DIY Parcel Shelf Bracket Repair Saved Me ££s

Such is life, with all second hand cars, you always find something you hadn't spotted during the purchasing process over the first few days/weeks of ownership.

Monty was no different, the first of those slight niggles came in the form of a rattling parcel shelf, the route cause of which was two broken parcel shelf brackets.

Both had broken in exactly the same place, the foremost locating pin had snapped off from the main moulding, probably due to misuse or abuse by a previous owner.

However, a clever engineering fix by my Dad restored the bracket and saved me a fair bit of cash in the process.

In the image below you can see the upper of the two locating pins in completely gone, with no sign of it in rolling around in the boot. All signs pointing toward needing a replacement.

 

Knowing Audi would more than likely have me buy a whole parcel shelf, not just the brackets i.e. relieve me of an obscene amount of cash for the privilege, I settled on just getting a second hand one from a scrap yard.

However, I showed my Old Man the problem and he was confident he could come up with a fix using some spare materials we had lying around. Not all heroes wear capes...

In case you did want to try and source yourself a new S5 / A5 parcel tray bracket, only the left hand one appears to have a part number on it (8T8.867.769.C).

Happily, I unscrewed the 4x Torx head screws holding the brackets to the parcel tray, handed them over and eagerly awaited his solution.

The one thing I said to him was to make it look as OEM and integrated as he could.

Out came the drawing board, I believe those hieroglyphics next to the dimension lines are values in the ancient language called Imperial ;)

Basically, his plan was to fabricate some metal inserts that he'd then bond into the main bracket moulding. Tap them, then screw in a turned metal spigot to form the locating pin that had snapped off.

Here you can see the first of the metal inserts bonded into place.

He then built up the form of the bracket using some super hard two part epoxy (Evo-Stik Hard and Fast Metal Epoxy Putty) that dries almost like a plastic, the same stuff we used when custom moulding my Rover 25's Cupra R splitter. Once it'd set he filed and sanded it into shape.

Matching the existing locating pin exactly, Dad turned and threaded some aluminium spigots that he screwed into the metal inserts.

Finally, the pièce de résistance, he sheathed the spigot in rubber to match the OEM finish.

Needless to say I'm dead chuffed with the result, Dad's workmanship never ceases to impress me. When fitted in the car, I'd argue it's better than factory, very rigid with absolutely no hint of a rattle, spot on.

Let me know what you think to my Old Man's handy work in the comments below, have you saved any parts from the bin with some good old fashioned re-engineering?

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