Page 2 of 2

Re: Special Sports Door Seals

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:30 am
by terryfrombury
Actually, Chris, the one thing that I forgot to mention is that the seal that I got from Autohose was self-adhesive. Pros and cons, I suppose. In favour is the fact that the adhesive is designed for that rubber, and against is that it needs rather more care when fitting into the channel down the A post, especially at the point where it changes direction at the wing.
Cheers
Terry

Re: Special Sports Door Seals

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 6:22 pm
by davidian
Hi Chris
I am glad you picked up the point about part no's, but that is not to say things could have changed during the production life of the car, its certainly a lot easier to fit a seal into a channel rather than to painstakingly attach it with small tacks which must be very labour intensive and our esteemed Editor always says no two cars are the same. When I removed the old seals I was at pains to explain to the Spanish painter not to fill the small holes as my intention was to re-use them to re-attaché the new ones but it got lost in translation and it was all beautifully filled and painted so my car is minus its seals at the moment not so important here in Spain , Incidentally, what material is your hood made off, a new hood is the next job on my list .
Davidian ( David)

Re: Special Sports Door Seals

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 11:46 am
by clevitt
Matthew Beales has replied with the following, which explains the brass channels on some, but not all, cars.

"Not all Special Sports have the brass channel. This is something the factory were struggling with as water was getting inside the car where the door and front wing meet due to the complex shape of the body around this area. David says he has only ever come across this brass channel on 2 cars and it should only fit on the body aperture from the top of the wing and down the back edge of the front wing down to the sill level. It shouldn't run along the sill"

For my own solution, I would like to retain use of the brass channels and will be comparing the relative merits of Woolies R219 and the TR4 seal from Autohose. I am hoping that I will be able to use the same profile of seal for the sill area, as worked for Terry, but first need to do some trials with the two samples on my own car. If not, I will revert to a diiferent profile seal for the sills.

About the hood material David: the photo used when I opened this post was taken when I first acquired the car in February 2015. If you look closely, you will notice a circa six inch gap between the front rail and the top of the windscreen. I was unable to close this gap, because the car had been stored like this for over 20 years, and the cloth had shrunk. I therefore had to have the roof recovered, although the material appeared still serviceable.
So I can't tell you much about the original material , but I can about its replacment and what led to its choice. Perhaps this would be better done via the Forum's email contact facility and I will be happy to respond.
Chris

Re: Special Sports Door Seals

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 4:48 am
by Peter Grant
Regarding the hood material, the late David Adcock thought the hood on my car was very good. Easy to open and close the hood and the only thing he noticed was that the padding that would be placed to even out the shape across the cross brace just above the side windows wasn't fitted and this actually made the hood action easier.
At the time I replaced my old hood, which wasn't original and didn't have lining material it had been slashed whilst the car was parked at Sydney University one evening.
Nine years afterwards when I took it back to the upholsterer as the timber trim on the upright behind the near side window split and the fixing screw was consequently exposed and damaged the hood the upholsterer couldn't remember when he had done the work and couldn t understand why because he thought it was a recent job. So the short answer is the cloth chosen was very suitable. It was a German cloth that was used on quality vehicles either Mercedes or Porsche but not BMW as I found lots of those cars with faded hoods.
Now I had the hood redone in 1992 and it still looks good today. Admittedly the hood is usually open with the cover fitted but after so many years of occasional wet weather or even hot weather touring and probably covering 80000 miles in that time I cannot recommend it highly enough as the right quality material. I think it was sonnebend fabric or something like that. Unfortunately I don't have specs on it.
Cheers and good luck.
Peter Grant

Re: Special Sports Door Seals

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 8:59 pm
by clevitt
Autohose were unable to supply a suitable profile, so I used R219 but only in the brass channels, because I couldn't get the base section of R219 to stay attached to the sills. I therefore repeated the old arrangement using the David Beales supplied profile along the sills kept in place by the thin metal strips.
Matthew told me that his profile is designed to be fitted to the bottom inside edge of the door, presumably by contact adhesive as there is not enough thickness of metal to allow self tapping screws. I did not use this method as it would have meant filling the existing holes along the sills.
A word of warning about using R219: the brass channels are in two parts, that meet at the point where the front edge of the door profile changes by 90 degrees. The lower part is open ended at the bottom (sill) end so R219 can be slid in provided the channel is clear and plenty of silicone lubricant is used. The upper part is blind at both end so the profile has to be squeezed in from above.
There is a further downside to replace these seals, the old seals being relatively worn and therefore thinner allowed the door to be shut without being slammed. The new seals require the drivers door to be closed with more force. I was hoping to adjust the door hinges to lift the door by 1-2 mm to clear the new seal where it runs horizontally, but the hinges do not allow for any vertical adjustment only horizontal. 😬