How to repair and reinforce broken and brittle plastic with superglue: DeLorean escutcheon repair
I came across a youtube video on how to fix old and/or broken plastic details on a car. You can watch it below. It simply shows how to reinforce broken plastic with superglue and thin paper strips from news paper. Since the escutcheons seem to break very easily and have been hard to come by, i decided to try it out on mine, since both were broken in the same place when I got the car. Escutcheons are the brittle plastic frame on each armrest on the doors, that frame the lock/unlock, mirror- and door open buttons. On the middle it is incredibly thin, and since you need to remove them if you want to get inside the doors, they tend to break.
Basically all you will need is a high quality super glue, tweezers and something pointy to push with. And oh, magazine paper.This is my drivers side escutcheon. My passenger side escutcheon looked the same, and has been fixed in the same way. You can see how little material is actually holding the piece together at the middle.Step one, apply some super glue and press pieces together until they stick. About a minute. Get this step right, because you cant change it. Make sure you have a rest to put the pieces on if you need it.Once the pieces are glued together we can start reinforcing. Because with only glue in such a small area it will not hold.Tiny strips of ordinary morning paper is soaked with super glue and attached across the cracks. Take your time, don’t let glue stick to your tweezers.Continue to add more paper strips, and make sure they cure in between layers.You can continue with a lot of layers. I was even considering filling the gap with plastic weld, but was not sure it would fit afterwords.Done! The two pieces are now one, and seem rigid enough. I have done this to both my escutcheons and they have lasted so far, even when slamming the doors.
