Working Man's Burbon

[HO455]

I will look in to moving the gate. Maybe I can get lucky. Good advice on the exhaust. Currently it has a pair of two chamber Flowmasters that dump down at the crossmember for the rear suspension. Not real pleasant to ride in for any distance. So I was planning on changing it, but i haven't really made any plans yet. It will be a couple of days before I get the windows in. I've got the seals soaking in soapy water for now, and maybe Friday I will have some time to put them in.

[HO455]

No improvement gained with moving the gate around. It just wants to be where it is.
I did get the carpet out and removed the aftermarket foam pad that had been put in on top of the factory sound deadener. No heat here! (If you look at the photo you can see the places that the foam melted over the mufflers. ) "Honey what's that smell? Oh it's nothing dear". I then pulled all the old sound deadener up and prepared some rusted spots for spot painting with POR15. All in all the floor board is in really good shape, with the exception that it has 35 extra holes drilled in it that are 1/4" to 3/8" and at least a dozen more smaller ones. Think I will try to find some rubber plugs for the bigger ones. The WMB looks to have had bucket seats once and I think that six of the holes went to some stereo equipment under the second row seat. There are lot of holes in the vertical piece that goes between the floor under the back seat and the wood deck in the back. Maybe some kind of bang board? Who knows? Going to put down B- Quite mat with some window seal tape to quite things down. Moving the mufflers will help with the heat.

[HO455]

The biggest issue I had with the fixed windows in the third door and the false door was the way the seal was distorted. See photos of seal before removal and the distortion after removal. If you look under the seal you can see the seal is only supported on the back half. I was even more concerned as i would be reusing old seals. So I used some light weight 1" square tubing to hold the front of the seals up in place. I just cut it to size, drilled the window frame and the tubing. Then pop riveted it into place. I was worried that this may be to flimsy to hold the seal, so I had a plan to put a small angle iron to on the divider to hold the tubing up. Turned out there was no need for this, as the rivets seem to hold it fine. Just need some paint and ready for assembly. I believe GM left the seal unsupported so it would be easier to assemble the windows. I did a test run to see if the tubing would prevent the window from being assembled. But it was not a problem, really no different than replacing the roll up window with the fixed window installed. Tomorrow I should be able to get the window sets installed. I have been soaking the seals in soapy water for the last week or ten days.

[HO455]

Got the second row window sets installed! The support modification worked well on installation so now we'll see what the long run brings. It is hard to see in the photos but the seals no longer sag into the unsupported area. I did use a tip forwarded by the master "LockDoc" saying put some petroleum jelly on the frame to allow the seal to slide into place easier. Worked like a champ. I made sure all the tracks and rollers were lubed up with garage door lube. The windows now roll down and they work like they are new when going up too!
Soaking the seals in the soapy water (Dawn) really helped with cleaning the old paint/over spray off of the seals.

Thanks again to Richard and Mel.

[Hart_Rod]

Originally Posted by HO455

Got the second row window sets installed! The support modification worked well on installation so now we'll see what the long run brings. It is hard to see in the photos but the seals no longer sag into the unsupported area. I did use a tip forwarded by the master "LockDoc" saying put some petroleum jelly on the frame to allow the seal to slide into place easier. Worked like a champ. I made sure all the tracks and rollers were lubed up with garage door lube. The windows now roll down and they work like they are new when going up too!
Soaking the seals in the soapy water (Dawn) really helped with cleaning the old paint/over spray off of the seals.

Thanks again to Richard and Mel.

Quick question, does it matter what order the door glass or the divider goes in? I'm getting ready to do this and don't want to break anything, .

[HO455]

If I recall correctly I had the glass in the lower part of the track on the front of the door. Then the divider went in at an angle and it was fitted onto the glass and I installed the top screw. Then I think I pushed the glass up so the regulator could be coaxed into the glass channel and the door skin and put the bottom divider screws in. Or something along those lines.

[HO455]

Moved forward on the interior lights. When I removed the last remaining headliner piece I found the unused factory wiring above. Using the existing plug I soldered new wires to it and ran them forward above the mirror, back to above the hatch, and down the A pillar to under the dash. I had three under counter LED lights left over from a kitchen project, which used 120 VAC to 12VDC power supplies. An earlier test of the lights on a car battery proved they would work without the power supplies. I laid out the mounting of the lights, putting one above the mirror, above the rear hatch, and over the third door. With the door switches already wired it was pretty simple to hook up. Orange is 12 volt positve and the white is hooked to the door switches which ground out when a door is opened. Along with this I pulled the headlight switch and installed an additional lead in one of the empty slots of the plug (The orange wire next to the green wire) so I could install a chime (Think doorbell not buzzer) that will sound when the door is open and the lights are on. The chime came from Radio Shack. The headlight switch supplies 12+ when the switch is in the park light and headlight positions and the 12 neg comes through the door switch.