Volvo newer front fender mirrors

[alan0043]

1 hour ago, MsChrissi said:

Alan, if you are going to be anywhere near Lakeland FL in the next two weeks, come to the Sun N Fun airshow and Randi who teaches composites techniques in the workshops will give you the complete rundown in detail. She loves to help people with their projects.  It's good stuff, we built an entire 4 passenger airplane out of this stuff.

Otherwise if you cannot make it to FL or to WI in  late July, you would want to go with epoxy resin (avoid polyester resin), bi-directional cloth and the techniques outlined above. The resin and hardener are available from marine dealers like West Marine who sell "West System" epoxy resin and hardener in quart cans with calibrated pump tops that make dispensing and measuring easy. The materials and techniques learned would be useful for repairing any of the composite components used on Volvos.

I suppose if we ever made it to a rally we could do a demo mirror install and teach this.

 

MsChrissi,

I won't be in FL or WI this year but I will be in TN in April for the ECR . I would love to see a demo. I know about the West System. I used the West System on my house on the widow's porch floor. This porch is on the second story. Does this composite help spread out the load better to help support the mirror's ?

Al

[VegasFlyer]

22 hours ago, MsChrissi said:

Alan, we don't have the mirrors here yet but we were hoping that they would come with a steel backing plate. From the pictures it appears you get a rubber gasket but not a plate. I believe the factory uses plates.

To spread the load out we'd prefer fiberglass. The glass we use is typically 0.010" per layer. So to get a 1/8" backing plate it would take 12 layers. The smallest layer would be 1" larger than the base all the way around, each additional layer would be about 1/2" larger. This would all get laid out on HD tin foil largest layer first, wet out as you go and pick up the whole wad and apply it foil included to the area then massaged from the center out to push out the bubbles. Peel off the foil and cover with an oversized layer of thin Dacron. When it cures pull off the Dacron (won't stick) and it will be clean and smooth inside the hood without edges or discontinuities. This technique gives a distributed load without hard points that would cause cracking.

What??  No vacuum bagging??

J/k

Great info you shared, right there!

[MsChrissi]

5 hours ago, Alie&Jim's Carrilite said:

Ms. Chrissi-

 Are you able to attend the National rally?  I don't want to actually teach or instruct, but I can help demo, prep, and show how.  

 

No, unfortunately we cannot afford the expense of doing so at this time. maybe when the RV is further along and we have something to show.

[MsChrissi]

Randi teaches vacuum bagging at the fly-in down in Lakeland if you are interested =)

The proper techniques for doing this sort of layup would be a bit time consuming and involved to explain on this forum. When we have the mirrors in hand I can probably take a lot of pictures and do a step by step thing and put it on our web page if that would help.

Too many composite projects look like a bad dune buggy repair or somebody's wood boat that got glassed and added several hundred pounds of additional weight to. Those are not the techniques we use. Consider that this is the material of choice for high performance powered aircraft and gliders it has to be both strong and light weight if done properly. Modern techniques do not use things like metal rollers or stippling, you do not need vacuum bagging or expensive tools and equipment. It is all in the materials, techniques and tricks of the trade.

[alan0043]

16 hours ago, MsChrissi said:

Randi teaches vacuum bagging at the fly-in down in Lakeland if you are interested =)

The proper techniques for doing this sort of layup would be a bit time consuming and involved to explain on this forum. When we have the mirrors in hand I can probably take a lot of pictures and do a step by step thing and put it on our web page if that would help.

Too many composite projects look like a bad dune buggy repair or somebody's wood boat that got glassed and added several hundred pounds of additional weight to. Those are not the techniques we use. Consider that this is the material of choice for high performance powered aircraft and gliders it has to be both strong and light weight if done properly. Modern techniques do not use things like metal rollers or stippling, you do not need vacuum bagging or expensive tools and equipment. It is all in the materials, techniques and tricks of the trade.

MsChrissi,

It will be great to see a step by step in pictures. If you don't mind, maybe your project could be put into the hdt resource guide. That way at a later date you will still be helping fellow hdt'ers with their projects.

Can't wait to see your project and to learn something. Best of luck,      Al

[VegasFlyer]

20 hours ago, MsChrissi said:

Randi teaches vacuum bagging at the fly-in down in Lakeland if you are interested =)

The proper techniques for doing this sort of layup would be a bit time consuming and involved to explain on this forum. When we have the mirrors in hand I can probably take a lot of pictures and do a step by step thing and put it on our web page if that would help.

