About a year ago I cracked my second to last NOS rear seat handle.  I had put the rear seat down and tried to use the rear handle to lift it and *SNAP*.  It was a complete lack of oversight on my part, but I was not too stoked.  I always try to be careful when using it and I'm sure I yelled something not too good when it snapped.

When I started at ISP about 15 years ago, I was surprised at the number of rear seat grab handles we had.  There was a pile of them in the bin, and a bunch of NOS boxes in the overstock area.  If you know Alex, he keeps a lot of empty NOS VW boxes...but these were all full.  At that time, it felt like a lifetime supply.  There were so many in fact that there was a rumor that we had already re-popped it and were just using old boxes to advertise them.  That was not the case!  

Slowly but surely they would trickle out.  I bought a couple as a just in case kinda thing.  Even as a Type 3 newbie at that point, I learned early on as most Type 3 owners do, that you buy when you can, not when you need.  If you wait, it's probably too late.  There might not be another chance with some parts.  

After I added photos of the NOS box to our listings, the handles really moved.  Eventually we were down to a couple boxes and in an attempt to hold on to these last few, we raised the price.  But they all sold.  We held onto a few handles for samples and then that was it.  There were no more and we marked it as unavailable on the site.  

The strategy we use to make parts at ISP West is not complicated.  If we can't find anymore anything...used, NOS, new, or refurbish-able, it goes on our "make" list.  If there are no more, someone has to step up to the plate and make it, right?  This handle was one of those items for us.  It was almost two years of R&D...which is fancy speak for snapping sample handles.  

And we snapped a ton of handles.  Different types of rubber compounds, all snapped.  It was real world testing, but a bit on the extreme side.  We pulled on them like a customer would, and ultimately, will.  In the photo below, those are six different compounds.  Some looked better than others, and some were stronger than others.  They were all installed, and all of them were given a hard tug.  

There was no golden sample.  Frustrated, we tried out some reinforced hinges, but none of those prototypes went very far.  They worked, but if you modify the look of a part too much, odds are it will not be welcomed by the community.  I get it.  This is understandable to me as an enthusiast.  After some late night discussions, we came to the conclusion that this whole thing probably sucked from the onset.  The way in which the rear seat folds down is most of the problem.  

When pulling the seat back up, the spot with the most leverage is right above which requires the owner to be kneeling on the front seats.  This pushes the front seat backs into the rear seat bottom, wedging everything against the rear seat back.  Finally, with everything now good and tight, the owner pulls on the handle and...snap.  This scenario is easy to see in the cutaway digram below:

It's pretty obvious that the whole design is rough on the handle.  Add in stiff hinges that haven't been used in years, and you've got the perfect storm for a snapped handle.  But it sounds like a copout to simply blame the design.  Also, you can't really sell an item and tell people not to use it...  

So we went back to the drawing board and tried to blend the best two handles.  We had one handle that was strong, but the overall finish wasn't that great.  We had another handle that was weaker, but the finish was pretty good.  We used the strong compound for the hinges, and the best finish for the rest of the handle.  Here's a photo of the combined compounds:

It worked.  But we still weren't happy.  After some more head scratching, we decided to send the tooling back for more polishing and tried the strongest rubber compound again.  Nailed it!  After another run, we approved the below sample:

We are really happy with them.  Are they indestructible?  No.  Should you use caution when operating your rear seat back handle?  Yes.  Definitely yes.  Give your handle some help as you pull, and lift using the corners of the seat as well.  While it took some time and lots of trial and error, I'm proud that we were able to get another Type 3 part made!  

Full kit including the hardware is available here.

What should we make next?