Friday, April 18, 2014

The Hits Just Keep on Coming

Got deep into the saddlebags yesterday. A refinish of them was required due to cracking in the paint on the curb side bag lid...

I figured just sand off the cracked paint...

clean off the dust... primer if I went through into the gel coat...

... and then I'd just rattle can on a fresh new coat of black... and a new clear coat...

Good Plan...

Yeah... there I go planning again...



I hadn't but started sanding to remove the cracked paint...

... when I discovered that the cracks didn't originate in a failed paint coat...

... but in the underlying fiberglass...


I worked for a little while... searching out all the spots where the paint was cracked... I'd noticed the first little crack maybe a year ago.

Over time they multiplied... and sure enough...

Underlying each spot of cracked paint... the gel coat was spidered with a thin crack.

cracked fiberglass motorcycle saddlebags

There was also no shortage of bad spots... at least it's only... as far as I can tell, the one single saddlebag lid.



So... work on the saddlebags is temporarily suspended... while I wait on some word from the manufacturer of the bags.

I'm not expecting any good news to be honest. My recent experience with companies and warranties has not been confidence building... but we'll see. I did at least get an automatic email response from the outfit.

It advised me they were "On Holiday" until the 22nd... so... I'll go do something else for a bit... maybe study up on Motorcycle Saddlebag Fiberglass repair.

At least my son-in-law who did the paint job can wipe his forehead and breathe easy... it wasn't His screwup. ;)

Grab Your Handles and Ride
Brian

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I scratched the lid on one of my hard bags, I bought a set of leather lid covers from Mustang Leather. Getting that lid re-painted is on my 'someday' list.

Trobairitz said...

A bit of a double edged sword. Good that it wasn't a paint screw up, but bad that is the fiberglass.

We'll cross our fingers warranty will help, but in this day and age probably not. I'm cynical that way.