Verell Boaen (Verell)
Junior Member
Username: Verell
Post Number: 184
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, July 10, 2002 - 9:26 am: | |
I just repaired my luggage cover zipper last nite. Took about 2 hours. Cost all of $4.00 & a couple of feet of black thread.
I'd tried the pliars trick last spring when one of the sliders started malfunctioning. Crimped it too tight & had to open the gap a bit w/ a screwdriver until it worked right.
BTW, the sliders are made of white metal & break very easily. The nylon coils also wear grooves in them which is why they stop working. Once they're grooved, they just don't crimp the coils tight enough together to cause them to mesh!!!
It got me thru a summer of frequent (almost every day) use.
However, last month the second slider started acting up, and the 1st one went really bad. In both cases, the slider would work fine until it came to the passenger side corner & side of the zipper when it would skip mating the coils.
The coils weren't obviously damaged, and I could even get them to go together by sliding a small screwdriver blade firmly along just behind the slider.
I went to a local fabric/sewing supplies store & asked if they had replacement sliders. Paid $10 for a kit, & then on a guess, bought two 12" Talon(tm) black coil zippers for $2.00 each.
When I got home, I pried up one end of the cover & used a small sharp knife to cut about 1" of the stitches holding one side of the end of the zipper to the cover. Just enough so that I could get the old sliders off.
The kit of replacement sliders was useless, I'm turning it in to get my $10 back. A coil type zipper requires a slider that is flat across the bottom of the closure groove's rear end. Standard sliders have slight sides to the bottom. If you try to use a std slider, it'll zip the coils together, but the join is at a V angle.
I disassembled the two 12" coil zippers to get the sliders. They worked perfectly.
Working the sliders on the zipper end is a PITA. The loose end of the zipper kept fraying on me. Also more stitches wanted to keep unraveling. I finally spread some DUCO cement on about 1/4" of fabric on the loose end of the zipper, and on the bottom of the last few stitches & let it dry. This stopped the unraveling & fraying, and also stiffened the loose end of the zipper so that it was a lot easier to work with.
Once the new sliders were on, I used button & carpet thread (nice & heavy) to stitch the zipper end back into the cover. Also I stitched thru the original stitching holes so the new stitches match the original ones.
Only discrepancy is that the pull tabs on the sliders are slightly different from the original ones. I'm going to try prying the original tabs off & putting them on the new sliders. (Wish I'd thought of doing this before I'd installed the new tabs.)I just repaired my luggage cover zipper last nite. Took about 2 hours. Cost all of $4.00 & a couple of feet of black thread.
I'd tried the pliars trick last spring when one of the sliders started malfunctioning. Crimped it too tight & had to open the gap a bit w/ a screwdriver until it worked right.
BTW, the sliders are made of white metal & break very easily. The nylon coils also wear grooves in them which is why they stop working. Once they're grooved, they just don't crimp the coils tight enough together to cause them to mesh!!!
It got me thru a summer of frequent (almost every day) use.
However, last month the second slider started acting up, and the 1st one went really bad. In both cases, the slider would work fine until it came to the passenger side corner & side of the zipper when it would skip mating the coils.
The coils weren't obviously damaged, and I could even get them to go together by sliding a small screwdriver blade firmly along just behind the slider.
I went to a local fabric/sewing supplies store & asked if they had replacement sliders. Paid $10 for a kit, & then on a guess, bought two 12" Talon(tm) black coil zippers for $2.00 each.
When I got home, I pried up one end of the cover & used a small sharp knife to cut about 1" of the stitches holding one side of the end of the zipper to the cover. Just enough so that I could get the old sliders off.
The kit of replacement sliders was useless, I'm turning it in to get my $10 back. A coil type zipper requires a slider that is flat across the bottom of the closure groove's rear end. Standard sliders have slight sides to the bottom. If you try to use a std slider, it'll zip the coils together, but the join is at a V angle.
I disassembled the two 12" coil zippers to get the sliders. They worked perfectly.
Working the sliders on the zipper end is a PITA. The loose end of the zipper kept fraying on me. Also more stitches wanted to keep unraveling. I finally spread some DUCO cement on about 1/4" of fabric on the loose end of the zipper, and on the bottom of the last few stitches & let it dry. This stopped the unraveling & fraying, and also stiffened the loose end of the zipper so that it was a lot easier to work with.
Once the new sliders were on, I used button & carpet thread (nice & heavy) to stitch the zipper end back into the cover. Also I stitched thru the original stitching holes so the new stitches match the original ones.
Only discrepancy is that the pull tabs on the sliders are slightly different from the original ones. I'm going to try prying the original tabs off & putting them on the new sliders. (Wish I'd thought of doing this before I'd installed the new tabs.)
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