[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:

[njsteve]

And the front side. You can see the different areas of good and bad paint adhesion.



Here's some of the filled in rough repairs:







And the preliminary rough sanding of the upper face bar repair:

[njsteve]

Stopped by Home Depot today and replaced the crappy Craftsman Mini Mouse Sander with a Black&Decker model. It worked fine. Using 80 grit, I had all the paint off of the front of the valance in about 2 hours. I can't feel my hands though. Maybe the feeling with come back in a day or two, in time to do the back of the panel.