I have a winter coat whose zipper will no long stay up, and my husband had a favorite down jacket whose zipper would open up while being worn (so he stashed the jacket in a closet 2 years ago and refused to throw it out). He decided to try this zipper repair kit and was able to rescue his beloved jacket AND fixed my coat also. I'm rather proud of him for even trying, let alone succeeding.

Make sure you check the size of the zipper you are looking to repair and make sure you use the right replacement head. Double check it, and then test it out. This kit saved my dewalt heated winter jacket!

I've used this kit to replace two zipper pulls this week. One was on a Columbia jacket with a '5CNT' pull. The other was on an ancient Russel Athletic hoodie with a pull labeled '5C'. There were no replacements with that nomenclature (no '5C...' of any kind), but with a little investigation and experimentation, I found two replacements in the kit that worked. For the record, I replaced the '5CNT' pull with a new one labeled 'S5'. I replaced the '5C' pull with one labeled 'XD'.

None of the suggestions in this Amazon product page helped me make the match, though to be honest I wasn't looking at the Amazon page when I was making the repairs. I did a little research to learn what the different kind of zippers were (more than I expected, probably because of patents). And I more closely inspected the pulls than I had ever done before to discover that they are pretty simple devices, but the minor differences in size and configuration make a lot of difference in which ones work with which zippers. In the end, I just eyeballed the match between the old pulls and the new ones to see what looked most similar.

To replace the pulls, I removed the top 'stop' (the one near the neck) on both zippers. The bottom stops seemed much more substantial. But even removing the small top stops was more trouble than I expected. One was glued on, the other just crimped. A combination of diagonal cutters, a small screwdriver, and an awl forced them open (or, for the glued version, just destroyed). I somehow managed to not slice or skewer my fingers.

The pulls then came off the now topless zippers with a firm tug. And that should have given me a clue to the next problem: how to get the new pull on over the little clump of fabric at the top of the zipper that used to be under, and cinched by, the top stop. It took a firm tug to get the old pull off. How do you reverse that 'tug' to get that bunch of fabric through the narrow slot in the side of the zipper pull?

I couldn't. I ended up wedging a screwdriver blade in the slot to open it up enough to get the pull onto the zipper. Then I closed the pull's slot with pliers. I'm talking about a tiny amount, maybe 1/16 inch. Just enough. But I wasted a long time trying to push that zipper pull back onto the zipper before resorting to opening up the slot.

Once I got the pull on the zipper, I slid it to the bottom, slid in the other side of the zipper, and tested it. The first pull I replaced, on the Columbia jacket, worked the first time. The zipper sides connected and the pull slid up and down smoothly. On the second jacket, though, I guessed wrong, and the zipper got stuck after I tried a little too hard to make it zip up. BTW, it's almost impossible to zip a jacket unless you're wearing it. Also, don't zip the zipper up too far on the first try lest it get stuck... and you're stuck in the jacket. Don't ask me how I know this.

So on the Russel hoodie, I had to try again. This time I used the trick to open up the slot right away, and the second pull worked smoothly once it was on. So two successes!

For the record, I replaced the '5CNT' pull with a new one labeled 'S5'. I replaced the '5C' pull with one labeled 'XD'.

They are easy to use and very good and not cheaply made. I was able to fix 2 jackets, took me only 10 minutes to do! Very simple and easy.

It was a very good product however the instructions were not very easy to understand