Little mid-weekend update here...
Ever since receiving my G Body Parts order last Wednesday, I’ve been chomping at the bit to get the replacement door glass guide installed on the passenger’s side glass.
Getting into it, I did my usual document everything with pictures as I went routine so I thought I might share what it all entails here in its own little post. Who knows, it might just help somebody down the road.
Best part is, this will apply to ALL power window equipped G bodies.
So here goes.
I already had the door glass out of the car in order to properly body work and restore the door. My windows in Olds Cool are power, manual roll up windows don’t have this little guide that I’m about to cover.
I began by laying the outside face of the glass out on an old blanket. This allows you to access the guide. The old guide is still attached to the glass, it’s the white-ish colored piece in the bottom right hand corner. The black replacement piece is positioned next to it for comparisons sake.
It’s pretty obvious as to why it needed replacing. There’s supposed to be a loop in the plastic that a metal guide pin on the door goes into when the window is rolled up. The pin and loop keep the window securely located and from flopping around. This loop is almost always broken in old G body power window cars.
As you can see in the previous picture, the plastic guide is riveted in place on the glass. More on this in a bit.
This is the replacement guide, it’s a different color and a slightly different shape, but it’s still the correct replacement for this application.
Backside of the guide. It has some metal washers inside plastic ones to back up the guide and keep the rivets from breaking the glass:
Time to start replacing stuff. This is just how I did it, you might find a better way. Taking a cutoff wheel in a die grinder, I ground the backside of the rivets down to the metal washer. If you’re going to do this, BE CAREFUL. Sparks from grinding can and will mark the glass if they’re hot enough. While the body of the rivets are aluminum, the centers and the washer underneath are metal and will throw sparks. I just went slow and careful, but I’d strongly recommend covering the glass to properly protect it.
Once you have all remnants of the old rivets removed from the backside, a light tap with a hammer and a small punch will knock the center out. Once all of the old rivet is gone, you can gently unsnap the plastic/metal washers from the guide. I’ve done one side here and left the other for comparison:
Once you have both rivets and the backing washers removed, the guide will come right out. Take some care in doing this however, because there is a second set of plastic washers on the other side that sit underneath the guide:
The white washers have little plastic tabs on one side of them, these protrude through the glass and clip into the black plastic/metal washers:
This is extremely handy because it keeps everything located in place for when you go to install the new guide.
As you may have guessed, you’re not going to be able to do this with just a regular run-of-the-mill hand riveter. That’s because the nose pieces for them won’t go big enough. To do this job you’ll need a large sized heavy duty riveter that will handle at least 1/4” stem rivets. I picked this one up at a local tool store for around $60 Canadian:
You won’t be doing any riveting without rivets. This is where y’all get to benefit from my mistakes. I had some 1/4” stem rivets that I thought would be more than long enough. Unfortunately they were not. If you use the incorrect length rivet, it will expand inside the guide and washer assembly and not clamp correctly.
After painfully drilling out my first failed attempt, I drove all over the city looking for the correct ones. FYI, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Princess Auto and several fastener stores will NOT have them. I finally tracked down the correct ones at NAPA, the part number you will need is on the bag:
They come in packages of 5 (you will need 4 to do both sides), or boxes of 15 or 20. Not sure because the NAPA I got these from didn’t have any of the boxes. But even at 5, you still have at least one you can screw up before you have to go buy more.
Installation of the new guide and washer assemblies is the opposite of removal. Just ensure you have the guide and rivet heads on the correct side of the glass, they go on the inside facing the passenger’s compartment.
Backside:
And that’s it. Now you can proceed to reinstall your glass back into the door. If you have the right tools and rivets, this is about a 10-15 minute operation per side, total.
For such a relatively quick and simple operation, I can personally vouch that this makes a HUGE difference in the stability of the glass when it’s rolled up. No more floppy windows, and looks pretty good too!
Hope you guys got something outta this “how-to” and won’t hesitate to tackle this project on your own rides.
Good luck and thanks for checking in!
D.
