Fiberglass pizza box (motorcycle tourpak)

Anything goes in the world of fiberglass and plastic



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PostPosted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 8:20 pm
I recently received an NOS 60's vintage aftermarket (I believe) fiberglass tourpak purchased off ebay and have what might be an issue. Contacting the seller brings no reply, so thought you guys might be of assistance.

Since the box and lid walls are so thin I plan to add 1 or 2 layers of biaxial mat to reinforce them but, the interior is really sticky/tacky. I messaged the seller the day it arrived (three days ago) to see if he might have used some type of solvent to "wipe down" the interior and caused this, but as I said, no joy.

I'm not comfortable doing additional layup inside this without knowing whether it will cause problems with the new resin curing. Is there something I could use/do to eliminate the problem if one exists?

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:39 pm
I know this is out there but people do some crazy stuff....There could have been a peel and stick style vinyl as a liner in there or even plain old shelf paper like you use in kitchen cabinet. In that case what you are feeling is adhesive residue. Try some degreaser like Prep Sol on it before these other methods.....
Acetone and straight Xylene and probably a host of other fairly "hot" solvents will do exactly this to open laid fiberglass. Fiberglass resin reacts very much like old solvent coatings used to so you might try some of those same old tricks to get it stable....Take a rough textured old shop towel and wrap some ice cubes in it and let it set for maybe a half hour. The ice water should have now saturated the rag. Take that rag and press it down moving around the inside of the box. This "chilling" effect will set some resins (not all). If you are getting nowhere with that then switch tactics.... Next try a heat gun on low (or hair dryer on high) and again move it around the inside up and down for 10 to 15 minutes or so. Bottom line....yes, I would not want that resin to be "sticky" in any way before doing a further lay up process.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 5:16 pm
Thanks Darrel.
This is one of the seller's pics of it. It had been a long day, and I forgot to add my thoughts on this in the OP.
Image

I had the faint suspicion the original resin wasn't properly mixed due to the color difference. Since there is no odor difference between the lid and box, I didn't lend much weight to this though.

At any rate. I tried the ice and heat tips and it was still sticky/tacky. On a hunch, I tried wiping down a small (quarter sized) area with IPA and the next morning it was still sticky, but wouldn't pull fibers off a q-tip. On a stronger hunch, and I hope I didn't bleen this thing up, I wiped the same area with denatured alcohol and it totally removed it so I went ahead and wiped down the entire area. So far it's still tack free two days later.

Given its size and style, I'd have hated relegating this to collecting dust.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:04 pm
If it did indeed respond to the alcohol I suspect some type of water based adhesive was in play there.....really hard telling just what that was from but I suspect some type of covering was attached. On the color difference it looks like the top is an original fiberglass resin but the bottom has additionally had something like West System epoxy put over it with additional matt. When we mix and lay up West that is exactly the "natural" color you get with it when rolled out.....
Bottom line, sticky gone.....good to go.....
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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