Body Repair Front Fender “B”: Jupiter Orange
Preamble:
Deer!! 6:40AM, leaving Hinton, Alberta, 515 miles from home and headed to there. Sun coming up over the rise behind me, casting that weird shadow that camo’s everything below it’s rays. Glanced in the mirror and the Zumo GPS to my left, and when I turned back there was a buck 8 feet or so in front, 2 feet to the right, and in the air trying to beat me past the confluence. It didn’t make it.
“Iron Hands” to keep it straight
No time to do anything except go iron-grip on the bars. Nailed him square at nearly 75mph. Blew the front-end off my Jupiter Orange ’03 GL1800, pushed the fairing stay back into my right knee. A rear hoof tagged my right thigh without bruising me. His head wrapped around the left side, broke the Baker Wings (the mirror-mounted one broke in half, bent the mount-bolt, didn’t bother the mirror at all). The rear dual-wings were shattered. The biggest piece of stock plastic left after my wing-man ducked to go through the cloud of pieces, was 4” of the front fender. Even the right-side throttle-body intake-tunnel was back on the road: crushed. The right side of the shelter was pushed back far enough to bend the fairing/rad-stay and fairing mount, and in turn blew off the right engine cover and the centre side cover and bruised my right knee.
A micro-second of “Oh-oh!!”
My buddy behind me, ducking debris, said the bike hardly deviated an inch from line of travel, although the instant of contact felt like I’d hit a brick wall, then blew through it, then went into emergency-stop mode. The forks were bent so I yanked it back in-line pretty quickly.
I stopped before the deer did.
The deer wrapped right around the front end, and when I pulled over and got stopped it was still 15 feet in front of my stop-line and 8 feet left of me, lying on the same lane I hit him in. On impact the had deer rolled ½ way up the shield and got carried, then thrown totally about 120 feet (at least, including the time it spent carried by the bike). We had a memorial for him later that day, I was swearing because I didn’t have my travel-knife on me for the first time in many years: and missed fresh venison. 10lbs from each rear haunch would have been a two minute job.
Road-side basic repairs
After using a lot of moxy gained from 57 years of wrenching, several tubes of JB Weld to plug over 10 holes in the right-hand radiator, which was used used over 150+ ensuing miles as the leaks cropped up (you plug the visible ones, then the pressure from the water-pump shows you the unseen ones). Used twine and several bungy cords, notably to keep the rad-cap tied above the level of the rad and to up-hold the fall-over sensor to keep it relatively horizontal, we brought it in to home 5 hours late.
And back at home..
So much for the preamble. This is about the front fender section B. Not available anywhere in the world in Jupiter Orange. Over $500CDN (yeah, we get raped) if it was available. There was one on the bike I bought for other plastic bits that I couldn’t find, but it was not nearly as nice as mine. Scratched my head, and other places, while pondering about getting a black Section B painted (one that I had in inventory): and decided to just rebuild the orange one.
Other than the right-side mounts (The tabs where the clips slide onto for the cover shoulder bolts) for the wheel-covers, it is in great shape. The tabs got sheared totally off by the right wheel cover when it got shattered off. Those little tabs were in bits somewhere on the road.
So, here is the repair in detail.
Used the black fender “B” from inventory to scribe a template on stiff card-board.
Made a mirror-image of the template for use on both inside and outside the fender, as well as to drop the finished fender-repair onto to check alignment.
Cleaned and waxed the orange fender exterior and wrapped it in saran-wrap to keep it from being injured on the work-table, and laid it up to the template to check the fit, and get oriented for cutting out the replacement pieces to build the tabs, then scribed the broken edges to the template. Measured approximate distances from front to rear of the mount holes of the black one as a check feature. Laid the broken fender over the transcription of the good fender on the cardboard, and scribed it in place, to get a decent idea of the pieces I had to cut.
Went out to the scrap bin, dug out pieces of the bike: front fender Section A, and the small remaining piece of the center-cowl that were removed from the bike, figuring the ABS compound-matrix would be as close to the Fender B as you can get.
Checked the thickness of the pieces at the junctions where the tabs had broken off from. Because the fender pieces and nose pieces are different thicknesses in different places, I could pick the proper thickness area to cut the tabs out from those broken pieces. I picked slightly thicker replacement area-pieces because I knew I would be taking the paint off of at least the inside of the pieces, and a bit where the ‘weld’ seams would be on the outside.
