Fabrication challenge

Fellow shooters,
I broke the glove box latch strike plate on my old plymouth (‘67 Satellite) a while ago and surprisingly it has been impossible to find a replacement. Its a tiny part, not worth a long drive and time off work to try to find a junkyard car.
Its just a small piece of spring steel, there has to be a way to repair it or fabricate a new once. I was thinking maybe micro-welding, but it would need to be able to withstand the repeated impact of the glove box latch (hence spring steel). Thoughts, metalworkers?

TIG welding it would be the way to do it. Unless its actually springy its not likely to be spring steel.  If you can hold it with pliers and bend it to find out to confirm. About a 5 min job, 15 if you want it smootehed out nice. If you cant get it done locally send it to me with a sase return envelope and Ill fix it for you.

Simplest thing (but not easiest) is to befriend some old hard core MOPAR guys, they are bound to know of one sitting in a parts bin. Is the tab that is broken supposed to be flush with the rest of the part or is it offset slightly? If you need remade from spring steel, you would want to get annealed stuff, drill/cut, and then heat treat. Does a file skate on the metal or bite?

That looks like something I’d fab out of a door latch strike plate or a scrap piece of 14 ga. with a file and drill.

Thank you all for the responses.
 
I can twist the piece with pliers and it springs back, but i can get a file to bite on the edge.. hard to tell what steel it is exactly. Coupebuilder, if you are still willing to try tig welding I would appreciate it. Doesnt need to be smooth or pretty, the piece just needs to be strong to withstand impact. Another thing I should have mentioned, the tab projects out at 90' from the base. 

As far as fabricating a new one, its pretty small, only 0.030" thick and only about 1-1/2 wide. I suppose the biggest challenge would be finding scrap steel of the appropriately strong and springy stuff.

1075 or 1095 steel, maybe.

'Blue Tempered Spring Stock' is 1095, commonly available, but it's not gonna bend like that without cracking. If you can find a scrap, it can be annealed, formed, and re-hardened.

I’d make it out of this.


https://www.onlinemetals.com/buy/material?q=%3Aprice-asc%3AMaterial%3ACarbon%2BSteel%3AShape%3ASheet%252FPlate%3AAlloy%3AA1008%3AThickness%3A0.0299%2522

The easy way is to waterjet a blank then form the return latch portion. If you take a punch then dimple the radius of the return it will stiffen that up.

Tin snips, fine file, drill, hammer or maybe pliers to bend, and a small vise. Not sure if it really needs to be spring steel if it’s just a strike plate. Hence just bend the tab. But maybe I’m not envisioning how it interacts.

Maybe make it out of thicker sheet like 18 ga. It maybe wouldn’t need to be spring steel if it’s heavier ga.

Have you searched the car's sister lines?  Years ago Dad and I needed a window switch for the Continental Mark II.  No way on earth to find one until a good old boy said its the same switch in T-Birds.  No problem after that.

It was in the Belvedere line, so may share parts.  It is possible that part made the jump to the 68 model year, therefore may be a Road Runner (shared body) part as well.  As it happens, my neighbor has a ‘69 Road Runner (He bought it new!).  I will ask him about it when I see him, maybe take a look.

My grandmother owned one of 70’s 3rd gen. Satellites.  She only drove it occasionally and was sold in the early 2000’s with 19,000 original miles!

SmokinNJokin wrote:Thank you all for the responses.
 
I can twist the piece with pliers and it springs back, but i can get a file to bite on the edge.. hard to tell what steel it is exactly. Coupebuilder, if you are still willing to try tig welding I would appreciate it. Doesnt need to be smooth or pretty, the piece just needs to be strong to withstand impact. Another thing I should have mentioned, the tab projects out at 90' from the base. 

As far as fabricating a new one, its pretty small, only 0.030" thick and only about 1-1/2 wide. I suppose the biggest challenge would be finding scrap steel of the appropriately strong and springy stuff.

Fabricating a replacement from an M1 Garand en bloc 8 round clip comes to my mind.

“Fabricating a replacement from an M1 Garand en bloc 8 round clip comes to my mind.”

