Posting to ask the community if it might be possible for me to find a adhesive that will let me “glue” a broken filler door back together? You may ask,“how did this happen”? Well, when a child fills the car with gas on a rainy night this is just one of many things that can.
Picture shows lonely half waiting to be reunited with its lonely brother or sister.
You could try a 2 part epoxy but it will only hold until you use it is my thought. Just get a new one or call a salvage yard.
Here’s what I use for that kind of repair.
Tester
Have you had good luck with reattached parts staying together? While I am pretty much always aware when opening the filler door I can’t attest so much for others who fill the tank from time to time as the pictures point out.
Just go ahead and try to glue it. If it works fine , if not all you have lost is a few dollars for the glue.
Seconded. If the repair doesn’t work, find your car in your color in a junk yard and get the filler door off of it.
This is why I’m not terribly happy about car makers moving to plastic gas doors.
Closest thing to the epoxy Tester linked I can find locally is this JB Weld product. Wonder if it is close enough in bonding properties to achieve the same results.
Personally I would not bother. Just either get a new one from the dealer or get one from the junk yard. I got one once for a dollar that was even the correct color.
At any rate, I don’t think glue or JB Weld is going to do it unless you also reinforced it with a metal brace and pop rivits or something. There will always be a lot of stress on that part and it’ll just fall off again as good as JB is. Why they made something like this plastic I don’t know but usually they are metal.
In a way, it’s good that it’s plastic. It becomes a sacrificial part, kinda like the plastic blender gear mentioned in another post. If something were to catch a metal door and try to rip it off, much more damage may be done.
That’s a fair point, but my SO has a Veloster that also has a plastic gas door, and it’s the flimsiest part on the car by far. I’ve been driving for decades now and have never damaged a car by ripping off a gas door, but I bet one of us breaks that door eventually.
Gas doors tend to swing toward the back of the car, so if you forget and leave it open and then whack something with it, you’ll just close it, not rip it off.
Here you can see where I used JB WELD to secure the head of a 5 lb maul to it’s handle
That was 30 years ago, and the head has yet to come off.
Tester
You’re right . . .
But . . . if you leave the fuel filler door open and back up the car, snagging that fuel door on something, you might see some damage besides the fuel filler door
I gotta go with the crowd here. Replace it. Even if you get one from a junkyard the wrong color or an unpainted one from the dealer, get some matching spray paint from, a) the dealer, b) the auto parts store or c) Internet paint sellers like Express Paints. These folks can mix any color into a spray can. Paint the new part first and then install it.
Very little hassle more than trying to glue it and have it fall off.
There are many kinds of plastic, and on some the two part stuff is pretty good. On others I’ve used just a spot or two of super-glue and it worked, but mostly that’s on light lenses. If you use the two part stuff you have to figure out in advance how you are going to hold the two pieces together for a couple of hours. I use masking tape on both sides, but that may not work. Whatever you do, test your system before you start gluing, because after you glue it together you don’t have any hands to do anything, because there you are holding two pieces together for the rest of the day.
You only need to hold it for five minutes, and it completely cures in an hour.
Tester
It’s worth a try I guess. Tester’s method is probably the way to go for longest lasting results. But if I had that problem and didn’t already have that product on hand, rather than risking $10 for something I may only need one time, I’d probably just use some super-glue I already have and hope for the best. I purchase 10 one-application tubes of superglue for $1, 10 cents each at my local flea market. One advantage of the super-glue approach is you only need to hold it steady for a few seconds. Trying to hold it steady for 5 minutes by hand might prove difficult, and you’d probably be better off removing the other part from the car and gluing the two together on the bench.
Whichever glue you use, it might well work for a while at least, but in the meantime I’d be checking for a replacement part from a local junk-yard. Auto recycling places often list what cars they have at the moment on their internet sites. When one become available, apply that $10 you saved towards the replacement part.
I had the same thing happen a few years ago with my Passat. I swung my arm the wrong way, or something, and it broke off.
But I just left it off for a few years until I traded in the car.
I’d get some fiberglass tape plus the epoxy. That will help spread the load.
And I thought JB WELD was good!
Tester
jb weld the old fashioned slow, not quick, shoe goo is very impressive with a 2 day cure, liquid nails not the latex version I have also found good.
