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[ST] Crack Addiction and Top Boxing (longish)



...and no I'm not talking about Klitschko.

Based on all the good advice from the lists (and the fact that I couldn't
find a used top box and Triumph wants a bazillion dollars for them), I
decided to fix the cracked box.

If you have a ST and a top box (and if you have a ST, you _should_, they
rock), you ought to check it every so often...the bottom half of mine was
pretty much cracked in three, with only a little strip on the top of the
front and back holding it together.

I'd lost some of the screws holding the baseplate in place, and my guess is
that allowed enough vibration to crack things apart.

So I finally got to the local plastics store when they were open, and, as
usual with specialty places like that, they were _immensely_ helpful.
(South Bay Plastics, on Normandie)

He looked at the broken piece, and said that he doubted that just ABS
cementing it would hold (the cement is as strong as the plastic, but the
discontinuity creates stress risers, which breed more cracks, and so on ad
infinitum). So he sold me some very thin fiberglass cloth, and the smallest
resin and hardener he had (which was like a  liter and a half of resin and
three quarters of a liter of hardener). He specifically selected a
'structural' resin. He also got me some black pigment to mix into the
resin, a bunch of popsicle sticks, a squeegee, and a few measuring cups. I
already have a lifetime supply of nitrile gloves.

So I went home and set up a table out on the driveway. I cleaned everything
with S100 and then dried it with the compressor, then cleaned it with
alcohol.

Broke one of the popsicle sticks into slivers and used them as glue
applicators. Hardest part of the whole process was holding the cracks open
enough to get glue close to the ends.

Glued it all together...total time, 3 people, 15 minutes. A little
squeegeeing of glue out onto visible parts of the case; nothing I could do
about it.

Had dinner, watched a movie, went to bed, and then... never mind.

Got up, and then...

Checked the top box, it was pretty solid. I'd asked about drilling the ends
of the cracks, and he'd advised against it; said if I was fiberglassing the
inside it wouldn't make any difference, and the holes would just make
things messier.

Never fiberglassed anything before...damn, it's easy. Spent most of the
time cutting pieces of fabric and trimming them to fit. Mixed up the resin
and hardener (2:1), added pigment, strirred, and spread it out on the
inside of the top box. Laid the cloth down, used the squeegee and popsicle
sticks to get the bubbles out and lay it out flat. Grace has a natural
touch; she could be making Corvettes in her spare time. Luc was pretty
good, too.

Got it all in, set it in the sun, total elapsed time, including reading
instructions on bottles, 30 minutes.

Made one mistake, and didn't mask the holes on the outside to keep the
resin from oozing. A couple of minor drips.

Let it dry for a day, drilled out all the holes, got some longer screws to
hold the baseplate on, and assembled it in another 15 minutes.

So an hour in actually doing the work, an hour hanging around the plastics
store getting advice, three weeks of sitting and looking at it and worrying
about what I was going to do with it. Sheesh.

Put it on, mounted the pannier racks, now we're ready to go to Laguna
Seca!!


Marc D





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