Seals cracking themselves!

[novacaine]

Hi all I need help again!

My hood appears to be breaking my intermediate seals (both sides). When the hood is folded the outside face of the seal is resting on the metal frame and pushing up, which has caused the brand new seal I bought are buggered.

I have another set of SE type intermediates that I don't want to use if my hood is just going to break them again. Looking at the two different seals the S2 (newer design) seem to be a lot softer and have a more brittle outer coating, whereas the older SE seals feel tougher and compress without causing too much obvious stress to the outer coating.

Is this common and is there any way to stop it from happening again?

At the moment I've quickly patched them up with black duct tape while I'm waiting for my delivery of sikaflex

[novacaine]

any ideas?

[Jamie N]

Jonathan, is that picture not the side part of the header seal?, im struggling to work it out with that picture, maybe the seal is just too soft and brittle like you say, is the seal breaking away from the bracket or is part of the hood doing the damage?.

[novacaine]

Its the rear edge of the intermediate. It's really frustrating, and I guessI it isn't common. I might just chance using the older SE intermediates that I have, until you have a set of the nice folding lip seals

[stevebow]

That happens on mine to and I put it down to the intermediate seal having too many spacers behind it, so that it meets the door glass. So I adjusted my door glass as much as possible to meet the seal without spacers, although I still need spacers.

[novacaine]

I thought spacers could be the cause but I have one spacer either side, which is standard :S

[Steve A]

My recent activities has caused me to have a closer look at this problem, it would appear that the standard intermediate does tend to destroy it's self every time the hood goes down


No spacer and the seal hits the frame





A weak seal and a far from ideal set up, a tougher seal must be found or an endless supply of seals

[Jamie N]

Or an affordable Hardtop .

[novacaine]

The hardtop is in the making! lol

This problem is nowhere need as bad with the rubber seals. Such a poor design by lotus though