Repair or Replace?

This may be a well known tip in the West, if you already know it don’t read it. LOL

When your protective skid plate on your detector’s coil wears through or breaks do you know how to repair it or do you simply buy a new one?

If the skid plate is damaged instead of buying a new one dissolve some ABS plastic
(Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) in Acetone in a glass jar with a screw lid.

Lots of things are made of ABS plastic such as Leggo pieces, some car bumpers and grills, computer cases, detector skid plates etc. etc.
Test if it is ABS by putting a small piece in some acetone, if it dissolves it is probably ABS.

To make a paste of spreadable ABS add some acetone to a glass jar then add some chopped up ABS plastic, about 50/50 for starters, place a lid on the jar and leave it until all the plastic is dissolved, this may take a fair while depending upon the quantity, possibly 24 hrs or more.
If it is too runny add more plastic or if too thick add more Acetone.

A light coat of Acetone on the area to be repaired will make it sticky, this will ensure the paste adheres strongly
Use a putty knife or similar to spread the paste over the broken skid plate, remove it from the coil first or use something, maybe cling wrap, between old plate and coil.

The paste can be kept in the jar for future use, just add Acetone to soften it when required.

I just thought there might be someone interested.
A new plate for the SDC2300 is about $20.00, one for a GPX4500 about $27.00 here in Vic.

Scrubby.

Good tip Scrubby, I use this method to repair cracks in coils, the most common area being around the mounting lugs, and to re seal coils after fixing internal issues, also as I have had some of the later NF advantage coils open up on the seams as well, its always best to use the exact same plastic as the coil is made from, so I save any old beyond help skid plates or at least some of the plastic in case I have to do a quick repair job, sometimes depending on the amount of adhesive needed I might also use a small artist type brush to apply it, you can buy cheap packs at red dot, reject shop etc, with flat and pointed brushes and a pop stick cut or ground to a chisel point is a good applicator and can just be disposed of after use.

Skid plates are fine to repair if you catch them early enough, but they are there to protect the coil and are sacrificial, better the skid plate wear than the coil body, if you are a bit slack in checking your coils and let them go long enough you can get wear on the coil body as well which in the end will allow moisture, dirt and dust to get in to the coil and make it play up, the skid plates need to be removed and cleaned out every so often as well as a build-up of dust or moisture can cause falsing and poor performance.

au-fever

Great tip Scrubby-I need to make a mould up to protect the bottom knuckle on my 2300-its getting a pounding-nearly as much as the plate-so by your method if i cover the knuckle with gladwrap and layer the solution on it and leave to set I can then remove it and have a strap on cover to protect that section-someone could go into bussiness making these -I cant be the only person beating crap out of their 2300-Dragon

What i do is simply rip it off from new & and use it hard , they will go a whole year of abuse without one , after that if they dont wear thin & leak moisture , the coils may become slightly rattly inside any way & after that theres always a next best new one each year, so your shoe cupboad ends up full of useless coils outdated shiny coils ay. Truly do a trip without one & you will relise the weight loss if you go hard for a week.

good stuff scrubby.
same here Max, im bashing my SDC also. i cut a stubby holder up and cable tied it to the knuckle to protect it a bit, good for a few days but not permanent and a clip on moulded heal like you have suggested made from plastic may work a treat.
good thinking guys.

albo wrote:What i do is simply rip it off from new & and use it hard , they will go a whole year of abuse without one , after that if they dont wear thin & leak moisture , the coils may become slightly rattly inside any way & after that theres always a next best new one each year, so your shoe cupboad ends up full of useless coils outdated shiny coils ay. Truly do a trip without one & you will relise the weight loss if you go hard for a week.

I used to run the ATX without skidplates and the difference in weight made it worth doing. I never bashed it about though and it showed minimal wear by the time I sold it. I think you're right about the new coils as well. If you're full time and finding a fair bit of gold then you need the latest. If you're a part timer like us then an unprotected coil is going to last for years anyway.

The added weight of a skid plate with most coils is minimal so I cant imagine why unless they were not available anymore you would not use one, the skid plate apart from giving the coil protection against wear to the coil body itself also affords it some protection against the knocks and bumps it gets while in use, buffering it a bit so that the body of the coil has less chance of getting internal damage.

Some types of coils may be more susceptible than others and once they get loose wiring internally then you get falsing and the coil playing up to the point its useless, if its the coil that you use a lot you may not want this to happen while you are in the bush, anyway if the coil manufacturers didn't think the coil needed a skid plate why would they supply it with one in the first place?

The other thing is that if you maintain your coils in good order and want to sell off a few at some time to fund other coil purchases it pays to keep it in good cosmetic condition, if you don't care about doing that then fine but don't be a banker and then on sell it on to someone else who ends up having all the problems due to the way it was used previously.

I still have my favourite minelab supergoldsearch 8" mono, that I got with an sd2100 around about 1998, its had some repairs to it here and there but is still as capable on the gold as it ever was, I have lost track of the amount of gold I have found with it, many ounces, with care and careful use you can get many years of gold finding with a good coil, and the thing that you cant put a value on is the confidence you have in its capabilities.

au-fever

Got some melting in a bottle on my desk as we speak Scrubby -your method works mint -thanks for the tip-just got to find some blue leggo to tint it the same colour as the 2300-Dragon

Picked up 2 skidplates for the SDC vacuums last month, $32 for both at my door.
Recon the Goop would be great for fixing up cracks in the box too..
Think we just used to use acitone and snipped up bits of coil plastic to make Goop to bond the coil tops n bottoms at Coiltek.

Great idea to keep your skid plates going by patching them. Particularly with those you can't turn around. My thoughts are if you are not wearing through a skid plate every two months or so, your missing a hell of a lot of gold.

Yea mate , its all each their own , if the golds coming in , they are a disposable , like a toothbrush or a missus.... Are jeez no im in trouble

Albo hahahahaha
no room left mate, iv'e permenantly booked the penthouse sweet in the doghouse

Glad to hear some are finding the repair info useful.
How about we list any item that is made from ABS plastic that we use ?
Today I tried bits from many different things before I found that a plastic wheel cover from a car worked great, wrong colour but that won`t matter.

Scrubby

Got all my workmates raiding toyboxes for blue leggoes-there is going to be some p*ssed off kids in Perth-Dragon

purple-dragon wrote:Got all my workmates raiding toyboxes for blue leggoes-there is going to be some p*ssed off kids in Perth-Dragon