I bought a set of door glass rubbers/felts/scrapers, because they are all dry, cracked, and broken. When I saw how much disassembly was actually necessary to replace all of them in each door, I decided to start small and just do the vent windows.
Starting on the passenger side, I drilled out the rivet on the top hinge.
And then removed the old gasket. Here are the old and new seals, side by side for comparison.
They look very similar in size and shape, so that’s a good start. But, I quickly realized, the measurements were off just enough that the new seal wasn’t going to sit flush.
The distance between the slot that is molded in the top for the hinge bracket and the hole in the bottom for the hinge pin is an extra 3/8″ or more larger than the original, so the seal is floppy around the edges. I made some “precision” cuts around the bottom end to shorten it and make it fit against the back side of the vent window opening.
But it still didn’t sit right in the frame and was too thick below the window, so it bunched up when opening or closing the window.
My first attempt at pop-riveting the top hinge didn’t go so well…
…so I didn’t mind having to drill that back out to put the crusty old window seal back in.
While I was there, I decided to go ahead and replace the vertical seal along the back edge of the vent window. Here are the old and new seals together for comparison.
Luckily, that went more smoothly than the main vent window seal did.
The lock/handle broke off of the passenger side vent window a while back. I have new ones, but it looks like a tough job that I’m not quite ready to take on. When I opened the driver side vent window to replace the vertical seal on it, that lock/handle snapped off as well.
It didn’t match the one on the passenger side and isn’t the correct one for this year of car, but it looks like a factory fit, so likely a window from a different year had been swapped in at some point.
The rear vertical seal went in on the driver side without issue.
With as big of a job as it looks like it’s going to be to tear the doors apart to replace all these other rubber and felt seals and scrapers, I’m not ready to take that on at the moment either. Also, the kit for both doors was over $350 and the first seal I tried to mount didn’t fit and was clearly not the right size.
That doesn’t instill much confidence in how the rest of the process is going to go, but that has basically been my experience with aftermarket parts for this old car. Nothing fits right and I can’t ever tell if it’s because the original part that was on the car wasn’t from a ’68 model or just that the aftermarket is a criminal enterprise these days.
