Date:         Mon, 1 Mar 1999 09:35:24 -0800
Reply-To:     Alistair Bell <albell@UVIC.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Alistair Bell <albell@UVIC.CA>
Subject:      windshield washer resevoir repair
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Two of the three mounting brackets on the  windshield washer resevoir of my
'82 Westy broke. I unscrewed the bolts, detached the wiring to the pump,
cut the tubing and brought the assembly inside. The resevoir appeared to be
made out of nylon rather than polyethylene so I figured it would be worth
trying to repair the brackets. The pump pulls straight up and out of a
rubber grommet that connects it to the resevoir. The pump still works fine
after all these years. I cleaned up the resevoir and roughend the areas
around the broken brackets with some coarse sandpaper. One of the broken
brackets was lost so I made a substitute from some 1/8" lexan (bent to a
right angle, heated in the oven, approx 200C).
I glued the brackets on with some PL Premium polyurethane construction
adhesive (great stuff for all kinds of gluing jobs, comes in tubes that you
pop into your caulking gun, its thick and gooey, moisture catalysed curing,
foams/swells a bit upon curing, cures hard), and taped them in place while
glue cured.

Reassembled next day, put new tubing on pump (connected to rest of tubing
behind the upper rad grill), cleaned up electrical contacts and
reinstalled.

I am please that the repair has held up.


Alistair