Breaking Eggs- Yakima Skybox Repair

They say that in life you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. I'm totally comfortable with this concept. However, my general rule is not to break any eggs that are too painful to fix/replace. Unfortunately, sometimes this rule gets broken. My wife, being a super-smart engineer, has some nice toys. One of the ones we get the most use out of is her Yakima Skybox. It's one of those hard cased travel carriers that you see on top of cars cruising down the highway. As my blog title indicates we have quite a few pets, including four dogs. So when we travel anywhere this carrier is necessary for our luggage.

We had just come back from a long road trip. Me being the good husband, I thought I would take out our luggage from the Skybox and get it down off the car. It's a bit awkward so I unlatched the box and went in to find my wife to aid in the process. As often happens, I got side tracked and forgot about the whole finding my wife and taking down  the box. Of course, during this time a strong storm came up out of nowhere. In honor of the upcoming London Olympics, our Yakima Skybox dismounted from my wife's SUV and performed a back flip with a twist. Needless to say, the Skybox did not stick the landing.

Growing up, when I did something wrong the response from my mom was always, first and middle name. Now that I am married a loud BRIAN!?!?! is sufficient to get me to jump. Unfortunately, Yakima took the brunt of it's abuse to it's back corner. A chunk was knocked out and there was a serious crack running down the edge.

At first I threw out the whole "A little duct tape will fix that thing right up". Of course that was met with a pretty disapproving look. So to fix this problem I had to do a bit of research. Yakima as well as Thule, and probably other carrier boxes, are made of ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) plastic. Unbeknownst to me, the holding tanks of RVs are also made of ABS. There is a company called Plasti-Mend which makes repair kits for just such an accident.

http://www.plasti-mend.com/


I bought their medium sized kit from Amazon but you can also purchase their kits from their website. Since I did this project just before I started this blog I don't have personal pictures of the process, but here is their official video which I followed.

A few extra tips:
1) The instructions recommend using a respirator with the product. Do it. This stuff puts out a pretty nasty smell. When I was looking for a respirator to purchase I was pretty disappointed that the ones I found on Amazon and at Lowes were close to $40, the cost of the repair kit. However, when I went to Harbor Freight I found they had a good deal on one. They had a maintenance-free, dual cartridge respirator for $15 on sale. With the 20% off coupon, that can be found everywhere, the respirator was only $12. A great deal, and it worked perfectly fine for this application. 

2) Work quickly. Don't think you can use this stuff like paint. Like the guy shows in the video, slop it on and move quickly. When I put the first coat on I tried to go back and smooth out an area that I had already applied the coating. It had already formed a top layer, so by trying to move it, all I did was take a smooth section and make it rough. So make one section smooth, then move on to the next and gently feather in the edges.


Ultimately, I did two coats the first day and two the second day. I waited about two hours between coats. For the large hole, I used the included mesh and cut a piece about an inch wider than the hole. This product worked great. When the patch was completely dry it was hard as rock. I sprayed the area with a bit of OEM black trim paint to blend it in. Here is the repaired Yakima (pre finish paint):

Here is the wife giving it the hurricane test:

Dry as a bone:

Overall:
Product

Great. This $40 kit saved me from having to buy a new $400 carrier.

Ease of Project

Took very little time and effort. Good weekend side project.