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Great guide. My liquid nails is curing as I write this. I ended up getting galvanized hanger strap and I found it in the plumbing section made by Oatey, for those of you going on the hunt at the hardware store.
Did this to the driver door today so bumped it up for others. I like all the other approaches to this fix in the thread, but I did mine for a specific reason that it covers both the front and back side of the tab so if it broke completely in half at the top the backstrap would still hold. It's kind of future planning. All these fixes will work for a bit though.
I wish I looked at this over a week ago. My SC driver side panel had the entire armrest tabs broken, like in your pics, but the previous owner kept using it until the power window/lock/mirror panel was just falling into a big hole. My passenger side was better, but still had broken parts around the switches, at the speaker grills, door lights, etc..
I bought used panels at a U pull for $10/, and window trims for $5/, but they weren't perfect either. I used Gorilla Tape (glorified duct tape) to repair everything as well as possible, and it did help. Your fix looks much better though! I'd have done a pre-emtive reinforcement on those main tabs of the armrest/pull to avoid trouble later.
I used plastic epoxy with some fiber glass mat.
Just like u would for fiberglass repair. The epoxy works great.
I was even able to drill out new holes for the screws that broke off.
I filled the missing parts with epoxy. Then added a layer of fiberglass mat. Then the metal strip then one more layer of epoxy with fiberglass mat.
Sanded smooth and I don't have any gaps. Plus it as strong as nails.
I like that too, but didn't read this far before offering kudos to OLT. I have mesh around here, and didn't throw away my old passenger side panel. I think I'll pick up some epoxy and see what I can do for the lower stress areas, then have a ready to go spare when my Gorilla tape lets go.
I thought this was going to be a little like using red loc-tite on every bolt but, nope, this makes a lot of sense and @$%@#$% am I tired of breaking those tabs. Thanks!
So a couple weeks ago my cousin ended up ripping off the armrest portion of my passenger door handle and I am wonder the routes I could take to repair and reinforce the door panel. I'll go outside and take pictures of it now.
02-16-11, 02:13 PM
