You know it's hot in the midwest when this happens!

Good times! Came out to the parking lot to find this today...



Thought it had been broken into at first until I saw the problem....10 year old Dodge window adhesive is no competition for the St. Louis heat!

So at this point I was kicking myself for replacing the stupid "hatch shocks" because my rear window was standing straight up without the latch holding it down. I was able to pry one of the hatch shocks loose which made the window stay down long enough for a VERY, VERY SLOW drive home. I was hoping the entire way that the top two brackets didn't decide to do the same thing sending the window flying off into traffic! Luckily the window stayed put!

Seems silly that Dodge would attach the window this way. I would have thought at least part of the bracket would have somehow been embedded in the glass itself. Of course, I'm not a car manufacturer or an engineer...just the guy who has to call an autoglass company next week to get his window fixed! :-(

Anyway, just had to share...

Did it actually damage the glass, or will a tube of crazy glue / liquid nails take care of it?

No damage to the glass that I can see. Hopefully it's an easy fix!

i hate to say this, but the 80 and 90,s corvettes studded the latch to the glass.... thats a bummer dude..

clean it off really good and than sand both surfaces with 100-200 grit (only where they meet) and use JB-Weld, easy fix!!!

Makes me wonder how easy it would be to pop into the hatch that way without breaking the glass or setting off the alarm ---

See the write-up on this fix: http://forums.viperclub.org/threads/653810-Rear-hatch-unglued-on-my-GTS-again!

Jerry

Yikes!!!!

alwayscode390 said:

Makes me wonder how easy it would be to pop into the hatch that way without breaking the glass or setting off the alarm ---

Click to expand...

Alarm switch is on the lift cylinder not the latch.

You know this just happened to me this weekend at a show in Florida. Went in for lunch and walked our to a wide open car. I'm still amazed that know one walked off with my camera. So how did you fit yours and hows it holding up?

Finsfan said:

You know this just happened to me this weekend at a show in Florida. Went in for lunch and walked our to a wide open car. I'm still amazed that know one walked off with my camera. So how did you fit yours and hows it holding up?

Click to expand...

Did you see this earlier in the thread? http://forums.viperclub.org/threads/653810-Rear-hatch-unglued-on-my-GTS-again%21
I remember reading about this a few weeks ago. My first thoughts were Eastwood or 3M for adhesives.

Sorry for the late reply, but here's how I fixed it. It's holding strong so far, but the heat has dropped off a little here in St. Louis so I haven't put it to the true heat test again yet.

The first two pictures are again just close-ups of the old adhesive showing how it came apart. It took a little grinding to get the bracket down the bare metal again. I was able to chip away the excess on the glass with a flathead screwdriver and it came off very easily. I cleaned the surfaces with window cleaner as well as some rubbing alcohol.




The 3M product that I used to re-attach it is shown here as well as my ultra high-tech clamping technique which held the bracket until the product set up. It says it sets up within an hour and is bonded strongly enough to be worked with and is fully cured within 8 hours. I took the car for a test drive after 3 hours and it did fine. The excess can be trimmed away with a razor blaze, but I will admit that I have just left it as-is for the time being!



I had the 2-part adhesive ordered through a local body shop where a family member works. That cost me $17 (their cost) which was ultimately the total cost of the fix. And I have plenty of the stuff left over just in case it comes loose again. Could I have found a cheaper product at the auto parts store? Perhaps. But quite honestly I didn't look and really didn't care if I could get a decent quality product that the body shop would have used to do the repair anyway.

My final two cents on the fix... I traced a line with a sharpie marker around the area where the bracket needed to reattach to the glass. I could see the outline fairly well even after the surface cleaning, but I just wanted to make sure for the sake of re-aligning the glass that I got it back in the right spot. I must have done it pretty well, because once everything dried no re-aligning was even needed. Lastly, if this ever happens to you, don't mess around trying to contact "auto glass" companies to come look at it. Some tried to sell me a new piece of glass and most don't have the correct product to fix it anyway. This was an EXTREMELY easy DIY fix, so give it a shot if you run into this issue!