Coleman Cooler Stainless Steel Hinges and Screws
Coleman has made great coolers for many years, but their Achilles heel is the cheap plastic hinges that they use. My family still uses a Coleman Extreme 100-quart cooler that I bought while I was in college. It’s great for cookouts, fishing trips, and bringing my produce to the farmer’s market. It was relatively inexpensive, holds a ton of cans and bottles, and keeps things cold for at least a couple of days.
One day, the wind blew it over, causing both of the plastic hinges to break. The cooler itself was fine, but the lid no longer stayed propped up when you opened it. It also made me nervous to have this in the bed of my truck, as the lid could have flown off while I was driving.
This stainless steel hinge and screw kit is everything you need to replace the original cheap plastic hinges. It takes less than five minutes to remove the old ones and install the new. Don’t waste your time with plastic replacement hinges. You’ll be right back in the same situation a couple of years from now. Once you go to metal hinges, you will have a cooler that is going to last for decades unless something unspeakable happens to it.
This hinge/screw combo is a name-brand Coleman part, which begs the question of why they didn’t use this much more durable part from the factory on all of their coolers. It’s disheartening to think of how many plastic hulks of former coolers will sit in landfills for thousands of years simply when we could be engineering products that last.
Igloo also produces great coolers, but like Coleman’s, their plastic hinges are destined to fail after several years. Here is a set of hybrid stainless/plastic hinges that are much more durable than the originals.