Quick repair for dash bezel plastic mounting "stalks"
 

Hi All,

As I work on my 1970 GTO, I occasionally encounter damaged threaded extrusions on plastic panels. I’m sure you all have too, at one time or another. The plastic becomes brittle with age and may already be cracked from over tightening of a mounting screw or broken off altogether.

I had the dash out and on the bench for an entirely different reason. However, while doing a general overall inspection, I noticed that the wiper switch was crooked and all three mounting “stalks” for the switch were cracked length-wise along the threaded area used to mount it to the bezel. You can certainly try to glue the crack and “splint” with some tape while the glue sets, but I found a different method others might find helpful.

Basically, I used heat shrink of an appropriate size to close up the crack and apply additional support to the stalk. Of course, this trick depends on the diameter of the stalk in question as heat shrink comes in only so many sizes. In my case, I got lucky and it worked well without glue – your experience may differ.

I thought I’d try it on the worst one first. It looks bad but the deeper the threads go, the better they closed up. I was able to get more than an acceptable amount of tension on the screw without further stressing the plastic.

The switch is now securely mounted and the retaining bracket makes a very good electrical ground for the instrument cluster.

I hope you find this useful. Here are some before and after pics:

Thanks for the tip LK, I think I'll use glue also.

Sweet! Good idea. And if you use the type of heat shrink tube with the glue/sealant already inside it would work great.
I use heat shrink all the time, the pre-glued type will even squeeze the glue out the ends when shrunk so it would probably squeeze the glue right into the cracks of the stalk.