repairing your hatch strut mount
 

Or how I learned to love fiberglass!

Hoping to give back to this site with info on how I opted to repair a rear hatch. No expert, but I'm happy with the results and feel it should be plenty strong. Downside is the exposed bolts that can be seen from the inside, but what the heck, its a truck, right? ;)

I bought a rear hatch that was known to have a ripped out strut mount. When I sanded I found two other areas of repair, all poorly done with bondo. I got some real fiberglass resin and mat and fixed those up before dealing with the strut mount. Here is what I started with after clean up:

http://dr-data.net/start.JPG

I reinforced both the outside and inside wall:

http://dr-data.net/top.JPG


http://dr-data.net/inside.JPG

Looks better after sanding. I then made a bracket out of 2" x 1/8" aluminum stock. I thought about mounting the bracket to the inside, or just bolting the strut mount to a repaired fiberglass section, but the former seemed too hard and the latter too weak.

Hence, I opted to mount to the outside via bolts. Was going to use machine head screws with the nuts on the inside, but too hard to get up in there and did not want to expand the hole, so on the outside they went. I used a piece of the aluminum as a support on the inside to spread the load.

http://dr-data.net/stage1.JPG

Details of the mounting:

http://dr-data.net/fit1.JPG

http://dr-data.net/fit2.JPG

A quick test showed that the mount worked:

http://dr-data.net/works.JPG

So I glassed up the rest of the area and am ready to paint.

http://dr-data.net/finish1.JPG

http://dr-data.net/finish2.JPG

I found this a fun project and suggest anyone else with top repairs pending get to sanding!