Hurricane Hinge Inner Side by chokinghazard

Last crawled date: 4 years ago

Hurricane hinges are normally found on pickup topper windows and teardrop camper galleys. In order to prevent water intrusion, they are made of two continuous pieces of extruded metal that slide together from the side. They can be hard to find and replace, and expensive at around $90 for a 4 foot section.
My pickup truck topper had a brittle inner side, which is the side attached to the glass door. It was cracking around the rivets one by one, so the glass door was in danger of falling off. First I epoxied the inner side back in place, but that did not hold for long.
Later I designed this part to replace the inner side, adding material to allow for glue / epoxy and compensate for plastic being weaker than metal. Due to printer Z axis constraints I used 5 sections to cover the necessary length. I printed in black ABS in order to tolerate high temperatures and ultraviolet light.
I removed the old rivets and epoxy, cleaned the surface and epoxied these pieces in. It's held the window in place in daily direct sunlight just fine since Aug 2017 - but I'll update this if it fails.