How would you fix this?
 

The hood brace on my 125 broke. I know the right way to fix it would be to weld it, but I don’t want to burn the paint off the outside of the hood. Any other ideas what I can do? I thought about an epoxy like JB Weld, but I don’t think it would hold up too long.

I own a spot welder. Some of the better rental places will rent them. If you can rent one it would leave the smallest amount of damage.

Make a new one from a thicker gage mat'l
I have done it on several Cubs
Use a spot weld cutter to remove what's left of the old one from the inside.

Flex seal the sucker on, yeeeeee haaaaaa.

The JB Weld fix will work,, ya just gotta do it right,,

Bend a piece of thick siding or other sheetmetal to an "L" shape,, some piece of metal close to the thickness of the hood.
If you can not find that, a thin piece of angle steel, with legs that are at least one inch can be substituted.

you must have at least 4 square inches of area that will contact EACH part.

Bend it until you have a good fit,, apply the JB Weld to the at least 8 square inches of contact area.

I would apply it to all 4 surfaces, prior to assembly, to insure no spot remains "dry"

After curing, that lap joint fix will be easily as strong as the previous tack welds.

Large lap joints do very well at resisting vibration,,

I have fixed many things that normally are considered "weld only" using the large surface area trick.

We have one, but that would be the last resort.
Great idea, I’m going to try it.

Keep us informed what works I have a 122 with the same problem curious to see the results:bigthink:
Best of luck on the repair.

Will do. :beerchug:

I think that piece has completely fallen off my 122. :-)

Its missing on my Dad's 100. Been thinking about bending a new one and epoxying it in place. We had to run some cosmetic grooves in some large stainless sheet metal strips at work. These were glued/epoxied in place in the entry of a hospital, some were even overhead. There are some rather high tech "glues" on the market these days. Maybe somewhere like McMaster carries such.

On second look at the picture, it appears someone has already "fixed" it at some point.

I was thinking the same thing, the welds don’t look factory. Both sides are like that.

I glued it tonight. I’ll take the clamps off and paint it tomorrow.

I hope it works out for you but I have my doubts.

Seems like a decent repair. Not sure of longevity of it.
I was under the assumption that you wanted a repair that could be done avoiding paint work. After this repair, you said your going to paint it. My question is, if you planned on painting anyway, why not just use a welding method to permanently repair? Someone mentioned thicker gauge steel. Paired with that and welding it in then painting i think would have been a truly permanent solution.

Your time, money, tractor of course. Just curious.

We’ll see. The glue I used is pretty good, it’s meant for holding body panels on cars.
I am just going to touch up that spot on the inside. I didn’t want to paint the outside of the hood.

I wouldn't give a glue job a prayers chance. I don't think the glue will hold up to the vibration the hood is exposed to. Spot welding or tack welding is the only real fix.:bigthink:

Go visit a body shop, you'll be in for a surprise.

Ah... understood

Looks good.

I have used Pliobond in the past with some success on other projects. Not sure it would hold up to the Kohler shake though. My "olde dad" told me they used it when patching the fuselage on their B-17's.

Here, read about a ten year old boy's science class experiment on welding vs. adhesive, and this was almost 13 years ago. Methinks the glue is even better now days.

http://autobodystore.com/forum/showt...ighlight=PANEL

It’s done, now we’ll see how long it holds up.