Making rubber gaiters?
 

Hi,

I recently did some crawling near the sea with predictable results. The rocks were awesome but the sand and salt have taken their toll, especially on the dogbone joints and bearings.

I would like to make some rubber gaiters to keep the crud out of the joints. A few years ago I tried using silicone rubber and it worked quite well but had a tendency to break up after a while. Does anyone have any ideas of a suitable material that can be cast or painted onto a mould? It obviously needs to be flexible and grease/water resistant.

Thanks,
Les

Have you tried Heatshrink Tubing? If you can find the size you want, you can warm it up a bit and it will fit quite smugle, and works well... kinda like a boot on a real vehicle.

hmmm,

what about streaching surgical tubing over the u-joints? might have to replace it as it wears but i think it would work.

(gonna have to try this myself...)

I hadn't thought of heatshrink. Some of the joints operate at fairly steep angles so I don't think the heatshrink would be flexible enough. I will experiment and see what happens.

Badhoopty, surgical tubing is latex rubber isn't it? Latex is affected by oil after a while, at least the latex gloves I use in the workshop are. Hang on, I have some nitrile gloves as well. I know nitrile is oil resistant. I wonder if I could use a finger from a nitrile glove. It would certainly be flexible enough. May be a bit large though... Definitely worth investigating. Thanks!

if the gloves don't work, get some balloon animal-type balloons. smaller diameter and cheaper!

Plasti-dip. It is sold in home depot. It works to waterproof servos and recievers. Just dip the end off things you want to protect into it.

I wonder if that would work. I need to make gaiters for joints so I can't simply dip the joints. Maybe if I make a mould up then dip that and peel off the plasti-dip. I wonder if the resultant gaiters would hold up. The other problem is finding the stuff here in the UK.

Might talk with a hose supply store. Thats where we get our hydraulic, pneumatic, and fluid lines for work. (Air Oil is this paticular companies name, but you should have something locally.) We can get hoses made out of lots of different types of material. They might have something that would work for you.

Just a thought anyway.