Whale of a Tail, restoration - Saab 900 Bulletin Board - Saabnet.com
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Whale of a Tail, restoration
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Posted by S Carlson [Email] (more from S Carlson) on Sun, 2 Jan 2022 18:08:25 Share Post by Email
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It's been a while since I've posted here (since before COVID), and I'm happy TSN still exists! I have a very bad whale tail and I'm restoring it. Just thought I'd show off my progress. Hopefully the attached picture worked. I need some motivation to keep going!

The steel strip inside the foam rubber portion of the tail, running transversely, was rusted into dust, so I cut it out. The steel stiffeners in the sides, running longitudinally within the foam rubber were fine, and appeared to take up a lot of space within the foam, so I did not bother with them. I made all my incisions on the bottom in order to better hide them later.

After cutting out all the rusted steel, I milled a custom stainless piece and drilled and tapped it, and then installed stainless screws from the backside to use as studs. The stainless piece started as 1/8" x 1/2" and of course you can't get metric-spec steel in the USA so I milled it down to 10mm in order to fit inside the stock whale tail location. 1/8" was close enough to the 2mm thick that the original metal insert was. I don't think it minds an extra 1.2mm or so.

Finally, I welded the extant steel frame from the sides of the tail to the new stainless piece. You can see in the photo (if it successfully attached) how I protected the foam rubber from getting burnt with a water-soaked shop rag and a piece of copper sheet. I TIG welded the stainless to the mild steel with 309 filler rod. Being aggressive and quick was key to success here.

Next, I have to bond my replacement metal into the foam rubber. I have heard that urethane windshield sealant works well for this. SikaFlex P2G is what I was going to use, unless anyone here has any better suggestions!

Happy new year!

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