Ikea Faktum drawer damper retrofit

Hello everyone,

I am currently in the process of renovating my old Faktum kitchen from late 2005 / early 2006. Since the surface of the fronts has come off and crumbled away, all cabinets/drawers are getting new fronts from the Faktum repurchase program. Additionally, I wanted to equip the drawers (in the base cabinet) as well as the full-extension base cabinet with proper dampers, because the screw dampers installed back then (those small gray, round dampers that you screwed separately to the cabinet body) have completely ceased to function and no longer dampen.

However, the story with retrofitting the dampers is proving to be more difficult than I initially thought. By now, I am quite desperate, as I no longer know how best to proceed or whether my plan is even feasible.

I will simply describe the problem: I have a base cabinet with 3 Rationell drawers. The top one is the "classic" cutlery drawer and measures 55 cm (width) x 52 cm (length) x 8 cm (height), the base cabinet/body is 60 cm wide. The two lower ones have identical dimensions except they are not 8 cm but 13.5 cm high.

Since I was somehow aware that I could not just replace the old rails attached to the cabinet body with the newer rails in which the dampers can be inserted, but probably have to replace the entire runners as well, because the side panels of the old Rationell drawers do not fit on the "new" rails with dampers, I also wanted to buy new Rationell drawers completely: The package theoretically includes both the cabinet rails as well as the drawer/the runner itself. So far, so good.

In the Faktum repurchase program, however, the runners with dampers now only come in one length (or depth) of max. 45 cm, i.e. 7 cm less than my "old" drawers before. I am now wondering if this is really correct and whether recently in the Faktum program there really were only Rationell drawers with dampers for base cabinets with a maximum depth of 45 cm – after all, that would mean wasting 7 cm of depth compared to the older drawers.

Apart from that, I absolutely cannot find a replacement for my cutlery drawer with dampers. There are only Rationell runners with dampers that have a height of 13.5 cm (Ikea calls these runners "deep" runners). While I could probably use the side panels of these "deep" runners for the cutlery drawer and simply leave out the upper rods (at least the side panels themselves are always the same height on my old Rationell drawers), the back panel would be too high (the height of the back panel is fixed, i.e. 13.5 cm high for "deep" runners and not 8 cm). Full-extension runners with a height of 8 cm, however, do not exist with a damping function at all.

Could I possibly solve this problem by ordering a full-extension deep (=13.5 cm high back panel) runner with dampers in 60 x 45, plus a full-extension 60 x 58 (without dampers) runner to take the back panel from the latter, and then combine both so that I get a cutlery drawer 60 (width) x 45 (depth) x 8 (height) with dampers, or does the back panel of the 60 x 58 (without dampers) runner not fit the side panels of the 60 x 45 (with dampers) runner? Then I would have lost space in depth anyway (for whatever reason only runners with 45 cm depth exist), but at least a cutlery drawer with dampers.

Or is there another (simpler) solution that I just haven’t thought of yet?

Thanks very much in advance and best regards!

For the top drawer, use the drawer damper linked by ikeauser, for the deep drawers. However, you can also keep your old drawers and just replace the cabinet slides. Cheaper but requires some tinkering and patience: You buy the slides of the Maximera drawers in the clearance section, if available, and use them. For installation, first screw a strip under the old slides. Then place the MAXIMERA slides on the wooden strip and mark new holes on the cabinet. Drill the holes as marked with a 5 mm drill bit and attach the slides. If necessary, put on the dampers, done.

Hello everyone,

these are really great tips, for which I would like to sincerely thank you once again, really fantastic

I think I will implement the tip from IKEA-Freund for the cutlery drawer, the solution is exactly the same price (21 euros 6 euros) as the oven drawer.

For the deeper drawers, it would of course be more cost-effective to order the oven drawer (as suggested by IKEA-Experte) instead of buying a deep drawer and dampers separately.

Is it really 100% certain that the rails of the oven drawer with dampers fit to the side panels of my old drawers from the end of 2005? Or did Ikea have other "rail systems" in the meantime? Then I would order this solution for the deep drawers and, as suggested by IKEA-Experte, keep the drawers themselves (the drawers themselves are also still in very good condition, so replacing the drawers themselves is not necessary).

Once again, many thanks for your help and have a nice evening.

100% certain. There were only other tracks before and from 2013 in various other countries.

Evening IKEA expert,

I just wanted to sincerely thank you again for your great help - without the tips from you and IKEA-Friend, I would probably still be wondering how to realize my plan .

I have now ordered the items and am looking forward to the delivery .

Have a nice evening and best regards!

Gladly, one more note for readers. The replacement of the rails with those from MAXIMERA does not work with RATIONELL drawers purchased in Germany from 2007 onwards.