Cleaned up the ragged edges of the broken fender, chose the pieces to configure for the replacements. The starting point was taking pieces of curved plastic, heating them, and flattening them into usable little sheets. The crustie ’81 GL1100 front caliper piston worked well as a rolling-pin. Cut the pieces to over-width and over-length to allow for trimming. Proceeded to put the the ‘breaks’ into them that were need to conform to the proper shape, and improve the strength of the finished piece. That was some painstaking work, which involved a heat-gun to get the plastic to a moldable state, and maintaining that state while working on the pieces. Occasional (as in every 8 to 10 seconds) re-heating required. It has to be just right, in the ‘Cinderella band”. Too hot, it droops and loses its thickness, to cold and you’ll stress it. You’ll see the piece at the end has a double-break. Fun. (note the deer hair on pic #4: very clingy)
After flattening it, cut the new pieces out, trimmed them to fit to the broken edges of the fender, painstaking and slow, for a good fit. Trimmed them to as close to stock configuration as I could with the diamond bit. and having the edges to the fender to match the ‘breaks’, using a couple pieces of flat metal (Goldwing chrome license-plate trim, a straight-edge, and a Vise-grip clamp, I heated from the backside of the cut pieces until the paint started to bubble, and did the ‘breaks’ in the plastic to match those that were there previously. It was nice to have another matching fender as a template, making the matching and the bending of the “breaks” which reinforce the pieces (mount tabs) to match the stock piece. Used a piece of the cowl-nose (exactly same thickness as the tabs) for the upper tab, and a piece of the thicker plastic from the front-fender down-leg for the bottom one, figuring it will take more weight and vibration. Then shaped slowly and gently to fit as exactly as possible.
After doing the ‘breaks’ (and that bending was the hardest part of this process to do, and get even close to properly done), then I trimmed the pieces down to approximate sizes. Next, projected the angles from the lines on the cardboard, dropped the pieces on the template, and drew the angles on the pieces.
Finishing the fitment. Note the mirror image from the excellent fender paint.
Mixed up a batch of JB Weld plastic-bond (15-minute set), and immediately brushed a layer onto the edges which were to be matched and bonded, just to give them a good bond, then wiped all off except a ‘skin’. While the JB was getting ready to use, I changed the Dremel to a wire-brush, and skinned the paint off any edge that was going to be involved in cementing the pieces onto the fender, with sufficient width so that any ‘weld’ going on would be to fresh and raw ABS, for a solid bond.
By that time, it was appropriate to again coat the ‘seams’, place the bits, get them adjusted basically correctly, compress them together hard, then I left it to set up.
15 minutes later, I used the Dremel tiny wire brush to clean the seams, and again brushed the plastic edging of the ‘weld’, mixed up coat number two, and laid it on thick.
45 minutes later, mixed up a batch of regular JB Weld Qwik-Set (six minute set), and laid on the finishing reinforcement layers. Two hours later cleaned up the finishing layer with the Dremel wire brush.
Cleaned up the seams. Starting of the finishing trimming of the tabs. Nearly there. Note the little ‘breaks’ on the shapes, and the clip-positioning extensions.
Now that the tabs were in place, time to again measure, (this time finitely with Vernier calipers) re-scribe the template using the good fender. Position the tab mount-clips where they are supposed to be on the tabs. Again with the Verniers: center the holes, cross-hair them, and drill the holes (oversize to allow for a little adjustment ‘slop’) in the tabs. Tab-locks are now shaped, ready for clips to go on.
Paint some primer on after roughing up the JB Weld, wiping with alcohol.
Lay on a coat of base-coat, then appropriate coats of Jupiter orange. (Colorite.com touch-up sticks)
Placed the finished piece on the bike, cost me 6 hours finicky fussing, plus set-time waiting, but saved me the embarrassment of an aftermarket paint job which NEVER matches properly, as well as the $500+ for (an unobtainable) fender piece.
You can see why I wanted to save the fender.
And here is my pretty lady, with all the deer hair removed. 2 years later, not a problem with Section “B” front fender.
Be sure to read the write-up in the main menu of Body Repairs before you attempt to repair or fix a cracked or broken piece of body work on your Goldwing. The same methods can be used on all plastic body parts.