I had been hand sanding all of my interior parts for a repaint and refinish.

It was taking FOREVER, I'd already spent like 4 hours on the IP itself. I never considered power tools to do this, figuired they'd all be way too rough on the parts.

Well...we went and bought a nice Dewalt orbital 5" sander for repainting the bathroom. I bought some medium and fine sanding discs to go with it.

We're walking in the house and I thought, what the hell. I had a spare center arm rest and had already done some other testing on that piece and thought it couldn't hurt.

I was amazed, literally, it took a 45 minute job and turned it into a 5 minute one. The control you had was amazing, took 3 full passes, first one roughed it up, second hazed it pretty light and the third got you down to the plastic and through the paint.

There is no way you could screw up a part using this thing. I thought for sure it would chew right through the plastic. Granted you cannot use it on the edges, it will eat them away.

I thought I would try an easy part and see how it did. I took the IP hood and went to work on it. In 10 minutes I had half of it done. It was super smooth, no gouges, no rings, just a perfectly sanded finish.

All was good until I went to do the center of it, I don't think I was leaning into it too hard but it snapped right in half.

Looks like a perfect clean break and it started to break in an area what I had only made an initial pass, just something to scuff it up without even taking the original painted material off.

I had it on my lap while doing it and I may just have leaned on it a bit too much. My other thought is that it would have been the vibration from the sander, the harmonics just caused the plastic to crack.

Now I'm stuck....this would let me finish the entire car in a day, and if it broke just because I was too rough with it then thats cool, I'll be more careful. But I don't want to go cracking the rest of my parts either

If it was just my screw up then I'd be real happy, and anyone who wanted to redo their interior I'd say go buy one of these things, the results were amazing for the amount of time involved.

thanks

 

I posted some pics on my Yahoo Photo site under Cracked IP Hood.

 

.

 

i dont think it would crack from the vibrations, there was either too much preassure, it was too thin, or the brace on the inside was not holding up. im sure a body shop could fix it and after being painted would look ok