Windshield Frame Replacement

[audaciousduo]

Hello all,

I replaced the top of my rusted out windshield frame today. Like many virtually rust free southern trucks mine suffered from the usual rotten windshield frame syndrome. I managed to find a solid one off a terminally rotten from the door handles down Canadian truck. I enlisted the help of a friend who is a ticketed body man and has decades of experience and though I'd share how we did this because it was slick!.

1) Measure a million times and use a straight edge to see what id straight and what is not. I measured hight at the center and both wiper posts. Width at the top and where I cut the A pillar. Cut your donar top slightly long 1/4" and make sure you have a chunk of solid A pillar to use as a sleeve.

2) sleeve the stump attached to the truck by cutting the flanges off the solid chunk you have left. Drill 1/4" holes on the flat surfaces of both pillars for plug welds.

3) weld in your sleeve you fabricated out of the solid chunk with rosette welds where you drilled the holes.

4) slide on the new top and measure, measure, measure trimming it as needed.

5) make sure its straight with you straight edge or by laying the new windshield in carefully and tack weld on all three sides. Measure, measure, measure again and weld up the plug welds and seams solid.

6) Grind, fiberglass (water proof) , then bondo where necessary.

7) Your done, did it yourself and saved a tone of scratch.

[audaciousduo]

The nice part of this method is you don't need three people and six hands. It's strong as hell when plug welded top and bottom. Hope this helps a some others who have been putting this off. I used a good spray of picklex 20 and a coat of weld through zinc coating on everything to make it last another 43 years.

[71_jimmy]

I need to do this. Can you use a truck window frame or does it have to be blazer or jimmy frame.

[audaciousduo]

The truck window won't work without some serious fabrication. It's much easier to find a blazer frame if you can. They are hard to find. I'll have a look at the parts truck I have it's a Canadian rust bucket but so was the on I got my frame off.

[michael.howell12]

On the first post #2 seems like it helped a ton. I'm in NC and having someone from CA mail me the top windshield header and about 6" down the pillar on each side.

In saying that I haven't cut any windshield frames up yet. Where are the flanges your talking about to make the sleeve. I'll have to make sure I get those because that looks like it made the job much easier.

I could maybe just weld in a piece of metal on two sides? But that sleeve makes it look much easier

[michael.howell12]

And do you have any tips before I start? Anything you wish you knew before hand or that you learned along the way

[audaciousduo]

The flanges are the lip for the windshield rubber and the weather stripping on the other side. Have your friend save as much of the frame as possible and cut it low. Cut a solid chunk out of the middle where the pillar is a consistent size and use that for your sleeve. I used a thin kerf disk on the cut off tool and cut parallel on either side of the flanges which leaves you with two halves that will match the contour of your frame perfectly. If you want to go over kill weld them together first and cut your pillars in a Z pattern instead of straight across. Even if you mess up and cut it a hair short you can still slide it up and down on the sleeve until you have your dimensions right and weld it up solid. Don't for get to use a straight edge and check front to back and side to side before you burn it in forever.

I drew a pictures of the frame and measured every which way recording the measurements on the drawing.

Originally Posted by michael.howell12

On the first post #2 seems like it helped a ton. I'm in NC and having someone from CA mail me the top windshield header and about 6" down the pillar on each side.

In saying that I haven't cut any windshield frames up yet. Where are the flanges your talking about to make the sleeve. I'll have to make sure I get those because that looks like it made the job much easier.

I could maybe just weld in a piece of metal on two sides? But that sleeve makes it look much easier

[raggedjim]

Wanted to bump this up for you guys who haven't seen it. This is the way I did my jimmy.