A Pillar seals, Rubber alternative found!.

[tb10]

[Steve A]

Well done that man!
It would be good to identify which car the profile came from.
I fancy having a go at making a set.
I think everyone's roof wil be slightly different, so making sets won't be that straight forward, I can see plenty of fettling will be needed,
so a certain skill will be an advantage.
Knowing the source of the profile & step by step intructions would be the way to go

[Fredjohn]

As said by many a great find and even better if they work in the long term too.

However, in the meantime Wayne and BCN have been spending a great deal of time, effort and indeed money in trying to replicate the original seals.
Without wishing to stir a hornet's nets (or even open a can of worms), is there perhaps a case for a slight change in direction and getting these seals replicated (but in the suitably modified form to suite the M100) instead of the originals?

If the actual car source of this find could be identified it might make this somewhat easier.

Any thoughts anyone?

[inkitin]

I agree 100% with all the positive comments made so far. A great piece of work.

I've spent a little time on the net trying to help identify this particular seal (no success! ).

This is a company that may be worth talking to as they list a massive selection of seals and seem to know quite a number of specific auto seals.

[Jamie N]

Some good points made Guys, one thing I would point out though, even if the same profile was to be made in lengths then that would actually double the amount of work that has to go into them as the seals I have already have a base part which corresponds exceptionally well with the car so therefore its only a matter of making a top part for the ledge, if it was only the profiled sections in straight lengths then the job would turn into a bit of a mission.
To get a company to make them with the top and bottom part surely would be pretty costly?.

Probably best to wait until I have both sides done with the hood seals and the falling pillar seals then I will make a video and get good pics of the lot and then a proper valuation can be made of the job and the work that has went into them?.

Last night I made 2 hood seals for the passenger side with the same seal offcuts and provisionally I can say the results are dramatic however they take a lot of time and thinking!, back and forward on and off constantly to get the right fit.

More details to follow.

Jamie.

[Jamie N]

Also cant stress this enough anyone messing about with rubber seals wear a mask!, the dust of them is deadly.

[chrisP]

Awesome work Jamie, this is one of the areas that has bugged (putting it mildly) me since buying my car. Is it possible to have a couple of pictures of the seals as they are before you modified them? Would they only come from a convertible? Also with the new type of seal that you showed on the video do they work in the same way when you wind the window down ad up again!

Chris

[Jamie N]

Awesome work Jamie, this is one of the areas that has bugged (putting it mildly) me since buying my car. Is it possible to have a couple of pictures of the seals as they are before you modified them? Would they only come from a convertible? Also with the new type of seal that you showed on the video do they work in the same way when you wind the window down ad up again!

Chris

Chris, the rotten sponges idea bugged me from the first Elan I ever had, such a poor design that always had a shabby look, they are the first thing I want to change!.
The A pillar one looks exactly like it is as you see it on the car if you can imagine chopping the top ledge part straight off then that is how I got them.
The window goes down and comes straight back up into the lip just the same, providing you are lucky enough to have good operating windows!

Here is a couple of pics of the hood seals I have made, these are pretty time consuming to do, much more so than the A pillar ones, sorry about the picture quality these are from my mobile but enough to give you an idea, I have now completed the full drivers side and have made the falling pillar work in the exact same way, at one point it looked like it was not possible but I persevered and managed to get the lip effect all the way round.

The hood seals have a "cap" of the same stuff on the ends but I get that material from E36 BMW's as its the only car I have been able to find bits of rubber which are wide and flat enough to make them from, then bonded on with Tremsil 400 which remains flexible enough and is extremely strong, I have tried pulling them off and the rubber tears before the bond breaks!, hefty stuff, the difficult bit is then shaping the cap edges in a way that looks pro.
The backs are carbon fibre which are bonded straight onto the seals and can vary in thickness depending on how far away from the window the mounting part is on the hood, like I said before a stainless self tapper (Honda mud flap screws are fantastic) goes through the carbon fibre securing it solidly to the hood but the exact positioning can lead to a whole day of stress so make sure you have plenty Nescafe on tap ( or whatever is your preferred brew ).

Will get some pics of the whole lot over the weekend hopefully.

Jamie.

The metal backs of the falling pillar seal I constructed from bits I took off another convertible in the yard, I think it was an Alfa Romeo, just strips of stainless which I basically shaped for the Elan hood, these were bonded to the seal with the Tremsil sealant, really good stuff. Note the FP seals only need to have a slight curve at the top and in the pic have no base part added yet. A couple of these are unfinished.


