Plastic fantastic

In New Zealand a car or truck which hasn’t had its registration paid for more than 12 months has its registration cancelled.

To re-register the vehicle, ownership has to be proved and it has to pass a rigorous inspection. This is called ‘compliance’ and can only be undertaken by a few testing stations.

A young relative of mine had bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee which, it turned out, had been de-registered. To get the Jeep re-registered, Dave, the compliance man, said that we would have to fix a couple of problems. Anyone who knows these wagons won’t be surprised to hear that the rear brakes required extensive work, including replacement of the phenolic pistons in the wheel cylinders which had swollen and jammed. Also, at some time in the past, the Jeep had run into something with a hefty smack and the bull bars had been pushed into the front bumper, poking a ragged hole, fringed with sharp shards of plastic which were clearly dangerous.

“Plastic welding was the obvious fix if the bumper was made of thermoplastic, as bumpers usually