BOYB - How To Repair Damaged & Broken FCS Fin Boxes

It's more than likely you've ran your board into the sand before. You've hit the reef, or another surfer, and had to go to the repair shop to fix your shred sled because one of your fin boxes took a hit or impact of some sort.

Instead of taking it to the repair guy and being without your board for at least a week ( and out $80!), you can now become your own repair guru from the comfort of your backyard or garage.  Watch the video below as Garek takes you through replacing FCS plugs on one of his Fish's.  If your ding is less severe, check out our video on fixing fin box impacts, it's much easier than this process.

First, we want to clear Excess Foam and Resin out of damaged plug area. A holesaw bit is what Garek used to drill out his plugs.  From there he used a rod to get the extra foam out.  Its perfectly normal if the plug hole is significantly bigger than the replacement plug, thats meant for the resin to fill in, creating a strong bond.

Cover Entire Plug area with tape. Go overboard here and put extra tape surrounding the plug area, so that if the resin that drizzles off, it doesn't get onto the bottom of the board.  You'll thank us later for this one.

After it's all taped off, take a blade and cut around to reveal the plug area while still having tape surround it the area.  This will make the sanding process much cleaner, and your board looking much more professionally done.

Take the new plugs you want to install. Place a throwaway or extra fin into the two plugs you are trying to reset. This will help properly place them.

Rig your fin to get the proper cant. Garek eyeballs his with the other fins, you should be able to tell the appropriate angle based on the other fins.  Be extra careful when looking this over.

Mix your resin. You can tint the resin if you want a little bit of color, Garek did blue on this video to match the rails of the board.

Fill Plug holes with resin all the way. There are lots of air pockets as you fill in the plug, so make sure you have plenty of resin for all your plugs to get enough to bond.

Let resin dry for an hour at the very least. You want the bond to be as strong as possible before messing around with it.

Remove all the excess tape. Glad you put it down now with all that extra resin, aren't you?

Sand the plugs all the way down until they are flush with the board.

Take a look over on the boxes to make sure they are watertight.  If bubbles or pockets occur, you can just add some UV-cure resin to get it ready for the water.