Body Clips, Retainers & Fasteners in Dallas, TX

Six things worth knowing before you order

• Bring the broken one in. Clip catalogues are close to useless next to holding the old fastener against the drawer and finding the twin.
• Nylon clips go brittle in Texas heat, so a bumper that comes off in July will snap fasteners that would have survived the same job in February.
• Toyota and Nissan use enough of their own clip patterns that we keep separate drawers, and mixing them is how a splash shield ends up flapping at highway speed.
• Assorted boxes look like a bargain and mostly are not, because two thirds of the assortment fits nothing you own. Buy the twenty you need by the piece.
• Splash shield pins are the single most replaced item behind the counter, and the reason is that a shredded shield takes the wiring loom with it.
• A push retainer is not reusable once the centre pin has been driven all the way through, whatever the person on the video says.
• Weatherstrip fasteners have a soft sealing washer moulded into them, and a standard clip in a weatherstrip hole is a water leak into the footwell.
• Captive nuts behind a panel strip before the bolt does, and a stripped captive nut means a rivet nut tool rather than a bigger screwdriver.
• Interior trim clips are colour coded by size on most Japanese vehicles, which is genuinely useful once somebody tells you it is happening.
• Hood insulation pins have a wide flat head so they do not pull through the fibreboard, and a standard retainer in that hole tears straight out.
• Moulding clips with a foam sealer pad are the expensive ones, and reusing them is how a body side moulding traps water against the paint.
• A screw-in plastic rivet and a push retainer look similar in a photograph and behave completely differently, and one will not go into the other's hole.