I just searched the Forum for "Plastex" and found 3 posts that suggested this product when working on interior panels, the shifter console, and other plastic-based parts. These parts are very brittle and the tabs break off easily. Are there other good products for rebuilding these tabs and for patching broken or cracked parts? Do any members have experience with Plastex? Thanks for your help.

 

You can 'weld' plastic with a soldering iron and a steady hand. Super Glue helps hold the pieces together while you 'weld' the mated pieces.

 

Try this if you are working on those shifter console tabs.

http://www.vetteweb.com/tech/vemp_06...air/index.html

 

I haven't heard of Plastex, but I've had good luck with this adhesive mixed with some milled glass.

http://blog.scottsvettetalk.com/2007...-plastics.aspx

 

That's a good link. Just remember if you have fiber optics you'll need to cut more of that metal plate away for clearence or you'll pinch, damage or cut the fiberoptic cables and crack the lens.

 

I've used JB weld to fix some of my parts. One trick I picked up is to cut the round end off of a crimp wire terminal and use it where a screw goes through a part. Used it to repair parts of the Astro vent duct. Sorry, I didn't take any pics.

 

Has anyone tried the plastic welders from Harbor Freight? I am on my 3rd one and eventually shove it back in the cabinet and drag out the epoxy.

 

I have just used a soldering iron on a low setting and a steady hand. It works great.

 

I may give your recommendation a try ... I enjoyed your blog ... and great photos!! Here's a link to the plastex website:

http://plastex.home.att.net/

 

Thanks for the tip! As I recall from '70 era technology, there were 2 types of plastic ... thermosetting which can only be melted once, and thermoplastic which can be melted and reused again and again. I don't know how to tell the difference without trying to melt it or weld it. Must be the plastic molded castings that I need to repair are thermoplastic. I do need to try a product in some places where my broken pieces are gone or are too broken-up to 'weld' back together.

If anyone out there knows more about this subject ... further comments are welcomed.

 

I used this tecnique to repair another C3. If you click on the pics it enlarges them. Very true about the fiber optics.

 

I have a 96 with lots of broken plastic tabs on various parts. In looking through the forum I have seen several possible solutions and after reading through some of them I decided to try the Plastex kit (it's about $30 from Amazon). I repaired one small tab and then went on to a much bigger one. This is the courtesy light cover from my halo.

The first image shows the broken tab and the unbroken one I used as a template to re-make the broken one. Note that I got the clear plastic version of Plastex but it comes in black and other colors. Since this tab is totally hidden I didn't care that it would be rebuilt in clear instead of black.

The second image shows the dam I built out of the included heat sensitive molding bar they send with the kit. You heat it in hot water and once it softens up you mold it around the part you want to replicate. Note in this image that I put a piece of scotch tape on the outside of the part and rubbed it down hard so that if any of the liquid plastic leaked from the mold it would not damage the visible outside of the part.

I put the dry powder into the inside of the mold holding the mold tightly against the plastic part so no liquid would leak out when I applied it and then using the dropper supplied wet the dry powder completely with the liquid. One bad thing about the instructions that come with the Plastex kit is that they don't say now long to let it "cure". I even e-mailed them with that question and they never responded. So when I did my first small repair I let it cure overnight. The one shown here cured for two hours before I removed the mold and it appears to be totally hardened even though it was a fairly large repair - I may just let it sit overnight just to be sure all the liquid has dried out of the part.

The third image shows the completed tab on the left (clear) with the existing tab on the right (black). It's hard to see but when I created the mold on the existing tab I added some strength to it before I removed the mold to make the new tab. I did that by adding some of the Plastex powder to build up the inside of the existing tab and added the liquid. I let this cure for only about 15 minutes before removing the mold and when I probed the surface with a toothpick point it was not totally hard but since it had the existing tab to support it I went on to build the replacement tab. You can see in the image the result (I had also applied some really soft and flexible weatherstripping to replace the factory ones that had degraded over time.

The last image shows the tab on an angle from the outside. You can see that it faithfully recreated the tab including the sharp angle that snaps into the housing. That is a result of being sure that when the molding compound is soft and pliable that I forced it completely around the existing tab insuring that it exactly matched the existing tab so the new one would be an exact duplicate.

What I am doing is replacing most of the high heat, low life bulbs in my car with low heat, long life LED's so hopefully I will never need to open each light housing ever again and that will eliminate any need to break tabs off in the future. But if I do I have a fix.

BTW, I got my LED bulbs at www.superbrightleds.com - their prices seem competitive, shipping is fast and cheap and when I got a DOA bulb they immediately shipped a replacement. You can't ask for more than that.

In all I think this Plastex stuff works fairly well and since I got some help with my problem from the forum I thought I would add my two cents so others know what I did and how I did it.

 

FWIW: the link is for 68-76 console repair. 77-82 owners have no consoles and are stuck with actual plastic panels.

 

LD ... Thanks for the feedback on Plastex. I had not posted any results using the product because I had not received any good positive feedback on Plastex.

I intend to give it a try.