Repairing beat up hobie fins.

[Jaspratt]

After a short memorial weekend drifting the sesquehanna river my hobie fins were pretty tore up from all the rocks, so I decided to repair them and come up with a way to increase its durability, since the front of the fins take all the beating and because there's seams where the two plastics meet, they are likely to rip and tear at those spots.
I have .02 clear lexan and with the help of a heat gun to mold a C channel type shape to slide over the front of the fins and slightly past the seams. I attached the Lexan using shoe goo. Attached are some pics of the before and after, and they are mounted back on the drive.image.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpg


Lexan is tougher than any abs or poly type plastic, it's use for bullet proof windows, ripping and tearing is out of the question. So it should hold up alot longer than the flimsy rubber. Oh and I forgot to mention the fins still flex the way they should.

[Jaspratt]

I have no idea why some of the pictures posted upside down.

[JKay]

I'll be interested to hear how this holds up. I've been using a soldering iron to repair tears and holes from mast poke through in my turbo fins. I'm still on my original set of turbos back from 2008! I cannot tell you how many times I've repaired those things (15+ times)?

[Jaspratt]

I hear alot of ppl use shoe goo to repair the fins, I feel this lexan will hold up well, it actually stiffened up the front of the fins more and I think it's a good stiff because they still flex to push water. As far as abuse goes, the show goo should adhere to the plastic and fins fine. I scuffed everything up with 60grit

[tufnik]

Interesting repair job. I too would like to know how it holds up. Will it delaminate?

I asked the same question last year about my turbos. Many of the guys said to use a bicycle tube repair kit. Just smear the glue on roughened fin surface, then attach the bike tube patch (also has glue). Seems to work fine, but periodic repair of the patch work is needed. I'm thinking your Lexan idea might be much more durable.

Also, my fins "loosen up" over time. That is, the rubber stiffness gradually is lost. Lexan may help overall stiffness.

[Jaspratt]

Yeah I noticed the fins do loosen up over time and if you smack a fin hard enough to bend the steel they also flex. The shoe goo is alot like silicone but Alittle tougher, and with the lexan only being .02 thick everything should flex fine with out the shoe goo separating as long as you don't bend a fin in half but we will see. I plan to test it this week and run into stuff with the fins to see how they handle. Maybe run bottom a bunch of times against a shoreline.

[Jaspratt]

As an update to this experimental repair i have been testing out, the lexan gaurds have held up well. I dont notice any extra drag, the edges of the lexan guard has broke loose, but overall they have held on solid. So far i have had miles of abuse on these fins and zero damage is shown. For hard sharp rocks on the potomac i finally tested the fins out this past saturday. We set in just below mad dog rapids off rt340 around 8:30-9:00am and pulled out at landers boat ramp around 8:30. I Never removed the fins from my hull and i went down every ledge paddled against the current when ever i needed to. I hit, bumped, scraped, and even crashed to a complete hualt doing 6mph going down a small ledge and was caught on a rock by my fins. Checked the condition at the end of the trip, only 1 small part of the lexan cover is chipped. They are scratched up and still holding on strong. The only un avoidable damaged caused was to my fin masts and they were slightly bent. They can easily be bent back to the original position. The real test will be our camping trip on labor day weekend on the susky, day1 will be 10mile drift and day2 will be An 8.5mile drift. I will post pics of the fins maybe tomorrow or thursday.

[hookmeup]

Catch anything? J/K.

Nice work!

[Jaspratt]

image.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpg
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[Jaspratt]

Catch anything? J/K.

Nice work!

Yeah we caught all kinds of smallmouth and channel cats, i would have posted a fish report but i have no pictures.

[AbuMasgouf]

Very cool Jason. I forgot about this repair from last year. Thanks for the update!

Is it easy to get .02 thickness lexan?

[Jaspratt]

Very cool Jason. I forgot about this repair from last year. Thanks for the update!

Is it easy to get .02 thickness lexan?

I forget where i ordered the lexan from but it was pretty cheap for a 4'x4' sheet.