Repair of broken grille tabs
I have had three Crossfire grilles, two on cars and a spare. Both of the car grilles had missing tabs and weakened tabs that could fall off at any moment.
Having some ABS sheet around I decided to strengthen the weak tab on one of them and make a new tab to replace a completely missing one. Weak tabs show a whitish line where it has flexed too much, it also bends too easily.
Taking a piece of .06" ABS sheet I cut a 5/16" wide by 7/16" long piece from it. You have to cut a notch in it to clear the rib that strengthened the tab originally, you can see the notch and rib in the photo.
ABS is easy to cement together, acetone eats it like crazy. So do not flood the parts with acetone, put a little drop of acetone on each end of the broken tab if it has come apart and carefully hold them together at the correct angle. The acetone liquefies the ABS and when pushed together they are practically welded to each other. When the tab is fixed you will need to brace the weld, this is done with the little piece you cut up. put a little drop of acetone on the mating faces of the tab and bracing part, put them together and hold with angled nose pliers until the parts have set together. It might be a wise move to strengthen all of the unbroken tabs with this little modification.
Care has to be taken when removing the grille, carelessness leads to broken tabs. To remove the grille remove the four top screws and lean the top of the grille forward, just enough to lift the tab at the bottom in its slot in the sheet metal grille support. Starting at one end pull the grille gently forward and the grille should come free. Pulling the top of the grille too far forward flexes the bottom slat of the grille, and you do not want to take that to the end result.
This photo was taken with a 1999 Olympus C-2500L digital camera (2.5 megapixel)
which cost somewhere around $1,000 at the time, I got it on eBay for $45 and it is almost mint in its original box with all the accessories. It focuses to .80" and that is the main reason I used it here
I made a completely missing tab from the ABS sheet and the thick wedge shape section was fabricated using two thickness' of ABS joined together and filed to shape. I copied the sizes from the one that matched it on the other side of the grille, the parts where then joined together, this time using Gorilla Super Glue which appears to work on ABS very well. The finished result look just like the photo shown.
Last edited by onehundred80; Dec 15, 2017 at 04:22 PM.