"Should have taken photos"

[unixronin]

I just repaired the broken shifter lock button on our Volvo.  The button was badly cracked when we bought the car (a used Volvo XC70 with 98,000 miles on it, for $7000), and broke into three pieces during the first winter we had the car.  I pulled the pieces out, tried various different adhesives without success, and eventually welded the parts back together and reinstalled it. That lasted until last summer or fall, when it broke again along one of the original cracks.  I took the pieces out again, put them on my workbench intending to try another repair, and there they got buried.

Recently, having come up with a plan I thought would work, I dug them out again and had another go.  Yesterday, I broke off all the old weld filler plastic, re-welded the break and the other old crack from both sides to hold it together while I worked on it, sanded all the affected outer surfaces level and slightly rough, then heat-molded a sheet of textured black 3/16" ABS onto it to fit the compound curvature of the front face perfectly.  I then mixed up a batch of two-part epoxy, bedded the button into the new ABS face and epoxied it there, cut a piece of glass mat to fit inside it, and epoxied that into place inside the button to make an internal fiberglass reinforcing layer.  Then, after all of the epoxy cured, I trimmed and sanded the ABS faceplate to the edges of the button and buffed all the exposed edges.

I just went out and installed the repaired lock button (now easily three times its original mass) back into the shifter.  (The dealership, by the way, won't even attempt to replace the button; they'll replace the entire shifter.)  With the dubious benefit of unwanted practice, it only took me about ten minutes to get it in this time, using only a pair of needle-nose pliers and (believe it or not) a dental pick.  It's working perfectly, and looks as though it's always been there.

Functionality restored, cosmetics restored, roughly $400 dealer parts-and-labor bill saved.

WIN.