Refurbish Repair Refinish Side Bags Help

[gmcjetpilot]

Some parts of my bags are faded. I hear Pig Snot is good.

 

Damage. So there are minor scratches until last week. I managed not to lock one side bag down, at slow speed 15MPH it tumbled. Most of the gouges are corners of main half. Thinking:

 

Sand smooth, fill, paint (pig snot?)

OR

Use heat gun to move melt 

 

The cover with mat finish has some boot scuffs. Paint would do. 

 

They are black unpainted now. May be this is the opportunity to paint match bike?

 

 

[Hosstage]

Pictures?

[gmcjetpilot]

On 10/6/2023 at 8:29 PM, Hosstage said:

Pictures?

 

I am asking for advice on plastic filler and paint.

 

Sorry no pictures at this time. Just scuffs a faded black, except where it came off, flopped/rolled around on street. The deep gouges are on top corners are  rough and deep. It's plastic. The rest of the bags are fine except some black fade on back side (next  to tire so mounted not visible). 

 

My plan to fix the two corners is treat it like body work, sand, fill as required, paint (locally) if needed. Some black filler may not need paint.. I am asking for products and ideas. I can do local repair on the edge and it should blend, good enough. Not looking for perfection.

 

The outside cover of side bag is not smooth but has a texture. They are fine except minor scuffs I can live with. I don't want to screw with that. The edge of bag is not texturized and has the damage (just one of the two bags).

 

As far as painting the whole thing likely not. It is more work. The back half of bag is not visible when mounted. The top corners on top is the most offensive.  

 

As far as getting plastic hot to flow the plastic by torch or soldering iron,  I rejected that thought. The rubber seal inside is near. Don't want to damage those. 

 

What suggestion do you have? Any products have you used? Pig Snot? Plastic Filler?

 

BTW I see brand new side bags, for sale $350... no badge. I see used ones and they are in poor shape. Mine overall are good.  No need to buy new ones, just data point. My bags are 100% functional and look fine. The  repair will look fine if I take my time and use the right products (filler, pain). 

[Michaelr11]

Krylon Fusion All-In-One Satin Black Spray Paint and Primer In One (NET WT. 12-oz)
Item #1026720

Model #K02732007

[Tsūkin-sha]

I have used Flood Penetrol for rejuvenating plastic on autos.  Recently, it took three [thin] coats on my sons Jeep door molding.  I thought it was gray for years until I tested a corner and found it was originally black.  

[gmcjetpilot]

I tried Everything and they all worked...  so my bag fell off doing 15  - 20 mph and rolled like a wheel. Worst damage top 4 corners on inner half of side bag. The outer edge corners worse and inner corners less (see pucs). So 2 big gouged corners, nasty. There was damage on bottom but not tok bad and also not visable. The major and  minor damaged cleaned up nicely. Some damage was virtually removed. The big booboo's still has scar's but greatly improved. I have only started. This is first pass at it.

 

Heat Gun- it works. I heated pladtic and with thin metal strip (tried several, putty knife, scraper,  but hacksaw blade broke off, square, smooth worked best being narrow).  I could have gone more melt repair but 90% there.  Over doing it was a fear. The rough gouges were proud and melted them back flush. The metal blade helped smooth it. I could do some filter, more sanding, more melt, but over doing it might make it worse.

 

Sanding - Using different coarseness I did a little of that after heat gun on inner half of side bag. It helped with out removing too much material. 

 Outer sude bag half is a harder shiny plastic with texture vs the inner half. The outer is not suffering oxidation. However had light skuffs from normal wear tear, not scratches per say. However the tumble did scratch it on the style ridge. I used light sand paper. I went after scuffs and scratches in the middle of outer cover. I WAS concerned about removing the textured rough finish. If I made a spot smooth it would look bad. I was able to reduce scuffs and scratches without removing the texture. But they were slightly visable until next step. 

 

Acetone - wiping the outer cover with solvent made scuffs and sanded spots go away. I went easy. This is all experimenting. My goal was reduce the road and use rash or ugly, 50%. I think I hot 80% to 90%. I tried wiping solvent on inner half of side bag to remove oxidation. Nope but I will play with more rejuvenation ideas. I do NOT want to paint them. However Ibdis try paint. Read next.

 

Paint - outer half of side bag responded well to my reconditioning efforts above, so no paint needed. It is still dark black looking great at 19 yrs old.

Inner half regardless of road rash tumble damage, it has oxidation and is grey. Damaged corners repaired per above, heat gun, little sanding... wipe with acetone. ALL helped. Sanding left it looking even more grey. I tried some polish compound for metsl. Could be promising with right product. I wiped down with acetone to remove buffing compound. I then tried a can of gloss black rattle can I had. Did a spot paint. Being gloss ( all I had on hand) it showed imperfections and contrast to oxidized surrounding area. I used scotchbrite pad to tske sheen off. Much better. Again just playing with different methods. The paint wipes off easy with solvent. Scotch Brite pad did blend the spot paint in a bit. The trick is get mat or fiat finish paint in a grey black. The other option paint the entirety of side bag inner half.

 

Conclusion - Nothing is permanent. I can do more hot gun, sanding, paint. As far as filter the inner half responded well to heat. If I had some plastic filler I could build it up. I did try to just heat it get it to look smoother and darker.  I'm not brave enough to get it hot enough to work if it can. You can sed plastic get shiny as it starts to melt. However it cools back more or less to a flat slight grey black color. 

 

Pictures. No effort to make it look better or worse. I dud not do before pucs but trust me it was ugly. I am not done yet. I'm not trying to make them look mint original.

 

[Dave P]

Your bags look pretty good to me. My 1100RT bags were really rashed, especially the front corner

 

I just filled, primed and painted. I think I used a satin black on the 1100 bags. I also did a refurbish on a trunk (fit an 1100 / 1150 trunk I bought cheap and mounted to my 1200RT) I used black Plastidip on the lid cause I wanted the severe texture. You might consider Plastidip- easy to use and you can peel it off if you don't like it.