Too many composite projects look like a bad dune buggy repair or somebody's wood boat that got glassed and added several hundred pounds of additional weight to. Those are not the techniques we use. Consider that this is the material of choice for high performance powered aircraft and gliders it has to be both strong and light weight if done properly. Modern techniques do not use things like metal rollers or stippling, you do not need vacuum bagging or expensive tools and equipment. It is all in the materials, techniques and tricks of the trade.

I don't have a lot of composite experience, though I did a little composite work in constructing  fillets on a BD-5J that I built, Canopy work on a Rotorway Scorpion that I rebuilt from a crash and built a Glassair from plans.

We are getting ready to undertake an interesting project on our 2008 780, when we finish the bed build.  One of the studs that attach to the gas strut, on the passenger side, inside of the hood, has partially detached.  We are needing to get the base of the stud back into place and reinforce it to preclude it from becoming detached again.  What is going to be. Interesting about this job, will be getting the stud back into position without effecting the finished painted surface of the hood.

John

[MsChrissi]

So let me get this straight, the tab for the stud is on the inside of the hood and has cracked and is ready to break off?

I'm guessing you are trying to avoid doing something like through bolting a replacement tab made out of angle aluminum?

If I were to do this I would first clean the inside of the hood with solvent about 18" all around. Then I'd take a sharpie and mark a giant X that represents the centerline of the hole for the stud and perpendicular to that the plane where the stud is bolted up to. Now you have a target to get back to.

Grind the existing tab off and grind smoothly into the glass all around I am going to guess about 8" out. Clean with vacuum and solvent. Use a straight edge to reconnect your  lines to a big X again. Make a second line parallel to the plane line about 1/8" away.

Get a piece of 2x2 x 1/16" aluminum angle about 4" long, cover it all over with packing tape except one outside flat. Mix up a -little- bondo or a -little- 5 min epoxy and temporarily bond the angle  bare side down so that the apex of the angle lays parallel to the offset plane line and centered on where the lines cross. This aluminum will be your temporary mold or crutch while you lay up one side of the new tab.

Cover your workbench top with butcher paper or wide cling wrap and tape it down.

roll out some 18" wide HD foil dull side up.

You are going to need bi-directional cloth http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cmpages/rutan.php

You cut this at a 45 degree angle so the threads in a strip are both at 45 degrees opposite each other, it gets a bit weird to handle but this makes all the difference in the world.

You need strips about 4" wide by a length that will go the 2" up the aluminum mold (yes go oversize what you actually need!) and the first two layers 2" onto the hood. Each successive two layers go an inch further out on the glass of the hood until you have 10-12 layers on that side = 1/8" thick.

Just before you begin the layup you want to fill in and put about an 1/8" radius of "wet flox"  http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cmpages/flockedcotton.php?clickkey=10409

You mix these fibers up with a small amount of epoxy into a thick paste and use it to build a fillet on the inside corner, because this is fibrous it is a structural fillet. You mix it up, you only need a small amount then wait 5 minutes then using your popsicle stick you whip it up and it will saturate better and spread better. You need this because the glass cloth does not like sharp corners and without it you would have bubbles and voids in the corners.

The way you do this is cut the two layers, lay it on the foil, I usually mark it out on the foil with a sharpie, mix warmed epoxy (flows and saturates better) and spread on cloth with a 3: rubber squeegee http://www.aircraftspruce.com/search/search.php?s=RUBBER+SQUEEGEE&x=0&y=0 (cut to size) don't overwork it, it takes a minute to begin to soak in, then spread it working from center out. Cut around the wad including the foil and apply. Smooth it into place with foil intact working from the center out. Remove foil. Do the same for each successive layer pair until you have the 10-12 layers done for that side. Do all of this in one go without letting it set up. When the last layer is on and the foil removed, cut a piece of Dacron peel ply about 2" oversized all around and smooth into place, it will soak up resin, keep smoothing it into place, work out bubbles from center out, do not apply too much pressure where the flox is or you will push it all out. Let this cure until it is fairly hard (feel the saturated edge of the peel ply) when the saturated part of the peel ply is fairly hard, test pull on the flat part against the hood to remove the peel ply, it should be difficult but not gummy..hard to describe. You can wait overnight but then it gets harder to remove but must come off. This will leave the glass structure very smoothly blended into the surrounding glass under the hood.

Once you are to this point you knock the aluminum angle loose ... whack with a hammer an chisel. Sand away the bondo or 5 minute epoxy, make sure none of the packing tape stayed on the glass, sand everything and repeat exactly the same on this side using the previous layup as the mold as if it were the aluminum.

