tailgate defrost

[dmccaig]

Dear Panthers,

Only the center four bands o my tailgate defroster are working. Anyone know how to repair?

Donald

[DerekTheGreat]

I had the same problem with my '85 LTD, only two bands worked. I bought a defroster repair kit from Permatex at the Irish parts store. Was very time consuming to do but I got all but 1 line to work again.. You have to have good eyes or some sort of instrument that enables you to find the breaks in the grid, then use the stuff in the kit to patch those breaks and voila, you'll have a working grid again.

[dmccaig]

Thanks.
Donald

[87gtVIC]

I have done this repair to the 1994 Ford Escort I used to own.

I purchased (and still have) the permatex defrost grid repair kit. It comes with an inch or so long reusable stencil to use as masking. You paint the metallic material inside of it to make your fix. I found that the stencil was a bit too wide and made the defrost grid look nonuniform. I went to masking tape and a good eye for the next repairs. Make sure to use a quality masking tape so you dont get any bleed through at the edges. All in all the kit did its job. The hard part was finding the faulty areas.