Sika Activator

Hey everyone,

If all goes well, I may bond my canopy today. Clear one primer, adhesive, and prep. Would like to confirm....do I apply activator (205) to aluminum...and plexi, or just aluminum?

Thanks!

Both

Need to clean and prime on both surfaces you want to bond.

Thanks, Charlie! That's what I thought, but wanted to make sure and not apply something bad to the plexi.

Don't do what I did yesterday and wait too long (45 min) to pull up your tape lines! What a mess! Not happy with my results- I'm gonna re-tape and shoot a cosmetic bead today.

When you apply the tape to mask off the primer try to utilize few pieces as possible. I bought a commercial quality 3M pinstripe masking tape and every place that I overlapped two pieces of tape the primer bled under about 1/8 - 3/16". This is going to take some time to clean off.

When I was reading up on this step, many (as did I) used black electrical tape for masking the primer/and adhesive. From there you can use regular masking tape.

The electrical tape is easy to contour but avoid stretching it, if possible.

Success

Thanks for the responses everyone. After a bunch of prep and masking, my fiance (she was awesome help) and I were able to successfully bond the canopy with Sika. It looks pretty good! I went ahead and did the side skirts at the same time, plus pulled the tapes right after we got a smooth bead. As was mentioned in previous posts, electrical tape was best for the final mask. I chose yellow for visibility. We let it setup for about 17 hours, then removed the assembly from the plane to get the rear arch dressed.

Also, thanks to Bruce Swayze and Bruce Hill for their excellent write ups on this topic, with lots of pics!

So happy to have this done! There are a few paint details to fix on the frame, then on to the fiberglass fairing.

I'll try to post pics later.

Any left overs?

Sean,

Do you have left over primer and activator for another canopy? Would you like to sell it?

Jay

Sorry, Jay. It's already taken by a friend/builder.