When is good enough, good enough? My long-running battle
with the rear glass trim has made me ask that a thousand times, but I believe I
am finally there!
There is still a small area where the seal is deformed as it
tries to slip inside the cutout, and the edge of the trim doesn’t quite fit
entirely inside the groove, but until I find a glass installer who could do a better fit, I’m as far as I can go. Once the car is on the road,
if I want it better I can drive it to the installer and not depend on them
coming to me.
Without the trim perfectly installed, I see three potential
problems…appearance, water leak, and wind damage.
Since this car has always been intended to be a driver,
appearance is subjective. There are other defects that would not be acceptable
on a show car, but are fine for my use, so I’m not too worried about looks.
Water leakage could be a problem, but since it will be a
fair weather car, I’m not too concerned about rain. Washing could be a problem
if I run it through a car wash, or forget about the potential leak if hosing it
down myself.
The chances of wind possibly ripping the trim off are unknown,
so I used a generous shot of “The Right Stuff” to adhere the upper trim
molding to the seal and to secure the stainless steel side plate that fits over
the edge of the molding. Maybe not 100% trustworthy, but it shouldn’t be a
problem at highway speeds.
At this point, I’m going to say good enough is good enough
until something tells me different, but I won't take a close-up photo for now.
I had similar problems getting the trim to fit back on to the new Steele Rubber windshield seal on my '56 Dodge Hardtop. I had to do lots of trimming with an Exacto to get the stainless to actually fit. My other issue is was either the new windshield was too thin or the glass groove on the new seal was too wide because the windshield would move slightly in the seal and the lower corners leaked. I just kept working the stainless and eventually used some clear glass sealer in the corner to water proof.
ReplyDeleteI'm not glad that you had problems, David, but glad I'm not the only one. It got to the point of my feeling very stupid and helpless! I tried to estimate how much time I wasted on that problem, and it probably approached 80-90 hours.
ReplyDeleteSince my OEM seal was crushed, dried and cracked, there was no way to compare the Steele part shape and dimensions to the original, but it's possible the only real problem was the seal. It feels great to be thinking about and working on different parts of the car.