Re: Phunkie Project Portafold
Posted: Sat, 24 Mar 2012, 9:02 pm
Right, didn’t take too long to work out what was happening and put a plan into action, but first, on taking off the fittings and drilling out the pop rivets, the left rear supporting steel for the roof lifting handle exploded. It had rotted out on the upper edge, and is no good anymore.
So the old one was cut out.
And a new one fabricated from aluminium.
Then, after cleaning the old mounting surface, this was installed using Sikaflex to bond it to the roof.
Then a couple of layers of laminate to clean up the inside.
There was a small repair to do at the front edge where he roof pivots on the little aluminium sliders.
Just set up a straight support outside, ground away part of the edge and laminated the repair from the inside. The outside will be addressed when we do the repairs on the outside.
Now, on to the “sagging” right side of the roof. The problem seems to have been caused by a weakness on the inside edge of the right hand “fin” allowing the roof to “flatten” out.
With the roof turned upside down on the base, this allows the roof to take its proper shape, weight was added to the “sag” area, expanded aluminium was cut to shape as a support to aid laminating.
Both inner portions of the “fins” were laminated over and the front portion as well. This gives us a Portafold roof on the outside and an Ansfold roof on the inside, but it has worked to give a non saggy roof.
To help to make this modification stronger but still light, holes were drilled into the fins from inside and the void filled with expanding foam.
Now to make a smoother/good looking roof surface, in side, it was sanded off and a complete one piece sheet of fibreglass cloth was bonded to it. This hasn’t added too much weight to the roof, as cloth is quite light compared to chopped strand mat.
As today has been very warm, the glass has been “going off” pretty quickly , so by the time I’m back on it again it’ll be fully hard and will only require a light sanding before painting it with the white top coat.
So the old one was cut out.
And a new one fabricated from aluminium.
Then, after cleaning the old mounting surface, this was installed using Sikaflex to bond it to the roof.
Then a couple of layers of laminate to clean up the inside.
There was a small repair to do at the front edge where he roof pivots on the little aluminium sliders.
Just set up a straight support outside, ground away part of the edge and laminated the repair from the inside. The outside will be addressed when we do the repairs on the outside.
Now, on to the “sagging” right side of the roof. The problem seems to have been caused by a weakness on the inside edge of the right hand “fin” allowing the roof to “flatten” out.
With the roof turned upside down on the base, this allows the roof to take its proper shape, weight was added to the “sag” area, expanded aluminium was cut to shape as a support to aid laminating.
Both inner portions of the “fins” were laminated over and the front portion as well. This gives us a Portafold roof on the outside and an Ansfold roof on the inside, but it has worked to give a non saggy roof.
To help to make this modification stronger but still light, holes were drilled into the fins from inside and the void filled with expanding foam.
Now to make a smoother/good looking roof surface, in side, it was sanded off and a complete one piece sheet of fibreglass cloth was bonded to it. This hasn’t added too much weight to the roof, as cloth is quite light compared to chopped strand mat.
As today has been very warm, the glass has been “going off” pretty quickly , so by the time I’m back on it again it’ll be fully hard and will only require a light sanding before painting it with the white top coat.