need a fix for this (buy, sell, engine, costs)

[ovi8]

This is the inside door panel of a Merc C300. In all their engineering genius, they decided to use a plastic door handle with a plastic loop that takes the stress of a lever-pull. The ring breaks over time, a now-common issue, and they don't sell the handle by itself. The whole panel costs $650. A junkyard wants $300.

Does anyone have any clever ideas on how to clamp/solidify the ring so it doesn't break again? It's just crazy-glued back together at the moment. We tried putting 2 washers above and below it but the clip that slides into the hole (pic 2) leaves no space for additional pieces to collar it. Seems the only other option is to fabricate something to hold the ring as one.

[Hemlock140]

Sounds like the perfect application for a 3D printer, but not likely to be worth buying one just for that.

You could take off the good one from the other side, and take it in to be scanned and printed, buy 100 or so, and then sell them on Ebay for $100 each to others with that problem. I have done a few repairs on similar stressed plastic items that broke. I drilled a small hole on each side of the remaining part, then wrapped thin, strong wire around several times to form a strong loop, then use plasti dip to cover the wire and keep it from cutting in or rusting.

[ukrkoz]

So what exactly is broken? Fabtech 60 second two part resin can fix a lot, except that I can't tell what is damaged.

[ovi8]

^ in pic 1, the metal-looking ring is actually plastic and was broken in half. You can see the line(s) where it's been glued back together. I'm not sure that adhesive will do the trick as this is a lever-pull straining against where it broke each time the door needs to be opened. If it can, it seems like a nice $35 fix.