Progress continues on the KZ400 project. Today’s work was focused around using my new plastic welder to fill in holes on the side panel.

The plastic welder came with a number of welding sticks, to use with a variety of plastics. After quite a bit of melting, and trying the PVC, ABS and PP welding sticks, the results looked less than ideal. None of the plastics seemed to flow well, but they eventually did bind with the stock plastic (type unknown).

The back side of the panel, having used the green ABS welding sticks

I later discovered that the plastic I have for model building (a poly styrene blend) seemed to weld a lot easier than any of the supplied welding sticks. I’ll be trying them again in the future.

Once the plastic welding was complete, I used a sharp exacto blade to trim off most of the plastic above the surface of original panel. That was followed by wet sanding with 400 grit sandpaper until the welding ‘slag’ was level with the surrounding plastic.

The last step was several rounds of glazing putty application, followed by more wet sanding with the 400 grit. I later found that switching to the 220 grit dry paper did not produce significant scratches and, obviously, let me complete the rough sanding quicker.

Finally, another ‘current state’ photo of the bike. It’s slow going but that’s OK, it’s all part of the plan.