How do you install v-window glass?

[gregbr]

Can anybody tell me how to properly install new v-window or door glass onto the metal parts using new rubber inserts? Thanks, Greg

[gregbr]

ttt

[mrein3]

Originally Posted by gregbr

Can anybody tell me how to properly install new v-window or door glass onto the metal parts using new rubber inserts? Thanks, Greg

This may be hard to believe. I'm glad I watched my dad do this on one of my side windows otherwise I probably wouldn't have believed it.

He took a 16 or so inch long piece of 2x4, set the rubber in position, applied a touch of soapy water on the outside of the new rubber insert, and whacked the metal with the 2x4. He was in my front yard in the grass when he did this. I don't know if the grass part matters but in my mind I'm thinking if you did this on a concrete slab you may break the glass.

[68shortstep]

Had this done professionally many-many moons ago, when I was a kid.

I broke my Mom's vent window glass on her fairly-new '54 Chevy Bel-Air 2-door, when I was trying to get into it after I locked myself out one night.

Glass guy disassembled the vent window assembly out of the car door, cleaned out all the old broken glass & rubber stuff really thoroughly, then cut a new piece of glass from a huge printed-up scroll-like roll of paper which held patterns for hundreds of patterns of different years/makes of car flat glass, which scrolled under a glass-top light table, and he rolled it from one end of the table to the other until he found the right year/model pattern to use, (pretty cool !!!), then cut the new glass by laying a sheet of new glass out over the pattern.

After edge-polishing the cut glass on a giant belt sander, he got some flat rubber stock off a roll - looked like thick inner tube material - dish detergent soaped it all up, wrapped it around the glass where it met the metal, and then literally beat the glass into the metal frame by using a rubber mallet.

No joke - I was shocked it didn't break the glass - he just stood the metal frame of the vent window vertically on a carpet-covered wood workbench, and started whacking on the glass edge, with the whole vent assembly on edge vertically, until it was all well seated into the metal vent frame.

Trimmed the flat rubber off around the edge of the metal where it lapped out over the glass too far with a razor blade, put the whole thing back into the car for me, and I drove away.

Oh-yeah ------- total cost: $ 8.00 plus tax. No extra charge for me to watch. I remember it still, because that 8 bucks was really a whole lot of money to a teenager who worked on a farm and shoveled literally truck loads of turkey manure for a dollar an hour, and was pretty darn glad to have the job, too.

As I recall, gas was about 18 - 19 cents a gallon, then.

[gregbr]

Hard to belive it won't break that way. I'll have to get the nerve up and try it soon. Thanks, Greg