I'm recarpting my 392v Ranger The rod locker lids are warped Is there some way to get them back to strait? I have them under heavy wight and siting in the sun . Do you think that will help ? Or is there some other way?
Modified by bassstalker at 2:42 PM 10/29/2011
they might straighten out a little for a while if you flatten them out but i think the only way to straighten them out and stay would be to add some bracing on the back. Or just redo them completly.
If they are glass and warped there is not much you can do to straighten them.
You can try using a heat gun to get them up to temp to soften the resin some.
If glass they are polyester resin so up to 290F would be ok for a few minutes.
You'll need some heavy weights and a flat surface to lay them on to try and get them straight.
Use a Teapot or small pan of boiling water to get the glass up to temp faster, then use the heat gun to get the temp up to the 250 to 290 range, this will make the resins soften a bit and want to deform.
That's where you need to work quick and get the flat weights on them ...otherwise they can get worse.......not an easy task to try and straighten cured glasswork.
You don't want to pour a lot of water on them as resins are hygroscopic and can absorb water under the right circumstances.
If you don't want to risk this, you can try reglassing the bottom of the lids with resin/mat and laying the weights down onto the rolled out mat
( place a layer of wax paper on it first so the weights don't stick to the wet glass )
The heat from the curing resin combined with the shrinking of the mat/resin while curing might be enough to get them fairly straight.
This will help if the warping is being caused by the glass starting to fracture and crack.
Some rangers in the late 90's early 00's had problems with thin compartment lids and cracking.
Thanks for your help. But this sounds like to much work for an OLD MAN. Thanks again
Were there rod straps on top of the rod locker box? Seems in the late 80's early 90's alot of people added them including myself. Anyways if your unable to straighten them out your only options are to locating them on craigslist or bbc or make them or have a fiberglass shop make them for you. If your mechanically inclined you can build them yourself starting from the inside of the lid and building out from there. It would require using a releaseagent appiled between the underside of the rod locker door and once you lay the first layer you can removed it from the locker door and then apply/buiild upon the layers from there. Make sure to build it back the the original thickness. The original design of the door had wood encapsulated inside of it.
Hope this helps.
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