Repairing a broken discontinued center cap

My rims for the Super were made by great company, American Racing.  My brother Lee originally bought them for his 2000 bug, and then after his lease was up on his new VW he and I started talking about putting them on his ’75 Super. Well fast forward 6 years later and I am finally getting around to doing it for him.

Other than being dirty and one rim with a slightly bent lip the wheels and tires are in pretty good shape.  When I initially received the rims from Jason (After they were stored at his garage for 6 years)  Pay attention this is where you will start to notice a re-occuring theme in all my articles relating to the Super beetles rebuild. I am inherently Impatient, yes… I admit it,  Microwave oven ? too slow,   Instant soup? Yeah not quite fast enough,  Quick Bond Super glue ? Come on.. what are you waiting for.. That’s usually my mantra.

 Recently, I have really been trying to solw things down and do them right the first time.

Because of my impatients I was trying to remove one of the center caps and accidentially broke it.  At the time I thought “Eh.. no big deal, I will purchase a new one, what the heck… I will buy ALL new ones !”. This is not the case my brothers beloved rim is no longer availible from our friends at American Racing and they have no replacment center caps availible either. Hmmm… now what ? …. the next best thing… repair the broken one.

Since the center cap experiences super high rpm’s I knew the if I simply superglued it (my initial impatient idea), my first trip down the freeway I would see it fly off and accidentally cause a 90 car pileup on my recetrack they call a freeway around here. I knew I would have to take the repair process up a level to ensure strength and for the saftey of the general public.

I started out with cleaning the broken centercap, and inspecting it to make sure I had all the pieces.

(Above) The broken and unfortunatley discontinued American Racing center cap.

(Above) Supplies used during this repair process.

(Above) Use #100 grit sand paper to clean up the mating edges.

I took a piece of #100 grit sand paper and cleaned all the mating edges between the two broken pieces. 

(Above) My good (“but slow”) friend  Mr. Super Glue.

I then took regular old superglue and bonded the two pieces together.

This next step is where we add some strength into the repair job.

I used fiberglass sheeting (availible at any hardware store) and traced out the circle of the center cap.  I then used my #100 grit sandpaper and roughed up the rear side of both pieces of the broken cap to ensure adhesion to the plastic.  I cut out the fiberglass cloth circle and mixed up some quick bond epoxy.

(Above) Circle cutout from the fiberglass cloth.

With the epoxy mixed up on a paper plate (generous amount) I sat my fiberglass circle cout out in the epoxy and made sure it was coated well.

(Above) Saturate the fiberglass cloth with the epoxy.

 Once the cloth was saturated with epoxy I put it on the backside of the the center cap and sommothed out and air bubles.

(Above) Yes, this goopy mess will cure to be rock solid and probally better than new.

Let it cure for 24 to 48 hours and it will be as good as new !

Thanks !

(-C-) JNM 2006