Rear Fascia Taillight Thread Repair

[refugeefromcalif]

That's Tuffy but, I'll guess door #1...

George

[cybercusp]

That's Tuffy but, I'll guess door #1...

George

Ding ding ding ding.

[larryk]

Ding ding ding ding.

I just had a lot of work done on my car. It had been decades since it was last running. I'm doing various work on it myself at this point. One of the things done was updating the tail light bulbs to LED as well as the bumpers being painted. The tail light and license plate screws were replaced in the process. The replacements used were stainless. The right tail light turn signal had faded to a light yellow and although it's possible to color it to fix the problem, I bought a new tail light since the right one is still available. I figured I could color the old one and keep it as a spare. As the left one is no longer available I figured the right one would soon follow into obsolescence. So I also got the correct screws to replace the wrong ones used. Unfortunately the wrong ones weren't just stainless but were sheet metal screws (at least for the tail lights) which have now stripped out the jacknuts. I've tried to keep the car as original as possible and my OCD makes things like this very annoying. I can't even put the new tail light on and use these screws as they're too big for the holes in the tail light and apparently were forced through the plastic. I'm not even going to get into how the jacknuts on the license place frame are warping the bumper over 1/4" because something must be blocking the top two of them. As much as it seems to be a bit of a pain I think the best choice it to replace the tail light jacknuts now.

The size of the screws from DMC is 8-32 and they have matching jacknuts (I haven't found them much cheaper anywhere else) and I'm assuming I can drill out the old ones with a bit slightly larger than the hole so it cuts through the side metal pieces and snaps into two pieces. This is the same I do to remove molly bolts from walls. There seem to be quite a few choices for tools to help with the install.

Are there any suggestions for an easier way to do this or is this just a bad idea?

I am afraid I'm going to be finding more saturday night special "repairs" to correct as I go forward.

IMG_20230704_114926741.jpg

[DMC-Ron]

Before drilling, I would suggest you first try using an 8-32 tap and see if you can rejuvenate the threads in the nutserts.
Ron

[larryk]

Before drilling, I would suggest you first try using an 8-32 tap and see if you can rejuvenate the threads in the nutserts.
Ron

I think I have to replace the jack nuts as the correct screws just slide in/out without touching much of anything now. Power tools make it easy to do all sorts of things the wrong way.