Hood seal which butts against falling pillar seal. A genuine rubber window seal not a sponge, sponges are
for washing cars not waterproofing them


Falling seal not yet fitted here.

[Lotus54]

I desperately need new hood seals (pillar seals are new)..

Certainly want to follow this

[Rob P]

I think everyone is following this thread with interest, looking like a real step forward in keeping the interior of our cars as dry as possible.

Loved the way the rubber seals around the window in the video, by the way another seal provider to consider is http://www.sealsdirect.co.uk/

Great work

[chrisP]

Great stuff Jamie

So these seals must be off a convertible of some type, I'm thinking BMW, Audi or Mercedes, time to go looking round car parks to figure out what they are from!

Chris

[WienLot]

2nd set I made with the other 2 seals.


Hi Neil,
Would you have a photo of these seals before you modified them?
How long were they?
Trying to identify which car they may come from.
WienLot

[Rusty Wishbone]

So these seals must be off a convertible of some type, I'm thinking BMW, Audi or Mercedes, time to go looking round car parks to figure out what they are from!

Or perhaps something with pillarless doors - although there are not many models like this sold in the UK.

[Jamie N]

Bear in mind we are dealing with 2 different seal types on this post Guys, the ones in the pic above on the white bonnet are the first ones I found, they don't have the lip that folds over although they do work very well.

The ones with the lip work supremely well but they can take a bit of fettling to get the fold over action precise, when I fitted the drivers side it was virtually a case of pushing it into the channel and the glass was spot on into the lip straight away but not so on the passenger side, that required removal of the seal channel from the pillar and realigning slightly higher and further out at the top as the glass was landing on top of the lip and its not possible to make the seal sit differently in the channel, once it goes in its held precisely in that position so the only way to adjust it is to move the seal bracket, I think that outlines one of the vagaries of these hand built cars, no two are ever going to be exactly the same and that just may be reason why Sponge seals were used as they do allow a bit more leeway for imprecisely fitting windows and hoods, although these rubber seals offer superior water tightness fitting them precisely takes a lot more time and effort, but well worth it.

I have almost finished the whole project and replaced all the seals that surround the side windows with rubber ones and I can tell you the hardest one to do is the falling pillar because of the curve at the top, with this type of seal there is no option other than to curve it yourself but to do that and retain the lip and it all to look good and work properly takes the patience of a Saint and a whole heap of time, and a lot of experimenting!, the other option would be to find a seal with that curve and the lip but ive searched long and hard and nothing so far.

Jamie.

[cliff]

Jamie, brilliant work, you are poised to become a star in the Elan world.

The seals in your early photos look a lot like the ones on my Alfa GT, although I am not quite ready to cut them in half to see if they fit and the windows have auto-drop..

P3300729.jpg

P3300732.jpg

However these are quite rare cars as well so it's unlikely that there are odd seals lying around in a scrapyard.

I was wandering round a scrappy the other day (I guess most of us are doing that now), out of the few cars there with pillar-less doors, the only one with seals that looked similar was a Ford Cougar but looked like it was the wrong internal profile and they had been wrecked by the crane.. A Saab 900 convertible also looked interesting, especially the hood seals but I didn't have time to take them off for a better look.

Embarrassingly, I don't have any pics of my Spider and I am not at home at the moment.

It would be really useful if you could post some measurements of the seal profile, it would give us all a better idea of what we are looking for.

[chrisP]

I've had a look at some cars in the car park and its not an SLK (mk 2), BMW M3 convertible (E46), BMW Z4, Audi TT convertible (mk 2), or a Renault Megane convertible (Mk 1) as far as I can see....... And I want a set of these seals to play with

Chris

[WienLot]

Vauxhall/Opel Astra 1998-2003...?

[cliff]

Vauxhall/Opel Astra 1998-2003...?

Were there any pillar-less Astras? I looked at a Calibra but that looked totally different to me. Rip would know better.

I also had a nosey at an Alfa GTV today, the window sits on the seal and there is no lip as on the GT and Jamie's pics.

[WienLot]

Vauxhall/Opel Astra 1998-2003...?

I mean... convertible !

[owentec]

Really interesting thread. I think the second seal that Jamie has found could possibly be a boot seal from a large car rather than a convertible A-pillar seal. Where all the pieces you got the same shape/length/etc?

Owen