C5 X7 Headlight inner bracket broken - not available in the repair kit :-(

[marsalek]

Dear colleagues,
when removing my front bumper I accidentaly broke away the bracket on my headlamp - the place in the picture, where the screw nr. 70 goes in. Any ideas, how to repair that? This part is unfortunately not available in the repair kits that are sold for the headlamps.

Thank you for any help!
Regards
Karel

[Jay-Bruce]

Yeah, that lug is going to be part of the lamp's main body, and would require a new lamp assembly from the dealer, as the body was never AFIK available separately. So, your only options are to replace the headlight or glue the bracket back on. I'd reccomend getting some good epoxy resin, and some fibreglass "tape" such as this stuff:

https://www.ecfibreglasssupplies.co.uk/ ... 00g-x-25mm

Then coat the two sides of the break with resin, and coat the top and underside of the bracket, along with an adjacent area of the light's main body with eopxy, and laminate it with some of the fibreglass tape, ensuring the tape runs from bracket to well past the join onto the main body of lamp, then laminate it with more epoxy.

Another option might be hot staples:


Or belt and braces, hot staple it AND fibreglass it...

[marsalek]

Jay-Bruce, thank you for the advice! So if I understand you correctly, the headlight body may be glued with two component epoxy. That sounds good. And the reinforcement with the fiber-glass tape seems very diserable, as only glueing back the piece will not last too long

[Paul-R]

I'm unsure this would work as many types of plastic won't bond well to the resin used for GRP. I'll look later to see what plastic is used on our X7.

[MattBLancs]

Good suggestions so far, only to add (and similar to the "hot staples" above) I'd try a bit of "plastic welding" with a soldering iron. If you reinstall the headlamp and broken bracket in place, that would hold the two in position relative to one another. Additional plastic can be fed in from a piece of scrap (coat hangers, cable ties etc can provide the raw materials)

If you have the headlight unit removed it often is marked with the plastic like this

<<PP>>

Which is polypropylene.

Cable ties are nylon. Milk cartons HDPE, coat hangers sometimes PP.

[myglaren]

My son dropped his bike and cracked the fairing. We were recommended this stuff to fix it:

Plastex

We haven't actually bought any yet so can't say how effective it may be.
Expensive though, £23 from eBay.

Also this:

Q-bond

A tenner from Amazon. Again, can't vouch for it as it hasn't been used.

[Paul-R]

If it is polypropylene then the chances of gluing it next to non existent.

Welding is a good idea. There used to be a chap near me who specialised in welding plastic bumpers back together. Those were ABS but the principle is the same as they're both thermoplastic.

[Paul-R]

In a similar vein, this is the repair I did on the 308's headlight five years ago. The aluminium pop rivets are beginning to show their age now against the stainless steel repair but at the time I didn't want to use matching stainless pop rivets because of the greater force needed to pop them with the consequent risk of squashing the plastic.

I've checked the X7 headlight and the black plastic is polypropylene.

[marsalek]

Dear colleagues, thank you for the very constructive ideas and for checking the headlamp material!!!!

Found the PP can be glued with (Ethyl-)cyanoacrylat glue with primer. As a Primer I just ordered Loctite 770. And for the Glue I took UHU with Filler (https://www.uhu.de/de/produkt.7000518)

[Paul-R]

I wish you luck and maybe if the area is not high load or flexible it might work. I am dubious though. Please keep us informed.

[marsalek]

In the meantime, check this Another interesting product is: https://hgpowerglue.com/schweissnaht-aus-der-flasche/ and how this works is there:


But this is just another (Ethyl-)cyanoacrylat glue with primer and a filler...

[marsalek]

Dear colleagues,

thank you all for the constructive help! The polypropylene brackets on the headlamp housing can be successfully glued with a superglue/instant adhesive/cyanoacrylate. BUT only in combination with a PRIMER! I used Loctite 770. As a glue I took something from UHU with a filler https://www.uhu.de/de/produkt.7000518
Actually this is chemically similar to the hgpowerglue that was shown in the linked YT video above. Thoroughly clean the area before glueing.

After 3000 km still holds

At the same time I reinforced the bracket on the other headlamp with the same glue and filler.

[MattBLancs]

Excellent, thanks for feeding back your success with the glue! I'm surprised it worked to be honest, but you've definitely proven me wrong always nice to hear a positive outcome

[marsalek]

Hi Matt, it was not the plan to prove you wrong I got the impression, that the primer is THE Game Changer. Tried glueing two pieces of PP without the primer and it failed. With that primer you would be able to use also a two-component glue with much better results.

[Paul-R]

I am also surprised by the apparent success. I would not naturally have gone down that route!