Fixing broken headlight tabs

[IRSmart]

I was one of the unfortunate ones that got careless when setting my headlights down and broke a tab. Rather than buy a trazillion dollar headlight, I tried my hand at plastic welding since I still had the tab and it was a really clean break. I used a plastic staple welding kit and a plastic welding iron (links below). The steps I took to repair them were:

1. Cleaned off the mud and grit from both pieces.
   
2. Aligned the tab back into position and used the iron to melt a few spots along the crack to “tack weld” the tab into place.
   
3. Used the plastic staple kit to provide the majority of the strength in the new weld. I used 4 in total, one of the large squiggly (yes, that’s a word) staple going along the crack on the top and bottom of the tab, and one small squiggly staple on the sides going against the crack on both sides of the tab. This provided the maximum number of crossing between both pieces of plastic. Then I cut off the excess staples to begin the finishing process
   
4. I took the welding iron and spread out the plastic on top of the holes the staples created, sealing the staples inside the cracks. This also helped to weld the tab back to the headlight more.
   
5. The final step was to take the welding iron and apply new plastic over top of the entire job. I applied a top layer over the staples and the entire crack, spreading it out as best I could. I wasn’t going for looks, you don’t see the repair, but it didn’t come out too badly I think.

All in all the repair took probably 30 minutes, and I only burned myself once lol I didn’t put hulk strength into testing the tab, but a mild strength test feels good as new. And a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new headlight.

These are the only tools I used. There are a lot of options out there, but these are what I chose:

• Plastic staple kit
• Plastic welding iron

The patient. Before:


After:

 

[Brads41789]

What as the brand of the plastic staple kit you used? The link is no longer working. I replaced my factory lights and would like to repair the broken tab before attempting to sell them