Repair to interior lining

Hi
The beige plastic interior liner has split near the 13A socket above the draining board on our X reg Symbol. Any thoughts on how to remove and repair or replace?


Thanks
PS I would attach a photo if I knew how

Thanks

These are typically vacuum-formed panels, and it's not easy to know what to do with them, as they tend to become very brittle as they age.

I had some success on a similar panel on the tailgate of our Trooper (where a previous owner had shut the tailgate onto the open gas locker door and split the panel) by making a shaped aluminium panel and bonding it to the back of the trim panel with epoxy adhesive. It's even possible to put small amounts of paint in the epoxy to colour-match, to make it less visible where the epoxy fills the cracks.

But... that was on a bigger area. If the cracks are in thinner areas at the edges I would be inclined to leave it alone and just live with it, because the panels become so weak that you're likely to find it will just crack elsewhere if you repair it.

Thanks for the reply Roopert. I would just like to leave it but I was planning on getting an electric kettle to plug into the 13A socket nearby. I suspect that over the years quite a lot of plugging and un-plugging has gone on and that this has contributed to the cracking.

When I lay the campervan up for the winter I will try removing the panel. There are a few obvious things to remove first but the panel extends to the end of the window and down to the hob and sink unit. The window blinds will have to come off. I just hope that the hob and sink unit can remain as they are.

Epoxy glue and a shaped aluminium panel sounds like a good bet and maybe some rigid foam support between the back of the panel and the metal skin of the van.

Not quite the same thing but similar....there is such a thing as plastic welding which might do the trick. Usually associated with car part repairs it's just a matter of finding someone with the equipment that does it. Alternatively you could effect a repair using glass fibre matting pasted on the rear

Bulletguy wrote:Alternatively you could effect a repair using glass fibre matting pasted on the rear

Agreed - all other things being equal I think this might be the best solution, provided you rough up the surface before laying down the matting. I decided against on the tailgate because there wasn't much space behind and I wanted to control the thickness, but if the rounded returns at the edges are fairly deep, the thickness should not be so much of an issue. I should add that I drilled lots and lots of holes in the aluminium to aid adhesion (the epoxy was smoothed over on the back where it oozed through the holes) but fibreglass mat would be significantly less labour-intensive.

I support the fibreglass/epoxy method. No refined skills required and small repair kits available from motor factors or marine chandlers.  A common technique is to drill pairs of fine holes either side of the split to pull it together with wire or even cotton thread. 
Keith

Drill a. Small pilot hole at each end of the crack to stop it getting any bigger

Thanks for all the advice.  I have some glass mat in the shed as well as some epoxy which I used to reinforce the inside corners of our fibreglass back box where there had been some cracking. I can drill a couple of small holes at either end with the panel in situ.

The most challenging part for me is likely to  actually removing the panel from the van.