This is a fridge inner door panel off a Fridgemaster fridge.
You can't buy new ones and this one has developed a few little cracks all the way around and
there is a crack at the bottom as well which I'll show you how I repair, and this one is
even worse. The whole bottom is broken out of it but at
least we have got all the pieces. So I'll show you how I repair it and I use fiberglass.
Now the first step we do is, as we are going to put the fiberglass in from behind and where
the cracks are, I'm just going to patch it with normal masking tape just to hold the
pieces together and then also so the resin doesn't run through because we are going to
do it from the opposite side. We just make sure we cover all the cracks
with masking tape,
like that, we've covered the cracks
and also there is 2 little holes here where the shelve supports fit in, we'll patch them also with the masking tape and
once we're done, we can just drill new holes for the shelves to fit in. So I'm just going
to carry on taping all of this.
Ok there I'm finished with the masking tape
now if you have a look, this is the one where the whole bottom was loose, so I've taped
it all into place here, and there's certain places there's parts missing, but I've put
the tape over which creates a cavity there and then once we pour the fiberglass in from
the back that will actually fill the cover up and you can see here where the joint is,
that we're going to cover with fiberglass and when it hardens it will be ridged and
we just remove the tape again. There's one important thing when you do this.
This panel when you look at it, there's quite a bit of flex in it and if we fiberglass it
and it's on an uneven surface and it hardens; it will put a twist in your panel. So it's
important when you put your panel down like this, it must be completely flat and we'll
do the fiberglass and it takes a few hours to cure.
Ok this is our panel and this is the fiberglass I'm going to use it's a chop mat but I cut
it in little assorted pieces. I don't want to put big pieces on, we do it in bits and
pieces and this is the fiberglass that we buy, a liquid and then there's a catalyst
that you mix with the fiberglass to harden it.
Most people use a paint brush but what I do is I take an old piece of copper pipe from
a fridge, I clamp a piece of cloth in there and I find this works very well we can get
into the corners and when I'm finished I just chuck this in the dustbin.
So I pour the fiberglass into a little container and we mix the catalyst with it, and then
this will probably take about 10 minutes to harden so you've got to apply all the fiberglass
within 10 minutes, otherwise it hardens.
Ok I'll just put it there.
We give it a nice mix. Once it's mixed what I do is I just coat the little fiberglass
sheets and I start in the bottom, I just push them all the way to the bottom and then later
on we can start doing the upper surface. If you use just one layer of fiberglass then
it's the same thickness as the plastic, but what I like to do, especially at the bottom
of the door, is to put a 2nd layer on and we make it stronger than it was before because
that's where the people put their heavy bottles and that's where it's most likely to crack.
If you want to have a look inside here, just see what it looks like.
We don't have to be especially neat, but we get it right down there like that, and that
will give us the strength in our panel, and then on the corners, I just shape it around
the corner like that, and that will harden and we'll have a steady corner.
Once I'm done, this won't be visible because this is on the inside of the door so nobody
will see this fiberglass, but the top bit where it was cracked, that is visible.
So once we have done the bottom then we can start on the top, the upper surface bit. I
just put it there and you just dab it in with this fiberglass like that.
It bonds very well to this plastic on the panels and it should be stronger than normal.
Now I won't have enough fiberglass here I'll just finish this then I can always mix a 2nd batch.
You'll always get a little bit of fiberglass
on your hands but it washes off quite easily some people will wear gloves, but I find without
the gloves you've got much better control over what you do so I don't bother with gloves.
A good trick that I sometimes do is I'll put a piece of fiberglass all the way across like
that it will give it a bit of support, but I don't have enough resin at the moment to
do it so I'll do that in the 2nd mix.
This is as much as I'm going to get out of this. I'm going to mix a 2nd bit and then we'll come back and carry on.
This stuff becomes rock rock rock hard.
Tomorrow when it's hard I'll take the tape off then we can video what the inside looks like.
This is actually not bad most of it's done but I would like to reinforce it a bit more. See now it's already starting to set, it's
becoming hard well not hard but you can feel it's not as runny as it used to be, so you've got to be quick.
Let's video inside there.
We leave this outside for the fiberglass to cure. There is still a bit of afternoon sun,
it helps to cure it. This is the panel where only the corners had
a few cracks in it. So we are going to do that one now.
Mix a little bit of fiberglass. This one we will only do the 2 corners at the bottom.
I'm just going to put this one aside for now. This is the big one we did earlier, so this
fiberglass has had a bit of time to cure now, so I'm just going to add one more little piece
here. I put this across like that so I bond it to the top and the bottom and what this
does is, this will become ridged and it will stop any flex in the panel, so if they put
a lot of weight on it, the panel is much stronger than before.
Ok so this one is completed. This is the other one, we can just neaten this up a bit, I'm
not going to add any more fiberglass to it. This is all it really needs. Come and have
a look inside here, you see it's only the corners that are done. We just spread it nice
and evenly. This we'll leave overnight to cure and in the morning we might have to drill
a few holes for the shelves where I put the masking tape on.
That's basically it, there is the front of it where the tape is, but we leave it to cure in this position so the
resin can all sag to the bottom. Done, so we'll have a look in the morning and see what
it looks like. If I need to add more we'll add more, but otherwise it should be fine.
I'm just drilling the fiberglass that covered the hole, out so the shelve support can fit in
The shelve support fits nicely now but the
cracks where the break was, are still visible, so we just cover it with a little bit of silicone
to hide the cracks, but the fiberglass is the support. This is the bigger panel where
the whole bottom was loose. We remove the tape, and that little piece there is where
a piece was missing, but the resin that set upside down inside there covered the little
hole up and there's a few other places where there was pieces missing but it's all covered
with the resin that hardened and we do the same as the other one, we cover those little
pieces with silicone just to make it look better, but the structure is quite sound and
steady it can carry a lot of weight on that.
Now I've used the silicone to hide the cracks and the fiberglass underneath will make it strong, they can pack it with heavy bottles
and weights again.
There, I've put the door together using the same door seal and there's the panel that we've repaired. It's strong to carry a lot
of weight and there we've just saved another fridge.