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I figured I would post this after seeing others looking to do grocery bag hooks. I had done something similar on my prior cars and have found a nice solution that works for most of my needs. Especially on my 2004 E500.
I start with getting a package of 3M Command Wire Hooks. Now, these alone will not hold strongly enough with just the double-sided sticky tape that comes with it. It does hold enough to then attach some stronger wire-ties.
The 3M units I got this last time are available at Staples for $10 for a pack of 9. (I only put in 5 in the E500, the rest are available for other use)
I then used a velcro based cable-tie to protect the car and then a full sized plastic cable-tie to give the whole thing strength. I have these on hand for normal use (cable runs, etc) and they can be found in any reasonable hardware or electrician shop.
Here are closeups of the hooks in the trunk:
Closeup of a single hook, as mounted in the trunk of my 2004 E500.
Closeup of two of the hooks with the cable ties holding them.
Here is a picture I took today with some grocery bags (and dog food behind them. Note that I have blue bungee cords that I ran from the tie-down hooks in the trunk to provide hold down of items (such as boxes, etc)
Grocery bags hanging from the hooks (plus some dog food behind them.)
Note that they just touch the floor of the trunk such that most of the weight is on the floor of the trunk. The hooks mainly hold enough weight to keep the bags from falling over/moving all around the trunk.
One nice thing about the hooks is that they are hinged and thus fold away a bit if needed. Since they are not very large, they don't really intrude into the trunk much at all. Sometimes, for larger bags, I put the handles through more than one hook in order to get the right balance of tension to hold the bags in place. (Such as the canvas grocery bags that I have from some of the local stores)
The whole thing likely cost me around $15 plus 20 minutes of install time. (Plus I have some extras if I ever need them).
As to weight - they have been in the car for a long time and have yet to come loose, even with bags that have two 1-gallon milk bottles in them or 6 wine bottles. I have been very happy with them except that some of my canvas shopping bags are too tall for my E500 trunk (the top of the bag, if full, touches the top of the trunk and thus there is no room to hook up the handles above the bag - but it is easy to use the smaller bags or the plastic bags from the store when I forget to bring my smaller canvas bags)
I saw someone using this design for bag hooks and took a chance getting some.
There is a down-side. The mounting requires making some holes as there are no holes there already. The process was rather simple as I used some high quality self-tapping screws to do the initial mounting.
The advantage of these hooks is that my reusable bags are held in place by wrapping the large canvas handles over both sides of the hook, something not possible with the smaller hooks. The smaller hooks were very good for the plastic bags and I was very happy with that except that I did not like having to get the plastic bags when shopping so this has been a nice improvement.
These are the ones I bought on-line. I could not get them locally at a reasonable price (and they did not have any in stock anyway).
This is what I did. Bought 3 pack door hooks fron dollar store for $1.25. Looks neat. They are strong, no drilling or taping. They slide in the holes with the open end. I need two more.
09-01-2014, 01:42 AM
