Loose foam grip (Front) on vintage Garcia Conolon rod. Fixes?

[MrRoundel]

Greetings all,

I finally got out on a boat for the first time in many years. The trip was just OK. While I was reeling in one of the 7-8 ocean whitefish I caught, I noticed that the foam grip was twisting on the blank, as if any glue that was there had given up its bond, or?

I'm not sure the rod is worth putting a lot of money into, but wouldn't mind making that grip more secure somehow. Of course it's the grip in front of the reel seat area, so it's not a simple slide off, glue on.

Does anyone have any ideas on a fix, aside from figuring a way to sneak some glue under the foam somehow? It's a decent rod, and has an action that I liked when coupled with my Penn 555GS reel. Any suggestions are appreciated. Cheers.

[oc1]

The grip may have been stretched onto the blank with no glue.  As the foam ages it gets stiffer and might have shrunk a bit.  If it was mine, I'd try sliding the grip to up near the stripper guide, put five minute epoxy or something down where the grip is supposed to be and then slide the grip back in place.

[thorhammer]

What Steve said. If that won't work, you can cut the grip, wrap with a couple layers of paracord and heat shrink over it. Put a little glue like Gorilla clear or even a stripe or two of epoxy on the blank before you wrap paracord on, and another stripe or two on the paracord for the heatshrink to adhere to. That will be under ten bucks, durable and very grippy.

John

[oldmanjoe]

  Contact cement is the new fad with foam grips .    If you can roll and slide the grip up the stick , apply cement and pull back in place while still wet.

[Midway Tommy]

Contact cement is the new fad with foam grips .    If you can roll and slide the grip up the stick , apply cement and pull back in place while still wet.

If you use contact cement make sure it's waterproof (not resistant), most CC isn't waterproof.

[jurelometer]

You have to get a pretty good coverage area or you will still feel the grip twisting under load.  You need an adhesive thin  enough to get under the grip, but viscous enough that it won't all get absorbed into the foam near the entry point.  Also something with a long work time.  I would stick to epoxy, and not the fast setting five minute stuff unless you have good access under the grip.

If you twist the grip, you should be able to figure out where it is still stuck and where it is loose, and that will determine what your options are.

I did a repair on a loose front EVA foam grip by slitting the foam wher it joined the reel seat, scrunching it toward the tip, sliding a couple bamboo skewers along the blank under the grip, and filling with slow set epoxy with the tip pointed down.  Twisting the  grip a bit fished spreading the epoxy around.


If you decide that you need to make a slit along the grip to get the epoxy in, you could cover the grip with one of those heat shrink grip covers.  There are smooth ones, flocked ones, ones with fishnet hose (?) decoration, whatever floats your boat...

Let us know how it turns out!


-J

[Swami805]

Ideally you can slide the grip up the blank, you might need to cut off the winding check/ houstel thing at the top to do that. If you can slather the blank with epoxy or rubber cement (not contact cement). Might be good to use a series of hose clamps while it dries so get good contact   If the clamps leave some dents usually heating it with a heat gun will fix them
If the grip won't move it's hard to get anything in that space but hose clamps will help here too
Cutting the grip off and replacing it with cord or cork tape is a good option too. Cover with shrink tube and your golden

[MrRoundel]

Thanks, friends, I appreciate the tips and instructions. I'll take a better look at the grip to see what the best option might be out of the ones presented. Cheers!