^^^ it does not come any cooler than this ^^^

Already spring steel, 90 degree bend… 5-10 minutes, done.

Fantastic idea, i should heat the metal with torch before bending, right?

SmokinNJokin wrote:Fantastic idea, i should heat the metal with torch before bending, right?

Smokin,
Without setting them side by side, I can’t be sure, but it seems that the 90 degree bend is already there.  Place the old part against the clip, and cut (snips or hacksaw blade) and file away all the metal on the clip that isnt present on the latch. 

Snip or cut away one side of the clip. Cut off all but a center strip of the other side, which will become the tongue that is broken off on your part.  The flat base of the clip will become the large flat part of the latch.  Drill a couple holes for screws. File or snip the remains till they fit the glovebox.

Edit - heating it risks losing the temper of the spring steel and making it brittle.

Hope that helps.

Check Ebay: "67 Plymoth Satellite glove box latch" There is one for a 58 that looks very similar! It doesn't look like a 90 degree bend but "folded" back on itself!

Smiles,

If you haven't made a SLED for a Garand from a clip, you'll be in for a surprise cutting it. 'Harder than woodpecker lips ' comes to mind.

Cutoff wheel in a Dremel. No idea how you'd drill holes in it, other than to let it rub until it gets hot.

Guy in our club built some fixtures and milled them with his VMC. It was brutal on carbide endmills, and he spent a fair bit of time deburring them afterwards. Said he'd never waste his time again.

Thankfully, a long shot came through on one of my mopar forums and someone found one!

Will, i am a huge Satellite fan, had a '73 4-door as a kid (my 2nd car), then later got a nicer 68-4 door, and after years of searching found my 67 2-door. It is a beast. Turns heads like nothing else on the street, people react more strongly to this car than any other I have seen. Its actually kind of an annoyance, people are always trying to yell at me at stoplights. Im deaf, the car is loud, and its usually something like "what year is that" or my favorite "did you build it or buy it like that". The other one I love is when a guy walks up, no introduction, and tells me he has a 1970 something or 1980 something corvette or camaro... completely unrelated. And I stare at him blankly and say, "oh cool, thats great... " people are weird.

The upside is, I live in an area with the rudest, meanest, most distracted and most aggressive drivers on the planet. And I can say that with confidence haven driven in many other countries and all over this one. But thankfully, people are really polite and give me a wide berth in this car. If im in my beat up, daily driver station wagon every teenage guy in $70k truck feels the irresistable urge to punish me by cutting me off and running me off the road.

Nice and clean! 383 car?

Nice and clean! 383 car?  I had a mint condition 68 charger, sold it in 2012. It was the cleanest car Ive ever come across. Love the old Mopars!

Its actually a driver, i used to be a helicopter mechanic and am fanatical about torques, alignment, hardware stackups, wiring routing, addressing vibrations, etc. So over the last few years I have completely torn the car apart and rebuilt everything and it is rock–solid.

360/ 727 auto/3.23 sure grip. I never liked big block cars, felt too much like driving a truck. This one accelerates like a 440 car but can actually corner, 300 less pounds on the front end and very good suspension. 6 second 0-60 with no launch and no tire burning, running 87 octane. Just stomp on the big pedal and it goes straight. With a bigger carb, better gas, a proper launch and manual shifting i'm sure its much faster, but why bother. Feels great by the seat of the pants, and gear ratio is just right to cruise at 80 without being too loud and vibrating apart.

At least this one you dont have to worry about the Jesus Nut, unless hes behind the wheel in the car next to you~

That's a great looking ride! My first car was a '62 Polara 500 That i pestered a guy in our little town until he sold it to me. Had 100,000 miles and the torqueflite was bad. Bought a 62 Chrysler Newport for $10 to get another trans and get it going. Won my first trophy at the dragstrip with it.

2nd car was a 68 Plymouth GTX convertible with a 440... something was wrong with the rear tires on it..they would only last 1 summer 

When a beautiful car like that rolls up, and we catch eyes, I simply say “thank you for all the work, expense, and love” put into keeping it up. Classic car guys don’t get enough credit for what it takes and for rolling these beauties around town where we get to enjoy seeing them.

i usually deploy “the nod” that says all…