Running Board Rubber Repair

[Curti]

I have a pair of NOS 1934-1936 Auburn running boards. Over the years each running board has taken a couple of hits causing minor chips and gouging, nothing over a 1/4 inch. The rubber even when new was quite hard. Does anyone have any experience or have suggestions for fixing them.

[nickelroadster]

Curti,

Since no one else has come forth with any information, I thought I would go ahead and give a couple of suggestions. Although I haven't tried this for repaiar I have used it to cast rubber items. Devcon makes a two part urethane rubber product called Flexane 80 Liquid 15800. It also has a flexible additive you can use to adjust the hardness called flex-add which you probably would not want to use on your running boards. It seems like this product should work if you experiment around with a way of molding it and trying to match surface texture with different grits of sandpaper and possibly some kind of tire dressing. You should be able to find the flexane by finding a industrial supply that is a Devcon dealer. Let us know how things work out.

[jrbartlett]

My '35 Auburn has the original running board rubber, as I restored the car before the replacements were available. I found that an earlier restorer in the 1960s had simply filled in the gouges with bondo, sanded it to fit the pattern and then sprayed it all with flat black. The boards still look pretty good -- but obviously not as good as new rubber. I'm going to install the replacement rubber in the future.

[Curti]

Thanks fellas for the replies. I tried 3M black weather-strip adhesive. This stuff is VERY sticky, and is sandable to a degree after is cured. I considered sanding a bit of the rubber from a non-visible area and mixing the dust with the weather-strip adhesive. You mention tire dressing; is that black tire dressing still available? If so, are there a brand name and a place to buy it? McMaster Carr stocks Devcon products I'll try Flexane 80 if the weather-strip adhesive doesn’t work.

James, when you replace the running board mats, there are a couple of different suppliers of them now, email me, and I can get you pointed in the right direction. The Auburn I am working on is just like yours.