Date:         Fri, 18 Jun 2004 18:00:12 -0700
Reply-To:     James Ballen <ballenjames@HOTMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         James Ballen <ballenjames@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Window rubber trim alternatives
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

There are a bunch of posts in the archives about this...i'd say about half
of the folks who posted said that they pulled out the ugly "chrome" stips
and had no leaks or other ill-effects...and the other half of folks haven't
done it, but swear against it because they think they WILL get leaks.

After reading all this, I decided to pull out most of my discolored moldings
last weekend.

For the most part, all the window seals appeared to still be nice and tight,
but around the corners/curves, it seemed like they were starting to pull
away from the body w/out having the molding in there to spread the seal.

So to fix this I bought a couple packages of black window/door screen rubber
flexible molding...the kind you roll into place to hold a newly installed
screen tight to the frame.  I got the middle size of the three I found at my
local home depot... .125" i think?  using a roller tool and plenty of soapy
water, it didn't take too long to get this stuff into the molding groove.
It looks good and spreads the seal nice and tight like it was designed to
be.  Another listmember used grey molding to give a little accent color, but
I stuck w/black.

I think any T-molding will work fine, as long as it is fat enough at the
base...otherwise it may look nice, but won't help any w/keeping the seal
from leaking.

I think the seals look 100x better w/that brown/orange/black cracked stuff
pulled outta there, and now I don't have to worry about leaks either.

YMMV, but this seems to have worked real well for me!

Cheers,
james
'83.5 GL Camper

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