Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Door Panel Separation Saga

I've been having trouble with my doors splitting apart along the outer edges.

To assemble them, as previously posted, you epoxy the two halves together with Cab-O-Sil/Epoxy mixture and then clamp everything down and hope for the best. After I cut the perimeter off the door I discovered gaps or voids in the edges of my doors. They didn't seem bad except when I applied a very small amount of force on them with a flat head they just popped right open, spreading the split further down the door. The edges that didn't have any voids have held up well and I plan on leaving them alone. But to remedy this problem I purchased some large syringes from the local farm store and stuck some plastic tubing on the end. This allowed me to squeeze an Epoxy/Flox mixture (notice I'm now using Flox now) into the door gaps until it came spilling back out. I kept going down the entire gap. I then clamped down the edges and cleaned off the excess that squeezed out. I could only do a small section at a time as I ran out of small clamps. So through the week I think I have my doors put back together again. This whole fiasco has made me a little nervous over the doors rapidly de-laminating at a really bad time. I'm going to ponder over a way to test them and I plan on inspecting my new adhesion job very closely. So far they this has worked really well.

Dates and Times
27 Mon -1.25 hrs- re-glued doors
28 Tues -0.5 hrs- re-glued doors
29 Wed -1.5 hrs- re-glued doors

Total Time on Door So Far
27.25 hrs


Notice the split in the door edge. I drilled out the center of the syringe leaving only the outer rim (this would make sense if you had a syringe to look at). I then used hot water to soften the tubing before sliding it over the syringe. I ziptied the tubing on just for good measure. I filled the syringe full of the flox mixture using a craft stick and replaced the plunger. I then flared open the split with a flat head and forced the tubing inside. When in place I squeezed the syringe injecting the flox mixture into the door. It didn't go far, after hitting my insulation that is in-bedded in the door it came flowing back out. Slide the syringe down a little and repeat.


I tried to clamp along the surface as much as possible to get a smooth surface.

4 comments:

  1. We had this same problem with our doors. I think that clecoing them to the canopy and not clamping them was part of the issue. There probably was not enough pressure using only the clecoes to keep the halves pressed together. Installing clamps in between the clecoes would have probably helped. Wish I'd seen this before we did our own doors...

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    1. I also think Vans should recommend we mix up a thicker consistency of resin/cabosil and put it on heavier. 1/32 to 1/16 isn't very thick. I'd rather have to wipe of excess then not have enough to keep the pieces mated.

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  2. Hi Laura. Were you able to salvage your doors? I had same issue. Not sure I can

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  3. Most of the time I don’t make comments on websites, but I'd like to say that this article really forced me to do so. Really nice post! install a door operator

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