[njsteve]

So now that the body is back at the bodyshop and I have nothing left to do, I decided to tackle the destroyed, allegedly unrepairable, original white polyethylene valance from the car.

All of the mounting points were not only broken but completely blown out and missing. If that wasn't enough, the upper support bar was broken and the center section was cracked in half with only about two inches still connecting the two halves together. Oh, and the parts that weren't broken were melted and warped from catching fire during the previous owner's carb fire/flambe/barbeque fest.

[njsteve]

Like a triage attempt on a car crash victim, I had to stabilize the patient before I could even move it out of the emergency room (the basement) to surgery (the garage).

I got out the trusty plastic welder and did a fast, rough melt to get to main fracture and the upper support bar stabilized. By the time I got the welding done there was only one inch of plastic still holding the two sides together:

By the way, most of the black area is not paint, but soot and fire damage from the original burning plastic! Only the upper portion had some flat black spraybomb paint on it.

[njsteve]

Once the rough repair was done so that the valance could be moved without cracking further, I moved it to the garage and started the Franken-Valance process.

Here I used some white polyethylene welding rods to fill in the missing areas in the center fracture. I just kept melting and massaging in more polyethylene rods till the area was filled.

[njsteve]

Here is the right mounting flange area. It was shattered completely. I had some of the parts so I used a Dremel tool and ground the edges clean and beveled them so I could get some good weld/heat penetration.



And here it is after welding and filling in extra material to make a rough estimation of the second mounting lug. Later sanding and heating will get the shape more accurately finished.

[njsteve]

And here is the left side, during and after:

[njsteve]

After about four hours of melting and inhaling burnt plastic fumes, here is the current result:

[njsteve]

I soaked the valance in the old Purple Stuff degreaser over the last couple days. I used a tall kitchen garbage can and was able to get one third of the panel covered, and then turned it over to get the other third. For the center I had to lay it flat and cover that area with a towel soaked in the Purple Stuff and let it sit overnight on the area. That purple stuff works wonders: it removed all the soot and the flat black spray paint. The heavy white paint and primer surfacer is another story.

I had to use a razor blade and shave the white paint off. In some areas the paint and primer layer flaked away together, in others, just the white paint, and in others, neither came off. So I had to use the mini sander, which promptly burned out so now I have to buy another one...

Here's the cleaned valance: