When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
While operating the vert top yesterday heard a loud thump while closing. The top had closed. The large black rear deck trim piece was actually sitting on the closed roof of the car!! Somehow it had popped off during operation. Seems to be a failure of the 6 round nuts which are embedded in the plastic piece. See pics below. Any ideas why this would happen. Thinking about gorilla gluing the round nuts back into the holes and reattaching, but wondering if something else may have caused this. HELP!! One side of the large black rear deck plastic piece. Note the 3 holes where the round silver nuts should be. They’ve popped out of the piece, and remain screwed to the moving arms (which go up and down during operation of top) See through rear windshield. Those 3 round silver nuts should be inside the holes in the deck piece. Trunk view with the large deck piece upside down, can see through windshield where it’s supposed to attach. Not sure why it popped off, there is no glue holding it in. Maybe plastic fatigue/heat????? The rear deck piece in my office.
The top seems to open and close completely, no warnings or anything. But when I got out of the car the large black rear deck trim piece (which moves up and down during operation) was sitting loose on the roof of the car. Bizarre.
One shows the large trim piece sitting in my office. The others show trunk views. You can see where it is supposed to be attached through the rear windshield. There are 3 round nuts on each side which attach by screws to to moving arm on each side. It seems they have all popped out, leaving the 3 round holes in the plastic piece on each side
Yeah I was in shock. I realize I was very lucky because that piece is solid and might have damaged the convertible mechanism or something while it was going up, rather than just kick it into the roof. I live in Hawaii, my garage gets to around 100 many days due to direct sun. The Vert has 22,000 miles and the dash is melted in many places, and the AC was shooting out small black tarry pieces from melted glue. So it probably gets hot enough to allow the plastic to expand enough to loosen the nuts on that piece. Crazy deal.
I ended up fixing it myself after analyzing the problem. I’m not a mechanic or great at this stuff, and it turned out to be very easy. First I removed the small round metal nuts (rivot nuts) which are screwed to the metal bar which moves the deck piece (parcel shelf) up and down (in your picture, you show 2 nuts loose next to their matching holes. The third presumably is pulled out and still screwed to the moving bar which goes up and down with the deck piece). I then used Loctite superglue to glue them back into the matching holes in the deck piece. This worked well with a rubber hammer to tap them in. Once all 3 were glued in on each side and dry, I screwed the deck piece back on (best with top partially up). Whole repair was very quick and has worked perfectly. The design or other flaw (to me) seems to be that the rivot nuts are simply pressed into the plastic deck piece, rather than glued in or screwed all the way through. This would work in an ideal world (without 120 degree garages, or slight asymmetrical torquing when piece raises up and down, or sits horizontal for years, applying stress). Anyway, cheap happy outcome.
Last edited by haleakalag; Apr 26, 2019 at 09:41 AM.
I ended up fixing it myself after analyzing the problem. I’m not a mechanic or great at this stuff, and it turned out to be very easy. First I removed the small round metal nuts (rivot nuts) which are screwed to the metal bar which moves the deck piece (parcel shelf) up and down (in your picture, you show 2 nuts loose next to their matching holes. The third presumably is pulled out and still screwed to the moving bar which goes up and down with the deck piece). I then used Loctite superglue to glue them back into the matching holes in the deck piece. This worked well with a rubber hammer to tap them in. Once all 3 were glued in on each side and dry, I screwed the deck piece back on (best with top partially up). Whole repair was very quick and has worked perfectly. The design or other flaw (to me) seems to be that the rivot nuts are simply pressed into the plastic deck piece, rather than glued in or screwed all the way through. This would work in an ideal world (without 120 degree garages, or slight asymmetrical torquing when piece raises up and down, or sits horizontal for years, applying stress). Anyway, cheap happy outcome.
agree, stupid design. they should have sandwiched it between the 2 layers of plastic. i was thinking of thru-bolting it, and using beige (match color) plastic caps. but i may try the glue idea for a cleaner look.
thanks for the tips.
Y. The entire repair took me less than an hour (trip to buy the loctite took as long), and very clean . I decided on Loctite superglue ultragel after reading about plastic- metal bonding issues with some glues, and it worked well. Easy to screw the piece back on with top partially up and parcel shelf/deck in vertical position. Good luck.