When all set overnight, re mark your lines, measure up to where the ball stud goes and drill a hole, use it as a guide to mark out a new tab, I'd angle the sides down to give as much support as possible, then grind and dremel it to shape. Use fairly wide area washers with the ball stud.

This is just an overview of the process. Same layup techniques for the mirror base reinforcements

The resin we use is expensive structural stuff for building high performance gliders, it has a hefty hazmat fee as well http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cmpages/mgsresin.php?clickkey=4717 Locally try West System structural epoxy resin. You can get it in quart cans with pump tops for measuring.

 

 

[Scrap]

Real quick Alan, open your hood and crawl inside and look for dimples at the mirror mounting locations.  A 2012 ought to be new enough to have all the reinforcements in place and just a simple set of dimples to drill out when the mirror option is ordered.  That's how other trucks are so you might get lucky.  Might even have a set of harness ends for a heated set!

[MsChrissi]

A heads up to wannabe mirror upgraders, we ordered the $150 set of all black mirrors on Amazon with free shipping, they arrived in 3 days FedEx!

The quality is very high. What I thought were rubber gaskets in the picture are metal backing plates. We may throw them on before our next tip to see if they vibrate with just the backing plates. Anyhow, nice upgrade for $150 !

Randi has been crazy for these mirrors, we both prefer the VNL770 body over the newer ones and certainly when we see the new ones going down the highway with their fairings flapping in the breeze. But we love the new mirrors.

[VegasFlyer]

I think you will find that they do not vibrate much at all.  Our truck came with them installed already and they have been quite solid.  And this is with both of the hood latches worn and out of adjustment to the point that the  hood was bouncing as we drove down the road, bringing the truck home, for the first time.  It did not show up on a test drive, but came on like gangbusters when we got on the freeway and hit an area of crack seal on the roadway.

The mirrors are far superior to the metal framed mirrors.

[MsChrissi]

Already mounted, about 2 hrs total. They have to be mounted about 1" lower than the instructions from Volvo (one of the links at the top of page) to fit the older hood, puts the mirror on the right just where the top of the hood is in line with bottom of the mirror in the driver's view.

The hardest part of the job is removing the fasteners on the insulation on the inside of the hood to get to the backside of the fasteners and also remove the old mirrors. We fortunately have some tape the same color as the truck to temporarily hide the ugly old mirror holes.

[SuiteSuccess]

1 hour ago, MsChrissi said:

Already mounted, about 2 hrs total. They have to be mounted about 1" lower than the instructions from Volvo (one of the links at the top of page) to fit the older hood, puts the mirror on the right just where the top of the hood is in line with bottom of the mirror in the driver's view.

The hardest part of the job is removing the fasteners on the insulation on the inside of the hood to get to the backside of the fasteners and also remove the old mirrors. We fortunately have some tape the same color as the truck to temporarily hide the ugly old mirror holes.

Pictures worth a thousand words. ?

[alan0043]

17 hours ago, Scrap said:

Real quick Alan, open your hood and crawl inside and look for dimples at the mirror mounting locations.  A 2012 ought to be new enough to have all the reinforcements in place and just a simple set of dimples to drill out when the mirror option is ordered.  That's how other trucks are so you might get lucky.  Might even have a set of harness ends for a heated set!

Hi Scrap,

Thank you for the tip. I will take a look and see what I can find. I think those dimples might be under some insulation that is attached to the hood.

Al

[Jeff.Sloan]

On 3/19/2017 at 9:36 AM, Scrap said:

Guy around us did it a few years ago.  Looks good!

What a funny coincidence.  I JUST saw this tuck 3 minutes ago, driving east past the KOA in Kent, WA.  Small world!

[MsChrissi]

The instructions say to take out the grill and work through the opening, Since ours is older and who knows what condition the fasteners were in we opted to open the hood and leave the grill in place. Easy for Randi to squeeze in between the grill and the radiator, maybe not so for others.

[oletimer]

On ‎3‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 7:30 PM, MsChrissi said:

The hardest part of the job is removing the fasteners on the insulation on the inside of the hood to get to the backside of the fasteners and also remove the old mirrors. We fortunately have some tape the same color as the truck to temporarily hide the ugly old mirror holes.

I had a tool I used to use years ago to install valve keepers on small engines that "kinda'" worked to remove those fasteners, but I thought I would purchase the correct tool.  I still break most of the insulation fasteners even with the tool.  Is there a secret?  I don't mind getting new fasteners, but hate to drop the studs into the air intake molding.   

