Tired of the rear roll up glass...

[79vette]

After years of fighting the rear roll up glass, I'm finally rid of it. I bought a new regulator, new seals, broke 3 hand cranks, and spent tens of hours of making adjustments and it never worked right. It took incredible force to roll up and down, causing the crank handles to break off about once a year. No amount of adjustment, lubrication, or parts replacement made any improvement.

I've seen several people on CK5 and other forums that have installed truck topper window assemblies into a K5, but it always requires major fiberglass surgery because there is no truck topper with exactly the same shape as a K5 topper. I wanted something that would be easily reversible to the factory configuration if I end up not liking it, and cutting the entire back of the topper off and glassing in a pickup topper window is definitely not that.

Last weekend I made this lift gate style rear hatch out of scrap aluminum and some truck shell parts from Amazon. The hinges and hatch to tailgate seal are from a Leer 100 series truck topper, the gas struts and latches are generic parts from Amazon, and the frame, brackets and hatch panel were custom made by me from 3/16" 6061 aluminum. The hatch to frame weatherstrip is from McMaster originally, and was leftover from a other project

The frame is 3/16" aluminum and slides into the factory glass weatherstripping, and fastens to the fiberglass with 6x 1/4" screws. I drilled small holes for bond-in thread inserts to accept these screws.

The hinges are attached to aluminum plates, and the plates are screwed to thread inserts I drilled into the fiberglass. Fiberglass really likes fasters to be loaded in bearing, does ok in shear, and really really does not like bending. Using the plates spreads the hinge load out onto a large area and ensures the fastener loads are primarily shear, which reacts into the fiberglass in bearing.

The gas strut brackets are 3d printed plastic currently, but I'll be machining aluminum replacements next week now I know the geometry works.

Everything is painted 383 green, but the rest of my truck is so faded it doesn't match ��. Guess I need to paint the truck someday...

I have quotes for custom glass to replace the aluminum panel and am really looking forward to that, but I think I am going to hold off for a few weeks. I am want to design a similar replacement for the side windows so I can get gear in and out through there too and the shipping charge is a large portion of the cost of the custom glass. So if I order the rear and side glass together it will be a bit cheaper.

I had most of the materials on hand, but buying everything new I think this would cost around $300-400, depending if you do an aluminum or glass rear panel and assuming all materials are purchased at retail prices. I can't believe something like this isn't offered as a kit. I guess the market just isn't there for these old trucks, but I would have paid $1500 for a set of side and rear hatch windows for a K5 and I would probably buy them for all 3 of my trucks