September 2017: I noticed that the lower right ear of the center dash panel was cracked. The ear was only held in place because it was trapped between the screw-head and the "Bread Loaf" dash pad to it's right.

Since I was installing a Bread Loaf eliminator kit, now was a good time to address this broken piece of plastic on the center dash panel.

Every plastic repair job is unique so there's no one-size-fits-all approach that works in every case. So, I want to illustrate a technique that worked for this particular repair.

The broken ear had a collar behind the screw hole. It is very likely that the hole and collar split because the screw was over tightened.

I had to find a way to add structural integrity to the piece now that it had broken. I measured the diameter of the collar, found a drill bit that was slightly smaller and made a metal ring out of a paper-clip that would fit around the broken collar to hold the pieces together.

The ring would not provide a fix by itself but when it was embedded in a small amount of Epoxy, any stress caused by tightening the screw would be transferred to the Epoxy and the embedded ring. Hopefully this will be enough of a fix to keep this dash panel fixed for many more years.