Removing old contact adhesive from my wheelhouse floor

Tradewinds

Well-Known Member
Joined
12 Jan 2003
Messages
4,204
Location
Suffolk
www.laurelberrystudio.com
The wheelhouse floor has a PVC coated fabric (like a heavy duty textured Fablon) glued down onto the plywood substrate (c1980).

This is now peeling away in places and I want to remove this tatty PVC covering and the residual contact adhesive and stick down (with another contact adhesive) something different.

The PVC coated fabric should just peel away from the glue quite readily I think.

My question is - how do I remove the old contact adhesive ? Solvent adhesive remover or by mechanical means? The area is about 3.5sqm.

If anyone has done this and can give advice and recommendations as what is best to use and how to go about it I'd be most grateful.

TIA
 
I’ve always used Autosmart Tardis. Allow it to soak in and then use a wallpaper scraper, seems to work on most adhesive.
 
A "face- off" disc for an angle grinder worked really well to remove the old headlining adhesive from the GRP. Hawk House does them.
 
I successful removed a lot of contact adhesive from my old Citroën using a "caramel wheel" (aka "toffee wheel") sold for just that purpose. It's a solid rubber wheel used in a drill and it smells like caramel (or toffee) as it warms up.
 
I did the inside of our Sabre 27, it was an absolute mess with thick caked on evostik everywhere. I ripped out all the headlinings took out all removeable woodwork drilled a hole in the side of the keel; stub with a tank cutter & hit it with a pressure washer, brutal but highly effective. Whole boat cleaned spotless in one hour.
 
A boat I owned had Treadmaster decks, stuck down with contact adhesive that had begun to fail. I stripped the whole lot off, a long and tedious job. At the time I had access to a wide variety of solvents but none was especially effective. Toluene and MEK mixture probably the best but now I would look at mechanical methods first.
 
Top