Softening old foam grips

Anyone had any success is softening hard old foam grips - or is it just time for bin (which I really don't want to do)?

Ta

I dont think thats something you can soften once its got solid :? Course i couldnt say for sure but it doesnt appear that any process will have an environmental touch to it :? Possibly a solvent would dissolve them and then youd be left with a sticky goo.

Yeah I'm not sure it's possible either. A damn shame it'll be as they're probably pretty much irreplaceable and they'd be perfect for one of my bikes :-(

depends what they're made with, but a careful application of wd40 may help.

Re:

Like dyna I think anything that would soften foam grips might also turn them to mush.

But maybe you could try it anyway.

A long time ago I used to race 1/12th scale electric R/C cars. The racing surface was industrial floor covering like very short piled carpet felt. We used black foam rubber tyres, to improve or adjust the grip you could get a solvent to put on tyre surface that softened the "tread". How much you put on determined the grip level but the solvent was expensive as it was sold in tiny bottles as it was meant to be used to clean and restore grip on the rubber drive wheels that drive the tape inside VCRs. What we found out was that Polyclens Plus, I think that's the name, a blue coloured paint brush cleaner, would do the same job of softening the rubber tyres.

Years later but still a long time ago :facepalm: , I raced 100cc karts for a few years. The tyres were about £120 a set but they would gradually lose grip as you used them week to week but they'd still have plenty of rubber on them. I couldn't afford to repeatedly buy new sets at that price, this was about 25 years ago, so remembering my previous experience with R/C car tyres I tried the same idea. The Polyclens stuff didn't work as racing slicks have different type of rubber, so I thought about using paint stripper gel that I had in my garage, might have been from same manufacturer of Polyclens Plus. Brushed it on to tyre surface, let it soak in for an hour or so then washed it off with water. Same process as with removing paint. Anyway it worked and the tyres were restored almost to as new grip level. Result.

Whereas the R/C tyres trick was within the regs doing it to kart tyres was against the RAC motorsport regs. Never felt like I was cheating as there were guys who could afford a new set of slicks for every race meeting so ingenuity versus cash was OK in my mind. Anyway just over 10 years ago one of the guys I ended up working with had been a pit-crew/helper of a guy I raced against. A guy that had new tyres most of the time, he'd been softening his tyres too, only with proper tyre softening liquid. Cheating bastard. :mrgreen:

The paint brush cleaner might be better for foam grips rather than the much more aggressive paint stripper gel.

A long story to tell you something that may be of no use to you.

Re:

Adrian , I've had great success reviving plastics, rubbers and tyres type compounds with auto glym's bumper and trim gel , might be worth a shot

Thanks for the pointers guys. A few options to consider at least

Well let us know how you get on. Threads like this are good. Gives a resource that will probably survive us
For decades to come people will be coming here to try to soften their old grips. Waiting with baited breath for page two

Next post will be a photo of some grips in the bin