Rear glass hinge repair

[HaroldJenkins]

I was looking through some other threads regarding this issue. I have a '04 Mountaineer with broken hinge pins on the rear glass. It hasn't fallen out yet.
This morning I took it in to the local dealer for a repair estimate. They called back 30 minutes later and said that they recommend replacing the entire back glass which would include a new plastic trim piece and painting to match. The bill would be around $1000. Yikes. It would be nice to get that done since I have the usual crack in the plastic by the Mercury emblem. But that's more money than I'm willing to cough up at the moment.
He also said they can just do the hinges for $400 but he said they haven't had the best luck with the replacements. Something about the plastic piece not going on right or something like that.
Even the hinge job seems a bit high in my opinion but what do I know?
I'm seriously contemplating buying the parts and doing it myself. My luck is that after I do this job myself, Ford will later come out and pay for the repair only if it's done at the dealer. That's what happened when I replaced the cracked intake manifold on my old '96 Grand Marquis and did it myself.
Do you folks have any recommendations or past experience?

By the way, hello all. I'm new here.

 

[rickybobby]

salvage yard

 

[waskly]

go buy 2 hinges and put them on. its quick about 3 bolts.... per hinge. make sure you buy the 4 nuts for the hinges they dont come with them, and the old ones the rubber will probably be squashed. they are the 2 nuts on the body side the glass you can reuse it all or they come with the torx bolt. that can be reused.

 

[HaroldJenkins]

Thanks, I'm going to go ahead and do it myself. I found the thread with the installation rundown and it doesn't look that bad.
I still don't know what's so different in the eyes of Ford about 02-03's and an '04 regarding the hinge recall.

 

[waskly]

Thanks, I'm going to go ahead and do it myself. I found the thread with the installation rundown and it doesn't look that bad.
I still don't know what's so different in the eyes of Ford about 02-03's and an '04 regarding the hinge recall.

the recall affected shock mounts on the glass. which was updated later in the gen 3's think 04 and up had the updated shock mounts.

 

[HaroldJenkins]

I must have misunderstood the recall.

In case someone else runs into this problem with the glass hinges, I'm posting what I ended up doing to get it fixed. After I got that crazy repair quote from the dealer the other day I figured I would see what my nearby body shop could do.
It ended up being under $130 to replace both sides. And they did a great job too. I don't know why I didn't think of them first. So if anyone here gets in the same predicament, consider going to a body shop that you trust if you don't feel like doing it yourself.