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Mooney plastic panel repair

rocketman

By rocketman
in General Mooney Talk

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rocketman Community Regular

rocketman

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I am in the process of removing all the yellow stained plastic side and ceiling panels and would like to know who are some of the experienced and friendly shops around the country that can repair the occasional cracks as well as to paint it to like new condition.


I have been looking into a paint made by Sherwin Williams called "Jetflex" which is a specialty paint for plane interiors. Does anyone have any experience with this product or are there any other paints available for our interiors? Thanks.


 

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jetdriven Grand Master

jetdriven

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SEM also makes a paint called aerospace color coat. Consider that as well.  http://semaerospace.com/cms/COLOR+COAT/80.html

 

  Talk with whoever you are considering to repair your plastic. There are a lot of improper repairs out there, if they start talking about epoxy, cyanoacrylate, "plastic glue", or fiberglass resin, hang up.  ABS plastic must be solvent welded with ABS glue. Fiberrglass tape can help reinforce it, but there is only one way to properly repair ABS plastic.

 

 

The replacement panels sold by Plane Plastic wil require quite a bit of labor from trimming and fitting. They often come just as out of the mold and take hours to work.

EDIT: since this post I have found 7781 fiberglass cloth and aircraft structural epoxy to be the thing to fix royalite ABS interior panels. I have used MGS and Aeropoxy with 781 or 7781 aircraft fiberglass cloth ideal for panel repair and refinforcement.

 

Edited by jetdriven
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jbreda Enthusiast

jbreda

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The problem with repairing cracked roaylite panels is that they are 40 years old, and that is why they are cracked and brittle. 


I think a much better repair is to make fiberglass copies of the panels, but you will have to use a Class I flame retardant resin.  This can be done by vacuum forming and your friendly EAA Experimental builder can probably help.  The parts can also be made by hand lay-up but this is alot more work.


John Breda

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jetdriven Grand Master

jetdriven

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There are two reasons the plastic cracks, one is UV damage and eventual disintegration.  Cessna's get this a lot. This really can't be repaired if it's significant.  More common on our plane is stress cracks from screws and in the corners and edges of panels from not fitting exact.  After 5000 hours, vibration tears the plastic.  This is an easy fix.

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jetdriven Grand Master

jetdriven

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Scott:


I went to West Marine and matched to what they had. I believe most of the small philips screws are #2 x 3/8" or 1/2" sheet metal screws.  you can go to a local hardware store, get the correct size, and order them in stainless.  I had some panels out for repair and doing the seatbelts, and replaced a few screws.


EDIT: posted same time as Jim. He may be right, they might be #4.

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PTK Grand Master

PTK

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Excellent work and even better results Jim. I did mine a year or so ago and I utilized the SEM Colorcoat product in the sailcloth white color. Check my gallery. This is relatively easy work which pays huge dividends every time I open the door of my Mooney! I'm sure you feel the same way. Don't know why people actually pay thousands of $$'s for something so easy. You agree?


Wanted to ask you where do you get that clip that holds the shoulder harness in place on the side wall. Any info is appreciated. I have shoulder harnesses on all seats and need these clips to hold them neatly in place when not being used. Thanks!

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PTK Grand Master

PTK

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Quote: JimR

Thanks, PK. I did visit your gallery and yours looks great too.  I do like a lot of the professional interior jobs that I've seen lately, particularly Aero Comfort's work. If my interior was absolutely trashed I'd probably suck it up and let them work their magic. But as it is a little elbow grease seemed to be the appropriate course of action. My seats, carpet, and sidewall carpeting were all in very good condition. Only my royalite needed a little bit of freshening up  Oh, and did you notice that my interior is RED? :)  I'm kind of a minimalist at heart, too, so keeping the interior more or less stock appeals to me. 

 

The shoulder harness clips were on the plane when I bought it.  No idea where they came from, but I have flown Cessna R182s that had the same hardware. They do come in handy. 

 

Jim

 

 

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PTK Grand Master

PTK

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Quote: rocketman

I like the products on semaerospace.com as noted above. But who would I send the panels to for painting. There are only two small craks on my royalite that need repair. Alternatively, does anyone have any experience with covering the royalite in leather?

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jetdriven Grand Master

jetdriven

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Thats some slick advertising but that is a cyanoacrylate product and WILL FAIL.  ABS plastic must be solvent welded, IE, melted with a solvent and bonded back together.  I cannot stress this enough. There is only one way to fix it. Solvent glue.   I used some 5$ Oatey ABS black pipe glue from Lowes, and the plastic will break in a different place if stressed after the repair..  MEK is also a solvent you can actually dissolve some ABS in it and make a putty. The pipe glue is thick and perfect for the application.

I actually had a piece of fiberglass and resin holding part of my glareshield together. Some ABS glue and some fiberglass tape the glareshield is not only normal looking, but stronger than new.

Quote: fantom

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