Tuesday, April 17, 2012.
Bought JB Weld WaterWeld at my local home depot on Monday (April 16, 2012) and gave it a try on my car’s trunk handle, which was broken by the ever-so-lovely previous owner. The only thing that was allowing it to still stay on the trunk was the fact that only one of the four T-20 screws was still in place, properly. The other three had broken through the plastic, which most likely degraded as the years went by. The car is, after all, 10 years old!
The way things went, though, is that I attempted to fix it with the JB WaterWeld on Monday. I followed the instructions from a guide on bimmerinfo (HERE), and even allowed the putty to cure for 3-4 hours, instead of a mere 60 minutes as they suggested. To my astonishment, it barely did anything, and the putty broke off upon screwing the T-20 screws back into the trunk. So, I removed it all, and did another trial shortly after going to bed, this time allowing the putty to cureovernight. When morning came (April 17, 2012), I promptly slapped everything on before heading out to school, and everything hardened and stiffened well enough to hold everything in place - just as the guys at JB promised! My trunk handle is no longer dangling from the trunk, holding on for dear life, and is now calmly sitting there as it should be! I won’t be using the handle, though, to lift the trunk up, but rather just lifting it from the bottom (near where the top of the car’s rear bumper is) because I’ve been doing that since I got the car. Hopefully this JB WaterWeld stuff lasts for a while (it is, after all, said to harden as tough as steel when it has fully cured), as it sure beats paying $80 at the dealership for a brand new one that exhibits the same flaw (plastic)!
Just one simple image, of the handle when I removed the single T-20 that was holding everything together. Please excuse the dirty car!
Unfortunately, no images of anything else, but it can all be seen from the link I provided earlier from bimmerinfo’s website. There’s no difference in the process, whatsoever.
