Loose Hotend

So I recently went through my first major print failure, resulting in a nice blob of ABS being built up and covering my nozzle and heater block in ABS. Seeing as how this needed some major cleaning I figured it would be a good time to pull it all apart and take a look at all the pieces, just to have a more intimate knowledge of how the whole thing fit together/worked. I got it all apart and it was a good thing I did this as I found that the idler plate for the hobbed bolt on the extruder cracked. Ironically, the print that failed was printing a whole new set of extruder and hotend pieces to have as backups. I epoxied the cracked idler plate back together, so I can go print a replacement part. Now, I am noticing that the hotend can swivel in the aluminum bracket even when tightened down. It also has some side to side rock and a lot of front to back rock/play. Is this normal? I can’t imagine that this is how the stock hotend is supposed to fit into this assembly as it would lead to dramatic inconsistencies in print quality.
I searched the forum for a loose hotend but got no hits, sorry if this is a repost or some common problem that has been discussed to death.

The hotend barrel should be locked in place by pressure from the extruder body itself pushing the top of the hotend down against the metal plate. It should be possible to rotate it within that location with a great deal of effort, but it shouldn’t be moving freely. It’s possible you have the plate itself upside down and backwards when you reinstalled it, which would make the channel the hotend rides in lower than it should be. If it is installed incorrectly, You would see a gap in the metal plate when looking at the toolhead from the side that the hobbed bolt nut attaches to (opposite the side the gear is on). If you don’t see that gap, it’s probably installed correctly and something else odd is going on. Can you post a picture?

Also, plastruct plastic weld will glue ABS parts back together well if you have something split that needs to be repaired long enough to print a replacement.

Thanks Piercet,
I had the aluminum bracket on backwards. I glued the ABS back together with some two part epoxy from smooth-on that says it specially for 3d printed parts, but I am guessing its just regular 30 min two part.