yeti Happy Hetty, the Fen Yeti

[DrPinball]

Hi All, as promised a quick update. It really is a case of 'so far so good' with a couple of caveats, late last year I left Hetty in the less than capable hands of Purple Parking at Heathrow while I worked abroad off a few days. On my return the rear passenger door was stoved in, a massive shallow dent about .75m square, effectively from the window to the trim. I will not bore you with their explanation but they eventually coughed up for a new door. Well here's the odd bit I asked my local body shop if I could rip the trim from the old door, I wanted to see how well it was attached (at least the thump had not dislodged it). I tore it off with a bit of heaving and there is no doubt that once started it could be peeled. Fascinated by my idiot effort the lads in the body shop wanted to chat about the removal and we ended up using the old door as a test piece.

The result was that polyolefin primer is definitely the way to go, although Tiger Seal forms a good bond on plastic, if you prep the job with polyolefin as a primer (rough plastic with emery, spray on, leave for 20 minutes) and then Use Tiger Seal it forms a ridiculously strong bond. There is no doubt now in my mind that this is the way to go for anyone considering doing this retro fit and there is an old dented door covered in odd bits of plastic to prove it too.

One final point, as we had a door with a perfect trim shaped lump of glue stuck on it from where the trim had been fixed and the piece of trim in question we did one more experiment to see if it was possible yo reattach trim without cleaning off the old glue, this may save anyone who has trim coming off a lot of cleaning up. We treated the trim with polyolefin primer, let it dry and then liberally brushed the old glue on the door with Locktite 406 superglue and stuck it back on, it's not cheap but by heck does it make for a simple job. As we had the door lying on the floor it made the job easier as all we did was spread the very thin and runny 406 over the existing glue and offer the trim up to the job. Even though the trim was bent by our earlier clumsy removal two of us easily held it on and happily slid it into place, thirty seconds later it was going nowhere. In fact after a day it was impossible to pull off, so if you do have trims and lose one it's an easy fix to remember, especially as the trim pieces are available to order separately.

Happily the rest of the trims are stubbornly still in place despite the wet weather and 10k of driving around Norfolk :-)

[manxskoda]

Will just add that the primer as used by Pinball is available from Wayside Adhesives ( Masterbond). It is a spray primer and is £9.95 per can.Thanks to Pinball for this useful update.

Tony

[manxskoda]

Sorry to pinch Pinball,s thread but with some intrepidation and a forecast of glorious weather this week, I set about adding my Wheel-arch kit. Have read and read this thread so touch wood I was well prepared, all the Masterbond adhesives and primer, clamps and shear will power, so at 9am I started. Complete clean of the Yeti and dried off, left in sun for half hour and then alcohol wiped the paint work round the wheel arches. Did the rear arches on both sides first and then the fronts ( they are a challenge) but at 3pm I have put all of them on.I did not use double sided tape as I found that the supposed 3m tape bought off E/Bay was a complete waste of time. The one thing I did do was after priming I put the Masterbond adhesive on and spread it with an un-used paint brush all over the trim and then put a line of adhesive on the top edge and bottom edge ( never putting too much adhesive on ). Then as I stuck each one on it was clamped and  later added 3m masking tape (as  per brochure), the Seley suction clamps were spot on, as you have no other way to clamp the front wing pieces.

In summing up we will see, hopefully the sunny weather is here till the weekend and then on Thursday I will take the clamps off and cross fingers on my trip to work on Friday morning, driving very much at a reduced speed.

Hope this little account helps anybody else contemplating adding Wheel-arch covers.

Many thanks to Dr Pinball and Jeep for their input.

Tony

[jeep]

I can happily report that my trims have stayed put for over a year now, and are still very firmly attached. I used Masterseal Speedbond from Wayside Adhesives. This is a MS polymer adhesive and does not really need a polyolefin primer like a Polyurethane adhesive, like Tiger Seal requires when bonding the Skoda polypropylene trim kit. I went for a belt and braces approach after my first failure at fitting the kit, as I already had purchased clear polyolefin primer from Wayside, so I used it also with Masterseal Speedbond, but my tests showed no noticeable difference with or without as long as degreasing and roughening had been carefully done.