[Sammy B]

I was pretty set in my thinking that the broken mounting tabs and cracks on the grills of my '67 Lemans were permanent, but after doing some searching on this forum, it seems that they can be repaired. I found a lot of posts about people who have heard about this method or that, but there didn't seem to be that many people who have had much personal experience when doing these repairs. What I've heard of so far is: PC-7, Duramix, dental repair epoxy (?!), and JB Weld. So... for those of you who have actually done this repair, what's worked for you??? I'm leaning towards PC-7 since it's inexpensive and seems to get good reviews just about everywhere.

As always, thanks in advance!

[barrierblue66]

I did this exact repair on my GTO grills. I found one donor Lemans grille at a swap meet and used a dremel to cut off the mounting pads, which had good clip nuts on them already - bonus. Then I used JB Weld to re-attach. I use t his stuff for EVERYTHING. Sand it, paint it , tap it, have a ball. Good luck.

[paint guy]

Not sure how similar GTO and Le mans grills are, but I had a couple of broken plastic mounting tabs on my GTO grills (unseen when mounted) and since I had part of the plastic tab remaining to work with, I bent some thin metal into a "U" shape so that it would fit over the remaining plastic tab part, rivited it on, and drilled it out for the mounting screws. I didn't want to worry about some glue letting loose sometime in the future.

[barrierblue66]

It was like 20 yrs ago, but I'm pretty sure they were from a Lemans. Of course it was 20 years ago

[Sammy B]

Aight, just to follow up on my cracked grills, here's what I did: Didn't want to use Duramix, simply because it was so damn expensive and I needed to buy a gun to use it. I ended up testing PC7 and JB Weld on the back side of the grills to see which one held better. Before applying the adhesive, I sanded the area to be repaired with 200 grit, then wiped it down with a damp cloth. The JB Weld won hands down. Wasn't able to scrape it off with a screwdriver like I could the PC7. The JB Weld that I used for this test was about ten years old. I bought some new stuff for the real repair, and it sets fast and seems to hold even better.

In the first photo, I tried using steel mesh (made by Bondo, purchased at Pepboys) to reinforce the JB Weld. However, it was really hard to mold around the curves of the grills. I'm going to slop another coat of JB over the mesh to make sure it doesn't go anywhere. On the next grill, I used a fiberglass mesh as the reinforcement. This was much easier to use, although it may not be as strong. The problem here is that the more I fix these grills, the more cracks I find. I cut little 'V' shaped grooves on the front (visible) side of the grills that I will also fill with JB and sand smooth. I'll continue to post photos of my updated progress on this little sub-project.



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[barrierblue66]

Lookin goood. The JB Weld area will outlast the original plastic no prob! I didn't have any cracks. I just needed to replace the mounting pads

[Singleton]

66 grills are obviously different than 67's, but here is how I fixed mine last year. Similar to the way PaintGuy mentioned above, using a U-shaped piece of aluminum, and riveting it in place. The clip nut is then installed, but not shown.

[Sammy B]

Smart. That's pretty close to what I have going on, but with the upper tabs, I just used the steel mesh and JB weld. No rivets. I'm not too worried about those, it's the lower tabs don't have much supporting plastic to hold them together that have broken off mine. Fortunately, the tabs were still attached to the metal support.

[barrierblue66]

Nice idea Mr Singleton....... matching '66 and '06. I had the same thought a few times The '06 wold have to be blue though.

[george kujanski]

The tab portions on mine were all fractured and useless so I bent up some metal "U" shaped brackets to fit inside the remaining portions of the mounts and glued it in with glass and resin. Added a thick washer to the top so the clip nut would fit on at the same level as the original.

George

[Sammy B]

Little washer reinforcements:



Reinforced upper tabs (damn mesh on the right slide slid out of place):


JB Weld filled cracks on the front side:


Smoothed down:


Just need to tape off the black parts and paint them up now. Having a hard time finding anything in Argent Silver.

[69Customs]

Another thing that will work is fiberglass resign. Just use tape to hold a form, mix it up without the fiberglass and pour the sticky stuff in. After it hardens, pull off the tape and it will stick to almost anything. Drill your new mtg holes and your good to go. I've used it many times on plastic.

[Sammy B]

I considered it, but ended up going with JB. If that fails, fiberglass will be my next line.

[bdk1976]

I've used fiberglass resin with mixed results on plastic pieces - may have something to do with the type of plastic it was used on?

I have a beat up set of '66 GTO grilles I need to repair and a minor repair on a set of '67 Catalina grilles and am following this thread (and looking for other options).

Anyone know what type(s) of plastic were used on these grilles through the years? Anyone tried one of those plastic welders they sell at harbor freight/eastwood/etc?

I also saw this thread a while ago on another forum and filed it away - may be of interest to some:

http://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/...0&fpart=1&vc=1