[Nuke-E]

On 3/23/2017 at 5:22 PM, VegasFlyer said:

I think you will find that they do not vibrate much at all.  Our truck came with them installed already and they have been quite solid.  And this is with both of the hood latches worn and out of adjustment to the point that the  hood was bouncing as we drove down the road, bringing the truck home, for the first time.  It did not show up on a test drive, but came on like gangbusters when we got on the freeway and hit an area of crack seal on the roadway.

The mirrors are far superior to the metal framed mirrors.

Without any reinforcing, I can tell you they're quite solid, and right at forehead height for me with the hood open.  They don't give!

[BlueLghtning]

Thanks for sharing this. I only have the one passenger side hood mirror on my Gen 1. I always hated I didn't have a driver side mirror to go with it. I thought about getting the matching driver, but I do like the look of the new sleeker mirrors a lot better. I'll definitely be looking into this for my Volvo 610. 

[Sculptor]

Now I gotta know, why avoid polyester?  And what base is the hood, epoxy?

[alan0043]

On ‎3‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 8:30 PM, MsChrissi said:

Already mounted, about 2 hrs total. They have to be mounted about 1" lower than the instructions from Volvo (one of the links at the top of page) to fit the older hood, puts the mirror on the right just where the top of the hood is in line with bottom of the mirror in the driver's view.

The hardest part of the job is removing the fasteners on the insulation on the inside of the hood to get to the backside of the fasteners and also remove the old mirrors. We fortunately have some tape the same color as the truck to temporarily hide the ugly old mirror holes.

Hi MsChrissi,

Can you give us and update on your new mirrors. Would you buy them from the same supplier ? Is the quality still good ? Do you have any pictures of the new mirrors on the truck ? Curious minds need to know. You will be helping some of us out who are thinking about installing the new style mirrors like me.

Al

[Alie&Jim's Carrilite]

3 hours ago, Sculptor said:

Now I gotta know, why avoid polyester?  And what base is the hood, epoxy?

First answer-

Epoxy will give you better adhesion and strength properties.

Second- 

The hoods are a polyester blend, probably a vinylester/epoxy hybrid.  New replacement hoods are all polyester cheeeaaaap hoods that stress and crack easily.  

[MsChrissi]

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 10:23 AM, Alie&Jim's Carrilite said:

First answer-

Epoxy will give you better adhesion and strength properties.

Second- 

The hoods are a polyester blend, probably a vinylester/epoxy hybrid.  New replacement hoods are all polyester cheeeaaaap hoods that stress and crack easily.  

Polyester is cheap and nasty stuff, it is not compatible with other resins. Epoxy is compatible with everything.

[MsChrissi]

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 8:21 AM, alan0043 said:

Hi MsChrissi,

Can you give us and update on your new mirrors. Would you buy them from the same supplier ? Is the quality still good ? Do you have any pictures of the new mirrors on the truck ? Curious minds need to know. You will be helping some of us out who are thinking about installing the new style mirrors like me.

Al

Yes, we love the look of the new mirrors. The position on the older hoods puts them right at the lower limit of your vision, they are right at the very lower edge of the windshield, any higher and you would have to have some sort of filler between the base and the hood because the curvature of the hood would cause a gap along the top of the base.

They do not budge, no vibration at all without any inside reinforcement.

Yes, absolutely would buy the same ones again.

[alan0043]

6 minutes ago, MsChrissi said:

Yes, we love the look of the new mirrors. The position on the older hoods puts them right at the lower limit of your vision, they are right at the very lower edge of the windshield, any higher and you would have to have some sort of filler between the base and the hood because the curvature of the hood would cause a gap along the top of the base.

They do not budge, no vibration at all without any inside reinforcement.

Yes, absolutely would buy the same ones again.

Thanks MsChrissi for the update. The mirrors are my next upgrade for the truck. Do you still have the link to the mirrors that you used ?

Thank you again for sharing with us,
Al

[oletimer]

It seems I always make things too "tuff.  I purchased the $155(now) set from the link, and downloaded the instructions from Volvo.  Purchased Christmas tree buttons, because all my old one broke when removed.  Marked the pilot holes as per instructions, but not comfortable with # D @ 7.2"(182mm).  Before I go pokin' holes in the hood, I was wondering if anyone had a problem with that, or did you just line things up and go for it?  I do know we are not trying to put men on the moon here, but would like to do it right. My truck is a 2006 VNL630.  Thanks for any comments.   Dick T