car fixin's, part II, or how epoxy and duct tape fix anything

sad, sad duct tape day

So Rusty McRustbucket came back from the auto body shop today. The broken mirror was dangling limply from it's duct tape sling, and I discerned two things:

1. Epoxy doesn't like wet and cold.

2. Duct tape hates direct sun light. [Well, so do I for that matter]

 The weather being considerably nicer today than it was a week ago, I decided to give this whole epoxy thing another shot. And learned that squirtable epoxy, sitting on the mixing palate, sets up in .3 seconds when left in the sun. This, despite the wasted epoxy, was an excellent sign. My mirror was  broken in what I thought initially was three places. But no!

The fourth broken place is hiding out under the foam insert - which is what aparently held the mirror to the car in the first place. This also explains why the mirror dangled limply off the side of the car even after I glued the mirror back together

At this point, I was chock out of squirt epoxy - since about 75% of it had hardened in the sun before I could apply it to my car. But wait! It's our good friend and close cousin, maleable epoxy! Waterweld! At the auto parts store, I hesitated getting the maleable epoxy, but now, I'm really glad I had it on hand. The fail came in when I didn't duct tape the mirror in place while the maleable epoxy set up. The good news is, now I have a contact point for another round of glue, since it's been dry all day and pretty warm.

I know what you're thinking. Wow, that looks like crap. Yeah, yeah it does. Consider the following; your mechanic and the auto body guy tell you the car won't be worth reinspecting in a year. And a new mirror is about $100 used, and that doesn't count labor. And you are under-employed. I am suddenly not above doing it myself.