Glueing wood to doors

Hello everyone,

I am trying to glue a wooden rack to the habitation door of my 06 Nuevo in time for Monday's rally. Several glues I have tried don't work at all. I think the freezing weather might have something to do with it.

It seems the painted aluminium door, which is what I think it is, does not like PVA.

Any ideas, please?

Peter

Agreed - PVA will not work well when one substrate is aluminium.

You should find that any epoxy based adhesive (such as Araldite) will work well, but you will have to add heat. If you an get a heater in there it will make a huge difference to the setting speed with ambient temperatures what they are at the moment.

If the door is thin enough to flex, you will probably find that Araldite Rapid (or whatever it's called now) will work best, as it seems to be more flexible when fully cured.

I've found that double sided 'trim' tape from an auto accessory store works well for most similar tasks in the habitation area.

Peter

Hi there,

From "a rack" can I assume that it's load-bearing?

If so then you will need rigorous control of everyone to make sure that it isn't overloaded; otherwise it will tear off no matter what type of adhesive you use!

I always tend to over-engineer everything and in a case like this I think I would be looking at some form of "through bolting" as well as glueing.

This may simply be a couple of stainless-steel pan-head screws that go through the door and screw into the top of the rack. (It being the place where it would do most good.)

That way it would provide extra strength and keep the rack in place whilst the Araldite adhesive cures.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Thanks for the replies.I will try the araldite first.

Regarding double sided sticky tape. It reminds me of when I worked in an extremely large telephone exchange, and it was decided to renew the clocks in every room with expensive satellite controlled jobs. The electricians did this job very quickly with DS tape. The night rota men used to to say that when things were very quiet after midnight you could hear the crash tinkle of falling clocks from all over the building for weeks. Naturally, nobody did anything about it and after the last one fell another lot was ordered. I'm sure the tape product has since improved.

When i built my last van i used hodgson polyseal 40 to bond all the wooden batterns to the steel shell and fiberglass roof and they never moved when set. I think its a bit like stika flex but cheaper also mounted solar panels with it and they never moved ally to fiberglass.Linky

mikejack wrote:When i built my last van i used hodgson polyseal 40 to bond all the wooden batterns to the steel shell and fiberglass roof and they never moved when set. I think its a bit like stika flex but cheaper also mounted solar panels with it and they never moved ally to fiberglass.Linky

Spot on any poly sealer make will bond wood to alloy and almost any other material I have used. Just needs held in place unit cured and job done.

mikejack wrote:When i built my last van i used hodgson polyseal 40 to bond all the wooden batterns to the steel shell and fiberglass roof and they never moved when set. I think its a bit like stika flex but cheaper also mounted solar panels with it and they never moved ally to fiberglass.Linky

Spot on any poly sealer make will bond wood to alloy and almost any other material I have used. Just needs held in place unit cured and job done.

Any modern PU ( polyurethane ) adhesives are good, but the REAL secret is to apply them to a totally clean surface, as a microscopic film (polish, silicone )will compromise the bond, a good rub will meths for instance, don't forget the face of the part you're fixing as well.

Thanks again everybody.

I stuck my shoe rack on with Araldite last night, and this morning it seems to be stuck fast. If it falls off at Whitemead i will let you all know.

Regards

Peter