My good friend Rob McDonald got a hold of me a few days ago. Apparently the rear door handle broke on his funky Indian Tuk Tuk. A Tuk Tuk is a 3 wheeled sort of motorcycle/car. Used extensively in countries like India, Thailand, and the Philippines. Rob got the idea to use one to sell wine. Well not just any wine - but St. Mayhem. I guess when you name the wine St. Mayhem, you have to expect things like broken door handles. Basically the handle was a poorly constructed cast piece that had seen it's days of hard use. It had incorporated a lock mechanism, but that looked like it has been non-functional since the days of British rule. My basic repair concept was to turn the OD of the broken area down, create a sleeve, then glue and pin it together. When I looked the parts I found this - a drywall screw that was used in a previous repair attempt. First I found a chunk of stainless steel tubing that had the right OD (0.625"), but needed to be bored out. I decided a wall thickness of around 0.030" would be about right. After that I had to turn the OD of the two halves down to 0.565-ish to fit inside the sleeve. Hanging on to the handle side of things required a bit of creativity to make an aluminum fixture that could be used to clamp on the handle shaft. After the 3 parts were created, I ran the broken parts through my bead blaster to remove any loose material and create a nice surface for the glue to adhere. I mixed up some JBWeld and epoxied them together. I didn't take a picture, but after the glue set up, I drilled two cross holes around 0.050" and drove 2 finish nails through to create a couple of pins. Hopefully they'll keep it from separating and twisting. I think the repair looks pretty good. We'll have to see how it holds up to St. Mayhem!
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