How To Repair Cracked Plastic Ice Chest Liner

Kim and I accept a total of three Igloo 94 quart marine coolers (the large white ones that people take deep sea angling with them). They have a great reputation for durability and come in at a reasonable price (around $130 at Westward Marine if I remember correctly).

You lot can become larger coolers and in that location is a certain temptation to that since a larger volume lets yous concur more ice. If wall thickness (and therefore insulation factor) remain roughly abiding and yous ignore factors like how often the cooler gets opened, how long your ice lasts is basically the ratio of the mass (or book if y'all like) of ice which you lot start out with to the surface area of the cooler. Since this scales less than linearly with the volume, it would make sense to get the largest cooler possible...

And then you sew together against two factors: cost, and mass when you accept the sucker full. Igloo makes coolers that get all the fashion upwardly to 160 quarts. I accept had to aid motility the large ones full of food and ice. Going from 94 to 160 turns an easy two-person chore into a pain in the butt. Moreover, the toll is well more than than double the cost of the 94 quart coolers, and then we seem to be in a scrap of a sweet spot hither.

Remember I said that the Igloo coolers had a reputation for durability? Notation that I used the D word, not the I give-and-take (indestructability). You tin can certainly harm one by being careless, negligent, or stupid.

Back in the fall of 2022, I was some combination of the to a higher place and left a cooler in the grass next to the driveway, inverted, to air out after a party where we served drinks from it. Afterwards a couple (ok, mayhap more than a couple) of months it snowed and while clearing snow I managed to hit it with the tractor bucket, denting the outside and bully the inside. Then I failed to mark the libation unusable so when packing for a camping trip in 2022 it accidentally got filled with ice, so I had to allow it dry out for a number of months before I could repair information technology (melt water had gotten under the liner).

This is how I came to be repairing the cooler in the spring of 2022.

The latches got bent upwardly when I hit the cooler, since information technology was sitting upside down with its weight partially supported on the meridian cover latches. I was able to order a prepare of replacement latches and hinges from Amazon. Since the Igloo people know people are going to corruption their stuff, replacement parts are available in the ordinary channels of commerce. The hinges turned out to not exist messed up, so I stashed them in the toolbox.

In one case I had functioning lid once more I turned my attention to various online forums for a uniform chemical compound to patch the within of the cooler with. I am not sure if these guys use it because they happen to have information technology around for other repairs or if someone who knows what works with what (plastic wise etc) did some enquiry that helped guide making information technology popular, merely Marine Tex Rapid Set Epoxy seems to be the go-to repair compound for it.

On the downside, it is night brown colored and does not blend in well with the color of the cooler.

On the upside, it seems to be holding fine later a year and a half. I followed the instructions on the label and roughed up the inner surface, applied one coat, then afterwards it was dry roughed up a larger expanse and practical a 2d coat over the top.

Here's a picture of the year and a half old repair