Door/window felt and cat wiskers

I was dreading screwing around with a hand made 1971 Italian sports car's doors and glass but, I was delightfully surprised, almost zero corrosion inside the doors that one would likely find in any car of this age and the regulator,motor,trim and glass is easily removed and reinstalled, try doing the same job on a 59 Caddy or a 61 Chrysler 300. It's about time I got an easy task on this car.     

Yes to the silicone approach.

do some trial dry fitting to figure out your movements, as you don’t want smeared silicone all over the place. 😉

I used two small spring clamps for holding and maneuvering each strip.

I took strips of cardboard, folding about six of them into a V-shape, and then added small cardboard strips to form a proper width wedge to hold the strip in place and allow the silicone to dry. You will do this twice on each door …… don’t try to wedge two pieces on the same door at the same time  

The upper few inches of window travel are a well known issue. I suggest you take out your U-channel felt and then notice how things change. I doubt you will discover you have a perfectly smooth and easy window even with the felt removed. The slightest adjustments to the two rubber cushioned bolts that attach the glass to the regulator will  often find a sweet spot, or something much better. You can adjust the position of the rear window track, also.  

Larry

Larry,

So, pretty much all early Pantera's have the same issue with the glass kinda binding up in the last few inches from the top of the frame? And whats up with with the square holes in the window bracket thingy? Steve told me to do away with the single black window attachment bracket that has two 6MM  studs welded to it. I'm going to put in the individual brackets with the folded rubber isolators. So, part of the glass adjustment is in the square holes of the bracket that goes up and down on the aluminum track. It seems like there should be a bushing of some sort in the square holes and I guess there is supposed to be a fender type washer on it? Can you show me a pis of what it should look like ? Here is a pic of mine. Steve told me the early cars were hand built and there were no two cars the same.  

In your last pic on the pink carpet, what going on there?

That is a spring clamp, as I noted in the text, that I used to handle the strips once the silicone had been applied.

Larry

I bought new whiskers from Wilkinson and new clips and put them in with no troubles (only the inside whiskers, not the outside ones). It went surprisingly fast and easy. I bent the clips a bit to make doubly sure that there were would be no sharp edges protruding to scratch the glass.

One trick that sometimes works in trying to better align the window channels to the glass is to slightly loosen the bottom window guide bolt with the window down, then roll it up with the motor while watching the loose bolt-head. You'll be able to see it moving around as the window climbs, which might give you an idea of where the bolt should be best tightened. Remember too, the stock motor & mechanism doesn't have much torque which is a big part of the slow-rise problem.

I got it all back together with everything new but, It's still slow on the last couple of inches going up. On a positive note the alignment of the glass is almost perfect. I,m going to call it good cause it goes all the way up and down. I didn't want to wait for the inside whiskers silicon to dry so, attached it with tiny counter sunk brass screws ant nuts and worked better than the old clips I tried to salvage. I took the car for a very brisk jaunt threw my favorite canyon and mountain high speed blasting area pushing the engina to full throttle at high RPM for 45 min. and returned with no leaks or puking. I was happily supersized.

Metal self-tapping screws have been known to back out a tiny bit but enough to touch the glass and produce a series of scratches  when the window is parked in one position. The door skins are quite thin so you only get about 1.0 threads. That and road vibrations seem to easily loosen them. Never tried brass screws or Lock-tite but I suspect brass is still harder than glass. Keep an eye on them- after a few years, my car had a series of dots engraved all the way up the driver's side glass.

I carefully counter sank all of the holes on the on the whiskers fuzzy side threw the plastic type material and the heads way further embedded than the whiskers. I'm HIV positive the screws will never scratch the glass.   

As everyone else, my windows get very slow on the last 2-3 inches.  I have found that if every couple of months I spray a "dry" silicon lubricant up and down the whisker channels on each side of the window frames, the windows operate much more freely and don't stop during those last few inches.  It's a quick and easy approach.

@Donny Dotson posted:

. I'm HIV positive the screws will never scratch the glass.   

Ummm, auto correct?

I was positive but not with HIV. Just messing around trying to be funny.