Scratched side skirting

This past Tuesday evening, I put my first significant scratches into my Leaf: I was pulling into my favorite parking space at the Wardlow Blue Line trolley stop (LACMTA), and scraped the plastic side skirting against a protruding bit of curb, just behind the port side front wheel.


scratched skirt by James Lampert, on Flickr

This brings up two questions:

1. What is the best way to fix moderately deep scratches in plastic skirting? I should think that Bondo would be too stiff (and I try to avoid working with polyester thermoset anyway; that stuff is nasty: have you seen the MSDS?)

2. This isn't the first time I've scraped something; I've pulled into a parking space and scraped the concrete wheel-stop. How much work would it be to raise a 2018 Leaf an inch or two?

The epoxy resin used with fiberglass mat will work fine, but it too is nasty stuff. Sand and wipe clean the area, brush the resin on as smoothly as possible, sand it after it dries, and repeat one or more times as needed. Using a sandable primer, and using ultra-fine paper to smooth that, will give you an extra layer to get it smooth.

Epoxy is something I use with some regularity, actually. I've even used casting-grade epoxy, in silicone rubber molds, to make model parts and exhibit parts for the Printing Museum.

I can imagine using epoxy with fiberglass when maximum flexibility is desired, but the stuff normally used for fiberglassing is polyester thermoset, rather than epoxy. The usual spotting feature is that epoxy-based materials typically use two fairly viscous liquids in a roughly 1:1, 2:1, 3:2, or similar ratio, while polyester uses a very small amount of hardener (as little as a few drops) in a much larger amount of resin.

The red hardener used with polyester thermoset is concentrated benzoyl peroxide. The same stuff used in some of the more drastic acne treatments, only in a concentration you don't want anywhere near any body parts you value. The clear or white hardener is MEK peroxide, which I refuse to handle without a shop coat (or even better, a disposable bunny-suit), a shop apron, gloves, goggles, respirator, AND a face shield. One drop in your eye, and you have less than a minute to get to an eyewash station and start flushing, while somebody else calls 911, or the effects could best be described as viral rotting of that eye. Personally, I believe that hardware, auto parts, and art supply dealers should keep that <expletive deleted> under lock and key. As should anybody who keeps it on hand.

The nastiest epoxy formulations are comparatively benign.

Maybe try the method used for composite aircraft construction. Epoxy resin can be mixed with with glass "bubbles" to achive a putty consistency.

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cmpages/bubbles.php?clickkey=3040248

I remember when I took plastics shop at CSU Long Beach. One of the projects (one of two involving polyester thermoset) was a fiberglass bowl. Mine ended up with some voids, and the professor pointed me to a bag of phenolic microballoons, and directed me to mix them up with some polyester resin, to produce a putty. It worked, although I needed to put a coat of paint on the bowl, in order to make it presentable.

I kind of have my doubts that any fillers would be needed beyond the natural viscosity of ordinary 5min. epoxy.

I can imagine using epoxy with fiberglass when maximum flexibility is desired, but the stuff normally used for fiberglassing is polyester thermoset, rather than epoxy.

Click to expand...

I'm picturing this as a flexible plastic panel. If I am correct, then what I wrote was correct. You don't want to patch flexible plastic with rigid plastic, as they will flex apart. Likewise you need to use rubberizer in any paint used on a flexible part like a bumper cover.

The skirting isn't flexible in the sense of being rubbery, or in the sense of being like a bumper cover. It felt like perfectly ordinary ABS.

I started, back in the middle of August, by sanding down the bits that had been raised, and then troweling in some 5-minute epoxy (Gorilla brand).

Then, once that was fully cured, I sanded it smooth, and applied some of the touch-up paint I'd bought to camouflage the wire I'd routed through the door jamb, for my "flap ajar" indicator. Since I hardly needed clear-coat to camouflage a wire and some Gorilla tape in a door-jamb, I hadn't bought any (the touch-up paint was expensive enough, at a fraction of what the dealer had wanted). So I went looking for clear-coat, and found that O'Reilly and the other "usual suspects" only had it in spray cans.

So I shot the clear-coat, and quickly found that I'd botched the first attempt: it started peeling almost instantly, especially where I'd tried to feather it out. I hadn't taken into account that the car had been Cila-Jetted prior to purchase.

The failed clear-coat came off very easily, a little over a week ago, and I wet-sanded the immediate area, this time biting the proverbial bullet and masking for hard edges on both the sanding and the clear-coat, and going deep enough to get into the factory clear-coat. Then I shot it again, this time not touching it until it had cured for over a week.

This morning, I had time to try and polish out the "lines of demarcation" at the edges of the new clear-coat, and then after hemming and hawing over "ceramic" waxes, I bought some stuff in a spray bottle from Turtle Wax, that was on sale for $2 off the regular price.

Here is the result. You can tell it's been patched, but it looks good enough for skirting.


patched skirt by James Lampert, on Flickr