Hot Glue Melted in Sunshine in Automobile

Jul 23, 2012 5 Replies

This is a first for me.



I repaired the hinge area of the pushbutton on my wife's garage door opener (about the size of a pack of cigarettes) as the plastic pushbutton hinge had cracked off. I used a new piece of plastic and hot glue. My wife just came in from outside and said she could not get the garage door to come down as she was leaving. I told her I would check. When I pushed on the button, the indicator light did not come on, and the button did not seem to even move. After some time with a knife, I was able to get the cover off, and discovered that the hot glue from the hinge repair had melted and run all over the inside of the opener, including along the edges of the microswitch that operated the opener. That esplained the problem.



The car was outside yesterday afternoon in the sunny area of our dirveway and I guess things were hotter than the glue melting temperature. A few minutes with a knife and a soldering iron (to melt some of the glue the knife did not reach) removed enough of the glue to make it possible to repair again, this time using fast-setting epoxy that I am pretty sure will not soften in the heat. Whatever glue is left should not be enough to cause any further complications, and hopefully the epoxy will hold next winter when temps can get down to zero if we leave the car out.


This is no surprise. Hot glue WILL melt in hot sun. It's not intended for such uses. It's mostly just for crafts that are not exposed to weather. Personally I find little use for it, but craft persons use it a lot. Epoxy is a better choice. They do make epoxy specifically for plastic. I've used it and was satisfied. Regular epoxy may not work well on many plastics.

Sometimes I use it to hold something together for applying something good.

Greg

I've seen a leather worker use it to hold leather together before sewing the leather. I suppose the same could be done to sew fabric too.

Reason #2 that we moved from the area, Bob.

gregz wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.o rg:

Liquid Nails construction adhesive works even on some plastics. it won't melt in the sun,either!

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