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Date:         Fri, 8 Mar 2002 02:40:16 -0500
Reply-To:     Stephen Steele <steeles@HORIZONVIEW.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Stephen Steele <steeles@HORIZONVIEW.NET>
Subject:      Working on the Westy Pop Top Seals Vs. deleting 300 msgs
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Tonight after a busy couple of days away, I opened up the mail to 300 plus messages!!!!

So instead of reading/deleting them, I went out to the garage to install my new pop top seal, luggage rack seal and skylight seal (all from Bus Depot) on my new-to-me '87 Westy. All went on great.

The PO (what a doufass!) had the mounts to the skylight on backwards... the channel that holds the arms that raise and lower the skylight was installed backwards and wouldn't/couldn't shut tight; the skylight just rose and fell with the arms outside of the channels... gravity kept the skylight "shut". His solution was to put a whole tube of silicon around the exterior of the skylight . The Original Owner had duct taped it shut... 1/4 can of carburetor cleaner got rid of the unsightly tape marks. The silicon took nearly an hour to remove from the fiberglass and the exterior of the skylight.

For those of you that are contemplating a new skylight gasket....it looks like the gasket material is the same for the skylight as the pop top.... with a solid piece of cylindrical foam inserted into the ends for continuity. I'm not complaining; all three gaskets fit very well and were easy to install. A putty knife, rubber mallet and a pair of sidecuts were all the tools that were needed to do the pop top and luggage rack seals. Screw drivers and an 8mm socket did the skylight.

The other longish part of the job was to get all the debris out from under the luggage rack. I pulled the old gasket off and was showered with composted maple, pine and oak leaves and seeds. I used a stiff piece of large plastic wire tie and an air gun to clean out all the debris that I could produce by tapping the side of the rack.

Boy! My Westy looks a lot better! And hopefully it won't leak.

-- Stephen Steele* Chillicothe OH '91 Caravelle "Hans" '87 Westy "Franz" '84 Westfalia "Fritz" now with my nephew '81 Diesel Rabbit "Ol' Yeller" by PO '82 Diesel Jetta "Donormobile" for... '82 Caddy VW Diesel P.U. '90 Jetta GL 16 yo Sons' "together" car '74 MGB My first car...yep, I've kept it since '74 '93 Chevy S-10 *all rights reserved/no portion of this document may be reproduced w/o prior written permission


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