Repair of tonneau cover a.k.a. hatch cover

Hi there -- well, first, for the record, I have gone several months without an inverter-related warranty repair (See my earlier two)

I went to retract the hatch cover 2 days ago and it went BLAM! and now has no retracting tension. I assume a spring probably broke within. From a little searching, I gather Toyota doesn't sell any parts for this, and a replacement is somewhere like $315-$350 (Does anyone know the part #?)

Has anyone taken one apart? Any idea if there's a replaceable spring?

 

OK, it wasn't the spring. I am actually surprised others haven't seen this failure (maybe some will, along with other plastic failures). One of the plastic endcaps of the cover assembly holds the flattened end of the rod under tension. That part of the plastic gave way and the shape no longer held the end.

The pieces had been bent back toward the correct placement before this picture -- they were more splayed out initially.
I recognized this as the same failure mode we had in a dryer knob. Mr. Prymaat (call him Beldar) had repaired the dryer knob with fiberglass mesh and epoxy, and it's still holding about 9 years later, so I asked if he would try it on the Prius cover part. This is the dryer knob:

For the Prius part, he selected "Plastic Fusion" 2-part acrylic adhesive.

Beldar wishes to state he would have not placed the excess adhesive around the area of the repair if he knew I was going to take pictures.

When putting it back together, wear safety glasses. We put about 12 revolutions of tension, and it seems a bit looser than the original state, but it's enough for now. Hopefully this will spare me having to shop for a replacement for a few years.

 

I purchased in January 2005, but crossed 36k miles some time before the 3 year mark anyway. I couldn't convince myself that the hatch cover is part of the hybrid system, so I didn't think it'd fly at the dealership to go ask for a warranty replacement

 

I'll report in. I hope it does as well as the dryer knob. It's been a couple weeks already.

Meanwhile, I thought of another detail to provide in case someone else tries this. Beldar found two spare screws that just fit into the voids outside of the rectangle shape, and drove them in just a bit, to provide pressure to maintain the original rectangle. Then applied adhesive in 2 stages: (1) into the voids except right around the screws. Let cure, then (2) carefully remove the screws and fill in the remaining holes.

 

FYI, the repair is still fine a year later.

 

FYI, The pictured repair is still fine nearly 6 years later!

 

Repair still good after 8 years!