WJ Handlepole repair , the real slim shady version

[WFO Speedracer]

Southern word of the day is Sensuous , Since- you- was grinding and laying up glass anyway I ground down the inside of the handlepole crack on both sides and laid up two layers of fiberglass tape and epoxy on the inside .

Notice that the only JB weld left is what was in the crack itself , The JB Weld was just there to hold everything together till I could glass it up ,
it's ground all the way down to SMC , Metton or whatever this crap is called.

Still getting rained out here , about as soon as I finished laying this up a thunderstorm popped up and I had to move everything .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I felt much better today and decided to get out and about, so I moved the handlepole to my shop to work on it there , I probably spent a good half an hour grinding on it with the grinder ,flap disc and a die grinder and carbide bit . You will notice again 99% of the JB Weld is now gone.

Then I mixed up three different batches of epoxy and cabosil to fill in different areas , I used all of it , this thing is just like Los Angeles, crack city USA.
I believe all the cracks have been ground out and filled ,next will be glassing everything back up.

I am going to be real here just for a minute , don't get used to it , at first I didn't actually think this one was fixable , the bottom piece , yeah totally fixable , no big deal , the top piece . not so much.

I figured I would give it a go and at the worst I would have a plug for a mold so I can make a new handlepole, but it does now look like it is going to be fixable , I will most likely still pop a mold off of it at some point for later use and just in case the worst happens, again .

I always thought it would be cool to have a carbon fiber handlepole for one of these , I have no idea if a potential market exists for such an item though.

If this had been for a customer I would have thrown this in the trash, no doubt in my mind about that.

 

[WFO Speedracer]

Yeah I know it's been a minute but as usual customer stuff always gets in the way of working on my stuff , anyway it's 95 and sunny here some time to do more fiberglassing .

I am starting off by removing all traces of the old paint since I have decided to fully layer this thing with glass , carbon and Stealth veil , so it's fire sale time, everything has to go !

Then I will start dishing it out at the cracked areas and filling it back in with epoxy and glass . most of the reinforcement will be done from the inside although it really doesn't matter the only place I can change dimensions on this is where it mpounts to the hull at the bottom, the inside dimension there has to stay the same..

This is Shonuff gonna take a hot minute !

 

[WFO Speedracer]

It actually knitted in quite nicely , I have a few ideas to strengthen it up in a few places that I will implement later , the difference between me and most people is the default settings , most peoples default setting is that's trashed I will buy another one , my default setting is how can I fix it.

The inside of the longer cracks on the sides (1st and 4th pics ) has been done for a while now , the two near the steering (2nd and 3rd pics ) have not been done yet and this is where I think it will need the most glassing and support at . Most of the additional material , reinforcement what ever will be on the inside with maybe a layer or two of cloth and a layer of carbon on the outside.

Like I said the dimensions here really don't matter that much except at the very bottom where it mounts to the hull , everywhere else I can pretty much do whatever I want , within reason of course .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I got the inside all cleaned up and the outside ground down, there are a few places I can't get into, I will take it to shop and get those with the die grinder and a sanding drum , then I can start glassing in the inside up with biax and carbon fiber .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I had a bunch of resin leftover from glassing the 300SX so I went ahead and laid in a few layers of glass on the inside of those cracks by the steering , I am trying to tie it all in together , there will be a lot more glassing going on in there with carbon fiber later after I get some of the areas knocked down , where I glassed it this time it was already good to go.

My intent is to put a fairly good amount of carbon and biax in there to strengthen it all up and I will make a stainless steel plate on the top for some added support , if it breaks again it won't be because I didn't do this as good as I could possibly do it. .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I honestly don't know when the last time this thing ran was , last time I checked I had no power to anything , so to get to the electrical box on this you have to remove the fuel tank , the vent hose that goes by the carb and the carb , it's really tight working space in here , at any rate all of that needed to come off anyway so no big deal .

Everything is out now so if I remember right the last person I let ride this thing sank it , I got it running after that at the freeride and I dried it all out , but there is no telling what I am going to find on the inside of that electrical box , I have more electrical boxes , I have solenoids , batteries , some starter rebuild kits and two spare 650 engines so I can get it running , just depends on if I have time to get it all put together this week or not .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I pulled the e-box apart after it stopped raining , unbelievably if was fairly clean , a broken glass fuse was the electrical culprit , any way I just pulled the red wire from the solenoid to the start switch and touched it to the battery side of the solenoid , it spun over nicely , then I checked it for the spark , no spark , I got the meter out and checked the source coil 65 + volts , I checked the trigger coil and got absolutely nothing so bad trigger coil or it's so rusty it isn't working , I may just swap in the other complete engine , it's 6 of one or a half a dozen of the other at this point .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I got back on the handlepole project today, actually I have been working on it all along , lots of hand sanding the paint off straightening and working down various areas , just nothing really pic worthy , this isn't either but what the hell , it is what it is .

I laid down some glass in some of the major spots after spraying it with spray adhesive , I use this stuff a lot when I have lots of curves and 90 degree corners, it makes life much easier especially if you are dealing with slippery carbon fiber . This Gorilla glue spray adhesive works pretty dang well , I am happy with it .

I am going to have to put it in layer by layer on the inside at the poles bottom because it has to fit the hull , as it stands now it is a loose fit and you can tell it has moved around a bit , there are chafing marks on the pole and the hull , a couple of layers on the inside in that area and I will fix that right on up .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

Flipped it over and laid up a layer inside at the bottom , like I said I will do one layer at a time here and test fit after every layer till it gets that just right fit.

The weather has been funky here , kind of like a fake fall , not that I am complaining but the last lay up wasn't fully hardened this morning , a few hours in the sun today and it's all good , the temp is going back up in the 90's for a while which is great for glassing stuff up but it's about time to invest in some fast cure epoxy for the Winter stuff I will be doing here .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I checked the fit on the hull this morning , it's a much better fit , I may get by with one more layer but I am using surfboard cloth this time , I don't want to overdue it and have to grind it back out .

This repair will not be typical of what I usually do , I won't try to make it perfect 99% of this handlepole is hidden and can't be seen, it's capped off at the bottom so no one will ever see the inside of it again once I put the cap back on the bottom , the top is covered by the seat and the handlebar cover , yeah I could make it perfect but truefully in this instance I fail to see the point of it .