Loose tape seam?

[akarmy]

Ok, all you great polyfiber experts... What's the easiest practical repair for a fabric tape that's coming loose. It's located on the bottom of the fuselage under the seat location. It's just coming off on the forward facing side that's against the wind. Plane is covered with Polyfiber / polytone.

I'm thinking about trying some MEK from the inside (I can see where it's delaminating easily) while pressing a cloth from the outside???

Yikes.

[Dave S]

Andy,

You are in luck - since you have polytone paint - repairs of this type are pretty easy. You do not have to soak the MEK through from the backside - just start on the topside like you are un-doing the painting/covering process - using MEK - wipe off the polytone, poly spray, polybrush sequentially till you get down to the tape. It is important to keep feather/blend areas in mind so you can overlap when re-doing the paint. If you need a new tape - remove the old one with MEK - otherwise a person may be able to re-use the original tape. The trick is to get down through the layers so you can start with a clean build up like you are doing it from new. On the repair, you need to get a good contact/seal between the fabric and the tape using liberal amounts of polybrush.

I would really recommend the Polytone covering book for guidance - it has a very complete and practical repair section - I believe John McBean has them available on his website if you don't have one otherwise available.

Sincerely,

Dave S
St Paul, MN

[avidflyer]

If it's just a bit of the tape comming loose, and especially under the plane and out of sight, I would try to just glue it back with a bit of poly tack or else poly brush. No body will see it when you are flying over if it isn't exactly perfect. I fixed a few tapes with poly tack on my first Avid in just a few minutes. Of course it also depends on how perfect you want it to look. take care, Jim Chuk

[akarmy]

I dropped a line to the polyfiber tech line and that was also their advice! So I got a pint of polytac yesterday and will have to get on it and get it done! For now I just taped over the seam with a spot of removable tape. Now I don't want no guff from you guys at the factory flyin this weekend! Thanks for the advice!

[SkyPirate]

Daggone it,..wishing I was going to the factory fly in now just so I could say " Oh my garsh@#~! is that tape on the belly of Andy's plane@#??? I could see it from the interstate 10 miles back before I got to the field~!!" ha ha ha sorry buddy ,..gotta razz ya~!! duckin and takin cover now