I have a Frigidaire with plastic rails to retain item on the door shelves. They frequently fail catastrophically. Closing the door with normal force causes the rails to fall off, resulting in breakage of bottles falling off the door shelves and in one case the rail broke, necessitating the purchase of a new (shitty) rail.
I have glued the door rails in the refrigerator compartment using Gorilla Glue; it’s well below the temperature it’s supposed to set, but it worked. Now I’m having trouble with the freezer door rails. I’d like to glue them in place somehow, but what’s going to set at sub-freezing temps? Can I use something that will set if I leave the freezer door open for a while so it sets at something over freezing?
You might look at a nice two component adhesive. LockTite/Henkel should have something that cures in freezing temperatures. Beware of condensation, though. And what’s the direction of the load? Maybe an adhesive won’t solve the problem.
Most fridge rails I’ve seen have slotted into the sides of the molded fridge door, so the primary loads would be shear. On the other hand, pressure against the middle of the rail would tend to cause it to flex in a direction which would cause tensile loads on the ends, and adhesives tend not to be very good against tensile loads.
Maybe some kind of chalk or silicone? There’s some that set firm on the outside, yet retain some flex (e.g. The silicone you use for fish tanks). Plus, I would guess there’s some meant for low temps. Some of the equipment used by researchers in Antarctica has to be held together somehow. The catch is they usually smell terrible until they’re completely set.
And I wouldn’t describe the smell of silicone curing as “terrible”. The smell is acetic acid, which is probably one of the smells you have in your refrigerator already, and which the usual fridge-deodorizing method (baking soda) would be quite effective at neutralizing.
It is the only consumer solution that actually etches the surface being glued, and creates a strong bond. Everything else just sticks to the microscopic imperfections in the surface, and isn’t nearly as strong. But, I would just bite the bullet and let the freezer warm to room temperature, or, at the very least use a hair dryer on the joint for the first 5-10 minutes or so.
The rail attaches via an indentation on each end which slips over an wedge-shaped tab on the door. I’m quite sure they don’t fit snugly, which was why I used Gorilla glue (it expands to fill space, if you haven’t used it.
Some kind of caulk or silicone might be better based on the comments upthread, and yeah, maybe I’ll just have to empty the freezer and put everything in a cooler for a while.
We had better results by replacing those ‘shitty’ rails with a nylon strap. Securing that required drilling a couple small holes in the door, but it seems to work fine.
Hmm. I’m renting now and though I’m fairly handy and I don’t think my landlord would care, I’d worry about hitting something vital–that, he’d care about. Is there any chance I could kill the fridge?
There’s little of importance in the door. If you have a door ice dispenser, you might need to be careful, but if not, there’s just insulation in the door.
