily.



Here's the wheelarch without spat, small section cut away for clearance is the only mod to a standard 2wd repair panel, so easy for a welder to fix, probably best to keep the old section for template of holes. It is clear that they were hand fitted as most of the holes were elongated for fitting the spats.




And the finished article.

mine are due to come off but some of the nuts are siezed, most were siezed origonally but i`ve been lubing them on and of for a while know and its only a few stubborn ones left.


i didn`t want to have to bond them on again as i thought it would make it difficult to remove them in the future, but saying that some sort of sealer behind them when re fitting is probally a good idea as it`ll stop any "pooh" getting behind them.

..lee.. wrote: i didn`t want to have to bond them on again as i thought it would make it difficult to remove them in the future, but saying that some sort of sealer behind them when re fitting is probally a good idea as it`ll stop any "pooh" getting behind them.

Yeah, I was thinking that too, I have got some Sikaflex 221, but it is very permanent, so was thinking of just using waxoil underseal on the rear sections, as they will prob have to come off again at some point. there is a sikaflex 521, which is non setting, so that might be a better bet, as is designed to be removed.

I will use the sikaflex 221 on the front door one, as there is a lot of stress in the fixing edge, and the spat is stressed by the rivets, so the extra help will not do any harm.

Is it likely for the bolts to come out from the plastic arch...can you replace them once they rot or break??
I have to take one rear one off as I need to do a bit of welding but i am scared shless that I wont be able to get them back on fitting nice and tight again!!
Got to say.... your painted ones look good now. Where do you get that plastikote and the sealent from??

Many thanks for your replies..

I had one come out on the front, as the little nut was rusted solid.

[IMG1536]http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa28 ... 050329.jpg[/img]

Here you can see the missing stud. I got the nut of in the vice, but have temporarily mislaid it. I was gonna glue it back in with Sika Flex 221. But If I just glue the whole thing on, it should be fine.

Here is the paint I used to get the texture back. I got it from B&Q.

[IMG1536]http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa28 ... 050330.jpg[/img]

Any satin top coat will work. The combicolour is nice and strong though. I did use plastic primer before anything else. Just normal Halfords grey one.

Here you can see where the stud has come out of the plastic, it has a splayed end which fits in the shiny bit, and then is covered by the (polyuerethane)? foam of the spat.





If I cant find the missing stud I may drill a hole, and glue in my own with a fresh machine screw.

I put the blugger down somewhere, a safe little place.

I think that if you were to glue the whole spat on with Sika Flex 221 then you would not need any of the studs, as it is a super strong glue/sealant. So I would not worry too much.



Your local caravan camper dealer will have loads of it.

there`s bound to be a suitable glue to bond a small screw in to the arch but which one.


knowing someone who is in the know as to what works with that particular material would be nice.


my troubles are yet to start

lee.

Our 16 camper had many broken studs on the arches. I cut off any remaining ones and sike flexed them on ! they have not come off
A couple of sets of jump leads are handy for clamping them on.
Pete

Fantastic response...many thanks for all your info. I feel a lot happier now about taking them off!!

..lee.. wrote:there`s bound to be a suitable glue to bond a small screw in to the arch but which one.


knowing someone who is in the know as to what works with that particular material would be nice.


my troubles are yet to start

lee.

if they're made of polyuerethane, then maybe gorilla wood glue would work well, its like that expanding foam stuff, but doesn't expand much!

Have yet to try and take mine off but i have cleaned the nuts of and been soaking them with wd40

Hi,
I have just removed all my spats to have my van repainted! and had a couple of the rear bolts snap as i was removing them! i drilled a small 8mm hole through the spat and pushed the new bolt into the hole and set it in with apoxy - filled the hole, sanded it and repainted all the spats using a similar textured top coat as the plastecote one and then used satin black so replacing the top bolts is not hard!
You should use clear silicone behind the spat to seal all the holes to stop the water getting in behind the spat because silicone will seal the holes and glue the spat in place but not so tight as that in the future if you need to remove they come off fairly easily!
But if you have not removed them before it seems a bit daunting but when you remove them it seems really easy

Never us Silcone on steel it´s vinegar in it and it will rust more than it ever have done before.

There are much better products to use.

Wurth have one if i translite it from swedish it´s "glue and thick".

Regards Patrik www.vw-tristar.com

Here are a few photos of a repair I made to the front body spat.

First I drilled out a large cavity where the stud used to be. This allows the head of a standard machine screw to be popped into place.



Next using a plastic repair furmula as provided by syncroswede, who had repaired cracks on his spats, I set about filling the void with the formula.





The formula is a two part process starting with a white crystaline powder which you dust into the crack, or in this case, the void I had drilled out. Next the bolt head was placed into the hole, and the second part, a liquid was pippetted into the void. This process was repeated in small stages to ensure all the powder was saturated.



Until the new plastic was level.



After a couple of hours drying, the stud was solid and strong.

This could also have been done with sikaflex, or araldite I expect, but I think that this stuff bonds chemically to the surface where it is applied, so should be strong. Has bolted down ok though.