rear hatch strut mount broke

Guess I asked with the wrong wording before as my previous post has disappeared. Anyhoo, one of the mounts broke off the body. Gotta hole there now. Body shop guy wants like $300 to repair it. Any way to repair it on the cheap? JB Weld maybe?
Thanks,
txinga

Year model??? Also a pix would help.

If you just lost the little ball stud, they're about $6 at the dealer. I just had to buy a pair a couple weeks ago.

They'll probably need two days to get them, just so you know...

5-90

It's a 95 Country and I'll post a pic this evening, thanks

The problemo i ran into on my 88 was the nut behind there was rotating making the old one impossible to move. I did some surgery with a dremel tool around the region so i could get in therea nd put a new nut behind it... if you can twist the old one out without incident then great otherwise its gonna be major surgery

Here's a pic of the broke strut mount:

Now that we have a picture, it's easy to see what happened. Orginally, there is (was) a threaded bushing that is swaged into the hole in the body. The strut mounting stud threaded into this bushing.

In your photo, it looks like the bushing is gone, as in fallen out of it's hole in the body.

The BEST fix, of course, would be to install a new bushiing. That's probably what the body shop wanted an arm and a leg to do.

An ALTERNATIVE is to find a "Riv-nut". Basically it's a special kind of overgrown "pop rivet" that, once installed, leaves a threaded hole in the center of the rivet. The threads, of course, must match the size and pitch of those on the threaded stud in your photo.

Riv-nuts can be had at most industrial supply houses who stock speciality fasteners. Unfortunately, the require specialized tools to install. Check to see if these can be rented, etc. if you go this route.

The only other way I can think of to solve this would be to cut a hole in the roof pillar from the INSIDE and fish a nut or threaded plate into the pillar where the stud attaches. That could be a challenge........


Good luck.

thats exactly how mine was ... i cuta slit and installed a nuut on the ned from behind.. this was after considering moving the stud up higher and trying to have it self tap into the sheet metal.... Id be tempeted ot jbweld the hole. hey just thought of something if you could get one of those clip nots the blind nut kind you could prbley cut a slit in the sheet metal and slide it in but i would do the jb weld thing it prob wont hodl forever but its a start

I have tool for that. It's called Grip- sert, it uses inserts sorta like large poprivets and leaves a threaded insert in the hole.