ATV Plastic Repair

Occasionally I have to repair the plastic body work on ATVs and snowmobiles.  In this case I had a cracked fender and a broken headlight mount.

Here is one of the broken headlight tabs.  Most of this plastic body work is impossible to glue.  It can be welded but that requires special equipment that most people don't have.

I have found that the best way to fix these problems is by stitching the parts back together with wire.  I drill a series of small holes and lace the parts up with stainless steel "safety" wire.  McMaster Carr has a large selection of stainless wire, I think that the wire I used here is .025".

Here is the repaired fender around the head light.  Notice that the wire is passed through each hole twice, this will hold the parts together more secure than a single wrap.

Body Rivet Tool

New ATV's have a lot of plastic body work.  To do any work on these newer machines you need to remove a lot of body panels. Most of the panels are held together with push in plastic rivets. In the past I would have to use the tip of a small screw driver to pry them up and then grab the edge with a pair of needle nose pliers.  This was time consuming and often chewed up the head of the rivet.

I ground special notches into the tips of these pliers to grab the edges of the rivets.  With this tool I can grab the thin edge of the rivet and pull it out all in one motion.  It is much quicker, easier and does not mar the head of the rivet.