My 1994 Kawasaki Concours has some damaged bodywork from previous owners having a small wreck and being laid down at low speed. The side panels and the belly pan all had scrapes and damage on them although the paint is in pretty good shape. Since I can't do bodywork and these are old bodywork made out of ABS plastic, I reached out to a friend of mine. He had helped me repair a previous dent and looked forward to trying ABS work.
A few weeks ago we had a planning and evaluation get together. We went to NAPA and looked at options, and the best one was getting fiberglass resin but not use any cloth. Work got in the way for both of us, so we weren't able to get back to the project for too long. So one night he experimented without me. He laid a thin layer of the resin on the damaged areas and let it set up. So yesterday I went over and we looked at the parts in the bright San Diego sun. By "flowing" the resin across the panels the long scrapes were built up and the cracked areas were sealed together. They aren't fuzed like ABS plastic welding would have done but they seem to be stiff enough. He handed me a vibrating sander with 220 grit paper and I went to work on them. I learned a good lesson after hand-sanding all my bikes previously! I'm shopping for a sander soon!
We also cleaned up some areas with a dremel tool and checked the parts back and forth. The usual rule of thumb applies-sand at least 1/3 more time than you think you needed to. The resin worked really well for this project after the first sanding, so Larry mixed up a small patch of the leftover resin and activator. We spread another thin coat on the low spots and set the parts out in the sun. The next step will be to get the parts from Larry's and sand them with both 220 and 400 grit prior to filler priming.
I hate to say it, but Larry is going to make these parts look brand new-which means I'll be crying when they get the road scars I know this bike will! It's stable mate is my 100K project bike and it's definitely picked up it's share of rock chips, scrapes and other "road trophies".
