Door Glass

The original door glass in my Ford was broken and nasty on the passenger side and the driver's glass was missing entirely. So I started pulling the doors apart.

 The old glass run channels were present but all the soft material had rotted away. This allowed the windows to rattle and bang around and led to all the glass busting and being noisy as all hell while driving.

It was time to consider fresh glass. I started by removing all the old glass and dropping it off at a glass shop to be used as a pattern for new glass to be cut.. I pulled my windshield at the same time so I could get new glass cut for it as well. 

On the counter at the glass place.

Both of the door window regulator channels were rusted out and had to be repaired. So I cut out the worst of it and welded it some new steel.

Cut it out

Weld some in

Paint it BLACK

With the regulators taken car of and the glass cut, I turned my attention to that nasty old window channel. I decided to see if I could sort re-think the original way these windows were mounted. I ended up trying to simplify the way these are assembled by using this universal glass run channel.

First I took out all the old rusted out channel and cleaned each mounting surface. 

Then, starting with the vent glass side I began mounting the new glass run channel.

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I drilled some additional holes to mount it to the door. There were some factory holes for the original set up which uses screws. I elected to go with some 3mm rivets because they fit in the original holes and they cinch down nice and tight and won't touch the glass. 

After the mount holes were drilled it was just a matter of pushing a punch through the window channel to align it with the holes in the door. 

Then it was a matter of pop-riveting the glass channel to the door, the rear channel, and the vent window assembly. 

I did the channel in two separate pieces so the glass can be removed. One at the front of the door on the vent window assembly portion and a longer one starting at the top corner where the channels come together that runs to the end of the window track down in the door.

The door garnish molding will serve to re-enforce this channel and cover that white stitching. 

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Here is what the window channel looks like inside the door looking to the back.

Again the rivet heads sink down into the fuzzy whisker material deep enough to not touch the glass. I don't anticipate any damage to the glass here. 

You can see the fuzz better in sepia tone

To protect the glass from rattling into the door I mounted a 
whisker strip within the slot for the window. I drilled some holes and mounted it with some tiny counter sunk screws. 

The whisker strip has a squishy butyl-like material behind the window fuzz. This allowed the screw head to practically disappear. 

In this picture we're actually looking through the new passenger window at the new fuzzy whisker strip from the inside of the car. The old whisker strip was stapled to the stainless trim and had to be carefully pulled away. 

I'll attach another whisker strip to the glass-facing side of 
the interior window garnish. This is probably unnecessary,
but it will look good from the outside and add that little
extra insurance against glass-to-metal contact.

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I put the window in so I could get an idea of the placement of the glass within the regulator mount. I rolled the glass up and down several times to find the area of least resistance. After I found the sweet spot I made some reference marks on the regulator mount and the glass so I know the best placement for permanent mounting. 

And here we have the passenger side glass installed again. I will have to remove it again to set it permanently in the window regulator mount (the rusty parts I fixed earlier in the article). 

You can see the reflection my hand in the glass and the messy interior of my old Ford. 
At this point I shut the door a few times, gingerly at first, then slammed it, to make sure that the glass was not rattling in the door. 

I'm happy to say the glass didn't bust out. I'm also pleased with how solid it feels within the glass run channel. 

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Then I wasted some time making this video. It feels pretty dang good when you implement an idea that actually works out like it should!