I went out Friday to put a quarter glass into a Dodge Caravan. The glass came with the "power" style latch. However the van was a manual latch. In the NAGS catalog it said the manual latch had to be ordered from the dealer. No real problem except that the power latch is expoxied to the glass. I had to cut it off and urethane the manual latch in place. Time will tell if this was a mistake or not. Has anyone else had this issue? If so how did you solve it? Any tips?

OUCH,must not of done to many of these.Dont feel bad,been there did that.The latch I think your talking about is on the quaterglass.If it is to simplify things take a pair of plyers and unscrew the hing.There is a part glued to the glass and the one part you need to remove can be unscrewed and will remain one part on the glass.Let me know if it helps.:)

we had this problem ,but we just ordered one from the dealer had the glass the same day and it only cost about $30 or $40 more than buying throught the distributor and we didmt have to worry about a come back.

I agree with SmartGlass. It doesn't look like it because the expoxied part is hidden under the mount, but you can screw the mount off and switch over the old one as long as it is still there.

Ninja, I just have to ask....what did you 'cut it off' with?

I'm trying to imagine what would cut through that hard epoxy....

We keep the bracket and the elbows from broken quarters, and the new latches on hand at all times.

About a minute to screw them off, and the new one back on.

Had to epoxy a bracket back on one of those for the very first time the other day, someone else had tried with an odd glue, and without the metal bracket(LOL). We used the 3M structural adhisive after cleaning the adhesive off the glass from the other attempts. New (used) metal bracket, 15 minute setup time, latch back on and customer out the door in thirty minutes. About two weeks later now, customer hasn't called; he had specific instructions to do so if the epoxy failed.

Everybody else wanted to sell the poor guy a new quarter glass. He assumed he would have to buy one after someone elses glue (something clear) failed twice. I never considered urethane. Perhaps it would have been better, but Chrysler epoxies them on, so I did too.

I saved the guy a quarter glass, made a few bucks for the bracket install, but gained a customer for life.

I'm not a newbie anymore, but I sure feel like one. I had no idea that thing screwed off. I saved the old latch...I'm going out to my van to try it right now. I have put several QGs in Caravans, it just so happens I had never run into a manual latch on the newer body style. So far the customer hasn't called back (knock on wood).

I used a long knife to cut through the epoxy. It cut pretty easy. Just had to be careful not to scratch the glass.