Is there glue or a specific velcro product that can withstand the heat inside a car during the summer?

March 4, 2004 2:36 PM

In need to find a a way to attach the hook portion of some velcro inside my car to hold an iPod. Is there glue or a specific velcro product that can withstand the heat inside a car during the summer?
posted by machaus to travel & transportation (8 comments total)

two part epoxy is good to a few hundred degrees C, i believe.
posted by andrew cooke at 2:40 PM on March 4, 2004

You might want to do some searches on some PDA web sites (visorcentral.com, brighthand.com, etc.)... some company makes a mountable case for PDAs to dashboards. I'm betting an ipod would fit nicely in it. From what I can recall it's sealed on all sides yet leaves the front face open so it can be read.
posted by dobbs at 3:12 PM on March 4, 2004

I bought some adhesive velcro at the hardware store a while back and stuck it to a plastic surface. I don't know the composition of the adhesive but it was thick and gummy. I used some sandpaper to score the plastic surface first, washed away that dust, and then applied a dab of crazy glue to the corners to keep them from peeling back. I haven't subjected the whole rig to great heat, but it's very very solid as far as I can tell.

Alternatively... I've learned to expect all adhesives to fail eventually. You might consider bolting some kind of hard surface, a thin piece of wood or plastic, to your dash, and then glueing the velcro to that. This way, when the adhesive fails, you just replace the mounting entirely, instead of getting stuck with a big crusty stain on your dash that you can't do anything with.
posted by scarabic at 4:59 PM on March 4, 2004

Contact cement would probably work well, too.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:02 PM on March 4, 2004

At the risk of being flogged for not answering your exact question, I wonder if you've seen the line of non-invasive car accessory mounts from Pro-Clip. They simply snap in over a vent or alongside a trim panel edge with no tools, and leave no marks.
posted by Tubes at 6:53 PM on March 4, 2004

My car has been recalled 14 times. Resale value is no longer a concern.
posted by machaus at 7:10 PM on March 4, 2004

I have about two inches of basic hardware store velcro tape on the top of the dashboard -- mounting for a handheld GPS receiver -- that survived last summer entirely without incident. It has a gummy adhesive that seems at first like it would drift, but it set nicely and seems to be very stable. Five bucks down at ACE Hardware will get you more velcro tape than you need by about 11 inches.

Make sure you don't have any conditioning products, such as Armor-All or the like, on the surface you want to velcro. Armor-All'd surfaces are incredibly immune to adhesives of almost every kind.
posted by majick at 7:18 PM on March 4, 2004

Armor-All used in the vehicle will result in a foggy haze coating the windows for years to come. Best to never let that vile stuff inside the car!
posted by five fresh fish at 10:29 PM on March 4, 2004