36 Buick window help

[Tom_S]

Well, I have torn most of the passenger door apart. After getting in to it, I found some rotten wood behind the door strike. Photo of new oak wood epoxied and trim screwed into place.

Here are some questions that I need help with:

I am going to replace the vent window seal on the division bar. This is held on the division bar with bendable tabs. To install the seal on the division bar it needs to have the window channel mohair run removed. I think this is held in place by small rivets top and bottom. What do you use to reinstall this? I do not think pop rivets would work due to the large knot made when the pop rivet is in place.

The mohair window run channel around the top and side of the roll up window is in pretty bad shape near the bottom. What holds this in place? I noted some small screws near the bottom where it is deteriorated, but are these screws also on the top? I have not tried to look there too hard as I might bend the channel in looking.

The bottom of the window needs to have the seal replaced. It is the type that fits in the window carrier and has a lip seal on the outside. Are there any tricks in removing the rubber from the carrier and window?

Wish some restoration expert lived near me!!!

Note: Do not pay any attention to junk in background of photos as my shop is full of junk!

Thanks for all your help.

Tom

[JoelsBuicks]

Tom,

I'll do the best I can with answering your questions. I'm in England at the moment, far away from my cars - so I don't have that luxury. Regarding your first question, I found a source for rivets to do this job, they were almost flat top, very low profile. I had to drill out the old rivets and so I used a drill size that was the same size of my rivets but slightly larger than than the old rivets. I also had to cut them to length to avoid the condition you mention about them leaving some sort of high knot. The new vertical vent window seals now come with an embedded metal piece that essetially replaces the tabbed metal backing - too late for me as they were not available when I did this. The metal mohair channel for this vertical is also available new - to length.

The flexible window channel is held by those small screws (nickle plated brass) all the way from bottom to top. I used the same sort of screw for re-installation of new channel.

You asked about if there are any tricks to the window seal. If you have to remove it to replace the seal, my advice is to do a lot of soaking with an oil penetrant and then remove "gently" with a hammer and a block of wood. The one thing you want to avoid is bending this channel by trying to remove it at one end first. In otherwords, do a little along the length and take your time. A bent channel is almost impossible to straighten. I want to recall that the rubber seal that goes into the small channel is separate from the window setting tape, in which case, maybe you don't have to separate the glass from the channel?

No doubt there's a lot of work that will need to be done.

Good Luck and stay safe,

[Tom_S]

Joel,

Thanks for the reply. After my post, I started looking closer at everything. I found that the screws holding the window flexible channel were hidden in the bottom of the channel and almost covered by the cloth. So, I have successfully removed the old ones. This then led me to how the division channel was attached and removed that also.

The next thing I did was to start looking thru my MCMaster Carr catalogue for rivets. I finally found the rivets needed to do the job and are called tubular rivets with a thin flat head and a set tool that forms the rivet very similar to the ones on the car now. I will probably have to shorten them to my desired length as you noted.

Thanks for the tips on window for the removal of the window carrier. My windows have the rubber with the lip seal in the carrier, so the windows will have to be removed from the carrier to replace it.

Now to get my order together for Steele Rubber.

Thanks,

Tom