defroster connector unhooked? help!

My daughter's long armed friends accidentally unhooked the connector from the back window defrost on her 97 Malibu. I can see from a prior post that someone mentions reconnecting the connector to the grid with grid line repair liquid. Where do you get this at? Autozone looked at me like I was nuts. With that old of a car, I'm not going to replace the back window just to fix the defroster, but there's got to be a fix I hope. Below is the post from 2005 that mentions being able to reattach to the grids.

Thanks!



If you have a multimeter, check continuity from the connector to the grid. The connector is most likely not making good contact with the grid. I used the grid line repair liquid around the connector to to help reconnect the connector to the grid.

Hope this helps.

I’m a bit confused with your post but I’ll try to decipher the best I can. If the connector is unhooked can you not just reconnect it or did it break off? If it’s broken you can try to solder a wire directly to the pad. If that’s too tricky maybe some form of epoxy or the glue that they use to hold up the rear view mirror. The grid repair kit that was mentioned normally came with a small bottle of the repair fluid, a template and a brush but I haven’t bought it in years. I hear nail polish works on grids but I’ve never personally used it or checked its conductive properties.

Back in Summer '03 the driver's side connector came off on my old '98 Malibu. My dealer insisted that the entire rear window be replaced, but since I still had the extended warranty, I didn't complain. Your daughter's friend maybe just tapped the connector - it was probably getting ready to fall off anyway.

I've never heard of an acceptable solution since then as to actually reattaching it to the original rear window, and don't know why.

Jeez, come to think of it, things on that gen Malibu did seem to fall off windows. I think my inside rearview mirror fell off 3 or 4 times in 6 years, but then this is South Florida. OTHER things are plaguing my '04 Maxx, with greater and greater frequency. My last Chevy, for sure.

There is no way to reconnect - it came/broke off from the window, so somehow it needs to be reattached and make a connection with the grid. Superglue didn't work.

Here's an interesting link. http://www.frostfighter.com/ Here's another one, http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4221212.html