Kawasaki Concours Forum
The C10, aka Kawasaki Concours - The Original => The Bike - C10 => Topic started by: mcman56 on February 02, 2014, 11:56:24 AM
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The plastic gods got me and my bike fell off the side stand. It was on a slight hill so must have started to roll backwards. This has happened to a previous owner and there are some glue joints with this hard yellowish glue. It looks like hot melt glue but is quite hard. See the picture. Can anyone tell me what this is? Will it also work on the bags? One has some small cracks where it hooks on the mount. I was probably lucky. There are the fairing cracks and the left side bag mount is busted. Hopefully the bag mount is not too hard to find or maybe weld.
Contrary to what I have heard, a Concourse is not a particularly hard bike to pick up off of its side.
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That's epoxy glue. Useless for fairing repair.
My advice would be to clean all that off (you should find it fairly easy to scrape it off) and take the pieces to a plastic welder.
I have a friend who does mine.
I have tried all kinds of glue and the only one that worked on ABS was home made.
Get some acetone and dissolve shavings of ABS plastic into it until it reaches a workable glue-like consistency.
Apply to the parts (both sides) and then hold together until the acetone evaporates (takes quite a while!).
The bag antler can be welded. Find a place that does propeller repairs. They are pretty good at welding aluminium.
Otherwise they can be had from ebay and some motorcycle recyclers.
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You can use ABS cement and it works pretty well. In a case like that I'd probably add some fiberglass backing embedded in the stuff. You'll have to scrape off any paint for the stuff to get to the raw ABS of the fairing in order to get it to work, all of this on the back side of course. It's pretty much just acetone and ABS anyway so it'll save you a step. It's generally available in the plumbing section of your local hardware store.
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That looks like the old-style "Plactic Mender" epoxy. It sticks good at first then breaks down and comes loose later. Plastic welding is best, or you can mix MEK and Legos to make a good slurry glue for fairing repair. As stated above, scratch it down to clean plastic. Watch out for the MEK, it's pretty pungent.
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Plastex (http://www.zggtr.org/index.php?topic=659.msg43078#msg43078) is my preference.
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The yellow glue or epoxy is stuck solid to the fairing. There are no failures at the glue/ fairing interface. The yellow stuff is simply cracked all of the way through. It looks like I would have to grind it off. Considering that it is on some 90 degree bends and other shapes, it would be hard to grind away without grinding away the fairing. So it looks like I would need something that would stick to the yellow stuff as well as the fairing...or maybe just the yellow stuff.
Could this be fiberglass resin? I have not seen fiberglass resin in a very long time but remember it looking sort of like this.
Do any shops repair things like this in the Sacramento area?
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Hard to say for sure what it is just from photos.
Had some minor cracks in mine and repaired them with ABS glue with excellent results. Just be very careful not to use the newer non-MEK based glue because it is almost worthless for ABS crack repair.
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When you are using regular plumbing supply ABS, be careful not to put it on too thick.
I had a hairline crack in the front tip of the fender, so I used ABS glue to put a patch underneath to keep it from spreading. I used a pretty generous amount of glue and it started feeling warm as it cured. By then it was too late. The glue melted through the fender and wrinkled the plastic and the paint.
It ended up stabilizing and the fender is solid with no sign of a crack returning, but it has that silver dollar sized wrinkled surface right on top the fender.
Good Luck
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When I've used the ABS cement I've always either used fiberglass or a piece of ABS pipe cut and heated into shape as a backer. Never had a problem. Thanks for the tip Leo.
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I used to build fiberglass boats and that doesn't look like resin to me. resin would be smoother and clearer. resin by itself has little strength and is almost useless.
Glass strand/mat/cloth/woven roving is impregnated with resin to make fiberglass. Like when people refer to cement but what they really mean is concrete because cement is just the powder that combines with water and sand/gravel to make concrete.
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Are the saddle bags also ABS? They seem more rigid like some kind of thermoset. One of the mounting area is cracked but not broken.
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Plastex (http://www.zggtr.org/index.php?topic=659.msg43078#msg43078) is my preference.
+1
^^^that
X's infinity
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Saddlebags are also a thermoplastic but IIRC they are polypropylene.
I've never had to repair mine so I don't know for certain, but I'm sure someone on here will know.