chainik wrote:I have a very simple question for the Airtime rep: is there a commercially available glue that works on orange blodder? I currently have a kite that I would like to use tomorrow that has the octagonal dump valve leaking. I tried to remove it via hot water and that got the material around the valve to become totally toast (evidently the melting point of it is about equal to 220F). With any other blodder it would be no big deal - remove old valve, re-glue it with AquaSeal and I'd be kiting the next day. With orange blodder it seams that I am stuck - I need to get the stick-on valve from Airtime and that will take a long time and then I got to somehow fix the area around the valve which is impossible to do without good cement. How do you remove these valves anyways if hot water does destroy the blodder material? Is it basically a throw-away product - once one valve delaminates, you have to throw it away because there no way to remove it without destroying the blodder?
I would hope that you get an answer to your question... but I think that the question has gone unanswered before, on this forum.
If not, then, there is a way to repair your problem using tear-aid and a stick-on valve... but it is tricky. I saw a very clever repairman, named Joel, on South Padre Island, do the following, on a failed Aquaseal valve repair, which left a mess, after the North valve pealed off, anyways.
He cut out the messed-up area around the valve AFTER making a "jig" to allow him to perfectly reposition the new stick-on valve, in the same position that the old valve occupied. He then placed a large patch of tear-aid to cover the cut-out area. I can't remember if he put a second large patch on the INSIDE of the bladder, or if he somehow put a piece of bladder material inside the bladder opening, to keep the large patch of tear-aid from sticking to the opposite side of the bladder. Anyway, after the large patch was in place, he positioned the new stick-on valve in the exact right position on top of the large patch, using the "jig" to perfectly orient the valve. It worked, and the kite held air.