While making repairs on my bad order (BO) cars earlier this evening, I was confronted with having to (try and) reattach a stirrup step on the side of a reefer. That's a pretty delicate job, especially considering they're styrene (or maybe even engineering plastic) with a very tiny surface area for gluing. Most folks would probably just drill a couple holes and replace the stirrup with wire, and I would have done that had I lost it (which would have been very easy to do). But since I had it on-hand, I figured I'd try and use it. But how do you glue it and expect it to hold? For a while now, I've been using a method I use for attaching delicate parts on resin kits. I use a medium viscosity CA, liquid Zip Kicker, a micro-brush, and another old micro-brush that's had the brush removed and the point split. See above (I put a white piece of plastic behind the stirrup so it'd show up in the pic). Here's how I do it:
I've used this method for stirrup steps, airhoses, just about anything where you need it to set up instantly and strongly. The only downside is that the bond may be a bit brittle - there's not much give, and if I were to bang the stirrup step now and it were to break, it'd probably fly off where I couldn't find it. Thankfully, I think I'd have to bang it pretty hard - which (hopefully) isn't likely. Then and only then would I bother replacing it with wire. In the meantime, I'll use this method whenever I have a chance of salvaging the original part. |