Problems with fiberglass?

[OkieG]

Now, here is picture of the outside of the hood, where the hole was. You can see the paint job on the front of the cowling is not as faded, yet as the rest of the hood. With close inspection you can tell there was a repair, but a casual inspection would never reveal it. I used a fiberglass repair kit from an auto parts store ($15-20).

The white surface scratches are not where the hole was and have happened since the repair was complete.

 

[OkieG]

This past Spring, I bought a Buck Top. It was only a week or two old when I backed into a big branch and cracked the left rear corner. Once again, no picture of the damage, just the repair. The crack went from the gutter up to the top edge of the corner and along the top edge for a few inches.

To the left and right of the repair, down by the guttering, you can see remnant runs of resin (alliteration)/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif where I got lazy and didn't sand them flush. From ground level you mostly can't see 'em.

Now, I must say, I had never repaired fiberglass before. And, I offer these pictures only to show that even a rank novice can work with fiberglass and get reasonable results. Plastic gloves and some sort of electric sander are very helpful.

So, don't be too afraid of buying a tractor with fiberglass parts. They may be prone to break with abuse, but are not too hard to repair.

Surely, I am not the only clutz out there. Has anyone had the chance to do repair work on the HD plastic tractor parts?

OkieG

 

[JC4HD]

I have a 4310 that I purchased last April... while manuvering around some trees one of them moved (they are know to do that occasionally) and really bent the "Plastic" fender... when I got free the only thing I had was a scratch... no dent! If it was metal I would imagine it would have been ugly! They are not fiberglass but a very flexible plastic and it appears the color goes all the way through... even the scratch was green!
I haven't operated it in -20 yet but at +10 it shows no signs of being brittle. Welcome to the 21st Century!

 

[whoodle]

I was very skeptical of the plastic until I saw some twisted up metal fenders. The metal fenders are pretty flimsey as well.

 

[Green_in_MI]

Re: Fiberglass and bitter cold?

I am sure you will like your Kubota, they are fine machines but it's too bad you made a choice of such proportions based on misinformation. Did you really expect to crash your tractor into something out in the bitter cold?