Improvised Plastic Repair

Nearly everyone's had some important piece of plastic trim or other part break in their car at one time or another. In the past you pretty much had to ignore it or shell out a mad amount of money at the dealer for a new piece (unless your luck enough to find it at a salvage yard in decent shape). Glue either refuses to work for the most part or fails very quickly on abs. These days you can pick up a 'plastic welding' kit at any number of online stores that does a much better job. They use hot air to fuse the plastic together and give you a bond as strong as the original. I didn't have one of these handy when the a/c vent broke off the door of my beater but, with a little improvisation, I managed to rebuild the plastic screw posts on it and drill/tap out some new threads. It's actually stronger than the original, though it looks like crap (where no one will ever see it). An old high wattage soldering iron with a flat tip was put between the remnants of the old post and a piece of matching scrap. Once they were nice and molten, the iron could be pulled out and the parts held firmly together for a moment, just until they solidified. Since there weren't any nice posts lying around and the originals had long since disintegrated, I had to settle for irregular pieces that could, after adhering to the original part, be shaped with the hot soldering iron. The new posts are approximately twice the thickness of the old ones. I would prefer to use the kits in the future because, while it worked rather better than expected, this process was rather time consuming.