Remedy for a cracked Hood!

[Powderfreak56]

I cracked my hood the other year and it just made me sick. The sled slid into a tree on a steep angle at a very slow speed on a very cold day. A year earlier I was up in Revy during the Big Iron Shootout and noticed a sled that had been cracked. The guys hood looked like Frankenstiens worst nightmare! He had drilled quarter inch holes on each side of the crack and tied it together with zip ties! Yikes! It looked like a giant scar across his hood. There would have to be a better way to disguise a crack better than that! What happens... I crack my hood the next year! The crack was a huge "S" going down the left side of my hood. The top part of the hood was too hard to keep together, but the rest of the hood has not moved or gotten bigger in the last two years of extremly hard riding.

Colored 14 gauge stranded wire works best. Solid wire is too hard to work with. The stranded wire is softer and won't put any strain on the hood. Drill a hole just big enough for the wire to go through on each side of the crack. Cut a piece long enough to push through and twist the ends together. Using a needle nose pliers to create a 90 degree bend in the wire will help the wire lay flat across the crack. Unless you have your face two feet away and know exactly where to look, it's a pretty clean fix.

 

[stum1967]

Something else that works good on thermoset plastic hoods {most black plastics} is cleaning the back side of the crack with brake clean or alcohol, then laying strips of metal window screen about 3/4" wide over the crack. Using a soldering gun with a flat tip, heat the screen until it sinks down into the plastic over the length of the crack. It makes a good repair to hold the crack together and you can't see much on the top side if the crack is closed up good before you start melting the plastic. You can put tpo repair material over the back side for even more strength.