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Repairing speednut mounts on front panels by 3D printing??

E

emseedee

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Apr 7, 2019
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Hi, all,

I guess we've all come across instances where the plastic tabs on the inside of the front panels - the ones that hold the speednuts - break off. and of course they're so thin that glue doesn't fix them. On a previous C650GT I 3D printed a small plastic wedge to repair the tab on a lower panel. On my new 2016 model the tab at the front on the.upper panel is completely missing. Has anyone ever printed a replacement? If so, would you be prepared to share the design file so I don't have to start from scratch? For clarification, it's the one next to the headlight on the right hand side of the bike.
 
Do not ride at hiway speeds until you get that remedied. A gust of wind can come up from the front wheel well and blow the panel right off of the bike. Yes this happened to me on my second 2013 GT.
 
mjnorris said:
Do not ride at hiway speeds until you get that remedied. A gust of wind can come up from the front wheel well and blow the panel right off of the bike. Yes this happened to me on my second 2013 GT.
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Actually the gust of wind just pushed the front of the panel out so that the wind at 65mph tore the panel off.
 
mjnorris said:
Actually the gust of wind just pushed the front of the panel out so that the wind at 65mph tore the panel off.
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I appreciate your concern, but in a way it came too late as I didn't realise the lug was missing until I'd already done a few hundred motorway miles. So far no problems, but I'll have a look at how I could rig a temporary fix before I take it out again.

Mike
 
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emseedee said:
I appreciate your concern, but in a way it came too late as I didn't realise the lug was missing until I'd already done a few hundred motorway miles. So far no problems, but I'll have a look at how I could rig a temporary fix before I take it out again.

Mike
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Temporarily some clear Gorilla Tape could keep the front corner from being pushed out.
 
I have the same issue.

I was watching some Reels on Instagram, and came across a video of someone making a similar fix to a car panel using baking soda, super glue and some clay for a mold. I'll see if I can find it.
 
I don’t remember which time I had a broken lug but I tried a two part epoxy first and when that didn’t work I tried an auto bonding epoxy kit that came with a ‘filler’ powder to add body to the repair. Even scuffing up the mating parts did not let the adhesives to stick to whatever plastic that the panels are made out of.
 
mjnorris said:
I don’t remember which time I had a broken lug but I tried a two part epoxy first and when that didn’t work I tried an auto bonding epoxy kit that came with a ‘filler’ powder to add body to the repair. Even scuffing up the mating parts did not let the adhesives to stick to whatever plastic that the panels are made out of.
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I think that the problem with a glue repair is that the cross sectional area of the broken plastic is quite small so there’s not much for the glue to stick to. I got around this on my previous bike by creating a plastic wedge that could be glued to both the broken bit and the panel, and it presented a decent area to both. It worked for the year that I owned the bike. However, that is all irrelevant to my current problem - the lug that supported the speed nut no longer exists so my options are either to buy a new panel or try and make (and attach) a new lug. It should be possible because I have the one on the other side to use as a pattern, but it would have been much easier if I could just used someone else’s design.
 
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