Clip-on 165 cabinet hinges

Mar 02, 2026 Last reply: 4 months ago 4 Replies
J

Finally got round to replacing one of the 165° hinges on a kitchen cabinet door. The spring-loaded part which kept the door closed had failed.



So off to Wickes to get a replacement pair, as I expected the geometry to be different and to avoid strain it was best to replace both hinges by a matching pair. These looked fine:

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As soon as I opened the pack it became apparent that the hinges were different from their picture on the webpage. They looked more like the soft-close clip-on ones at

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Unfortunately there were no instructions at all in the pack! I could only guess how the hinge clipped to the fixing plate. Some time searching on the internet came up with a slightly clearer picture, but even that didn't show how they fitted together:

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There was a short video at

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, but at around 45 seconds where they start to show how the two pieces clip together the chippy's hands obscure the important bit! I eventually worked out how to clip them together, but in the end had to do it "back-to-front" by clipping the plate onto the hinge and then screwing the plate to the cabinet. That was because one of the plates would not clip to the hinge without pressure from pliers forcing them together.



And, of course, the old screw holes on the hinge side didn't quite match with those of the screw positions on the new hinge. No surprise there! :-)



Now all I've got to do is get the positioning right. I'll report back in a couple of years...


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J

Apologies. Link should be:

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T

I am surprised that you are having trouble matching screw holes as the hole spacings on all hinges across manufacturers is pretty universal. On the door side they should be 45mm and on the hinge plate they are a standard

32mm centres.

On Blum clip on hinges which I am most familiar with the cruciform hinge plates have two hook shapes front and back. The front hooks clip over a small bar in the hinge arm and the retaining clip fits into the hooks at the back. This normally works quite well once you have the front hooks clipped correctly on the bar, the arm then easily presses down at the rear allowing the retaining clip to clip in position or at worst require the retaining clip to be held slightly open in order to engage.

It is possible to get the hinge plate back to front and in that case the arm will not clip on even though both ends of the hinge plate look the same. I wonder if your resorting to pliers is because you have the back plates the wrong way round?

Richard

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D

"report back"? Why the hell would anyone be interested in your unique problem?

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J

It was only the ones on the main part of the hinge (that fixes to the door) which were slightly out by 2 or 3 mm.

I had the plates the same way (as far as I could tell the correct way, as it only fitted one way). One went in easily without problem. With the other, I pushed the "button" back as far as I could and let it go. It butted up against the part of the plate it should have slid over, so I had to push that part down to let it slide over. Once it was over it was locked in place like the other one which worked first time.

I had a look at the Blum catalogue in the hope that it showed how the clip fits, but I couldn't see it on the pages for the 155° and 170° hinges.

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