If you want to know four ways to fix a crack in your floorboard (and one way to prevent it in the first place), keep reading.
It can happen so easily: You’re riding down an easy trail, you hit the gas while you’re rolling over some loose rocks from a washout, and WHAM! You’ve got a brand new crack in the floorboard right by your feet.
The problem with cracks in your floor is that the floor pan is just one big ol’ piece of plastic—you can’t just replace it. You’re gonna have to fix it.
So let’s get to it.
We’ll give you one piece of advice right up front: If you can’t fix a crack right away, drill a hole at either end of the crack to keep it from spreading anymore.
Now on to the fixes!
If you have the means to do it, fabbing up an aluminum plate as a heavy-duty Band-Aid is a good way to fix a crack.
Just cut an aluminum plate big enough to cover the crack and fasten it down with some screws or nuts and bolts.
The big advantage of a repair like this is that it not only covers the crack but also increases the protection of the affected area and covers any holes where plastic is missing. Plus, you don’t need to worry about corrosion on aluminum.
The only problem is that it might make getting into and out of your cab more slippery if it’s in a spot you need to put your foot on. You can mitigate that with some grip tape or by using diamond plated aluminum, but these are things to consider before you go with this repair.
Zip tie stitches are a classic go-to repair for cracks in big pieces of plastic. It’s go-to for a reason:
It’s also ugly, so keep that in mind before you go through with this one.
The tools you need are simple:
The steps are simple too:
The tricky part is getting your hand to the backside of the plastic to feed the zip ties through, but if a rock could hit it, surely your hand can reach it too.
Also, it’s more pleasing to the eye if you hide the zip part of the zip tie under the floor pan instead of in the cab, so keep that in mind.
Overall, this fix will get you going faster than any other. You might need a trip to the hardware store for some zip ties, but that’s it.
For quick and easy, nothing beats zip tie stitches.
For a more professional-looking repair, you can use a soldering iron to weld the plastic back together. This fix can be as strong as OEM and look just as nice, but it is a little tricky. And any time you heat something up in your machine, you want to make sure you have a fire extinguisher nearby (you should have one on your cab just for riding anyway).
The basic idea is simple: you use a soldering iron to heat up the edges of the crack and fuse the melted plastic together.
Here are the steps to get it done:
A plastic welder staple kit is the most robust solution here. It lets you repair the crack and reinforce it with metal staples in the plastic.
These staple kits are purpose-built just for mending cracks in plastic, and they make it easy. You can pick one up for anywhere between $40 and $140. If you’ve got a lot of plastic to fix, consider spending a little more.
Here’s how you use them:
When you’re done, you should have a solid repair that’s as strong or stronger than the original floor pan.
[A plastic welder staple kit is purpose-built just to repair cracks in plastic. That makes it easy and effective to get the job done. Photo by Allturn]
They say prevention is the best medicine. That goes for busting your floor pan too.
That’s why we highly recommend buying an aftermarket skid plate before you go wild again.
An aftermarket skid plate, like our UHMW skid plates, gives you way better protection against sticks and rocks than your stock skid plate gives you. That’s because we use 1/2” thick UHMW to make them.
UHMW is pretty dang cool stuff, and it makes the perfect skid plate material for couple reasons:
We take this awesome UHMW material to make kickass skid plates that are way better than stock.
Our design covers more of your undercarriage than stock on many models. And our patented interlocking design keeps them securely mounted to your machine for ride after ride.
Check out our UHMW skid plates and make sure you don’t have to repair your floor pan ever again.