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Heineken's Garage

Plastic Repair

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Introduction
Broken-of plastics, especially mounting tabs on things like door cards (interior door cover), speaker mounting points and the defroster panel at the front window are to be expected considering the age of the NSX, especially after being overtightened. There are multiple ways to fix issues like these.

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Speaker Mounting Point
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Door Cover Mounting Tab
Repair
One of the best approaches so far has been the Japanese product プラリペア - Puraripea (Japanese from "Plastic Repair"). It's a quick curing PMMA (Polymethylmethacrylat - a powder) and MMA (Methyl methacrylate - a liquid) combination sold together with a moulding rubber.

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click to open

It's compatible with the following types of plastic: ABS, AS, PMMA, PS, PVC, PC, ASA and AES.
Above video provides further information on how to utilize it (including plastic thread repair, and many others). It's additionally possible to reinforce repaired areas with fibre mats or metal inlays. Using it to repair a door card mounting tab works the following way:

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locate an undamaged Section
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create a mould
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move it to the damaged section
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fill with powder and liquid
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wait to cure and file-off excess material
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a nice match
Alternatives
The material stays slightly flexible and no failed repairs have been reported so far. Unfortunately it's not available in Europe as of 2021. The chemicals though are easy to obtain as it's the same approach used for nail art and dental work. Looking for "Nail Art Acrylic" online provides a huge amount of sellers for "Liquid" and "Powder". All colours seem to be available, including night glow and even glitter.

Test with these acrylic nail sets have been successful so far. Only the curing time seems to be longer, sometimes taking a few days to fully cure. The result is of the same strength, though. A replacement for the moulding rubber, modelling clay or bee's wax could be used.

Holes drilled into the head lamp covers where closed using nail art chemicals and the results (after a few days of curing) were as good as the much more expensive and difficult to get Puraripea. If both options are availbale, Puraripea should be preferred as it's much quicker to work with and comes with the moulding rubber.

Updated 02-01-2021 at 10:03 AM by Heineken

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Comments

  1. Silver Surfer's Avatar
    Absolutely fantastic find...very useful!

    SS
  2. Heineken's Avatar
    Kaz mentioned it in one of his blog entries. It was easy to get in Japan but not that easy in Europe.
    Since my parents in law are biochemists they pointed me in the right direction regarding the chemicals and after watching several hours of nail art videos I was quite sure it's the same thing
    Updated 03-01-2021 at 08:52 AM by Heineken (typo)