Alright guys, I’ve had a few days to lick my wounds and face the inevitable.
Long story short, I’m gonna have to remove the outer AstroRoof pan and reinstall the old seal. The install with Mike went well, no issues getting it up and in the car. We spent (as we always do) quite a bit of time aligning and adjusting everything to get the best fit, but what we found is that the aftermarket outer seal is just too hard to compress and seal when the roof is closed.
It’s as simple as that. The durometer (it’s a word, look it up) of the new rubber seal is just too much. It doesn’t not compress at all as it should to allow the insert to “pop up” into place flush with the rest of the roof when it’s in the fully closed position.
Pics don’t really show it the best, but it’s VERY apparent in person:
It’s sits recessed in the opening about a 1/4” all the way around, and even if the seal made even contact all the way around (which it doesn’t, there’s small gaps in the corners that would leak for sure), it would only make for having a nice shallow swimming pool above your head when it rains.
The reason for the small gaps in the corners goes back to the same fact: the seal is just simply too hard and won’t compress. The middles of the seal where it contacts the roof with the most pressure prevent the insert from coming up all the way to sit flush. Mike’s suggestion was to let it sit in the closed and compressed position for a couple weeks and see if it takes a set.
But I know better than that, it isn’t going to change anything.
So whatever, it is what it is for now, I just need to walk away from it for a while and work on something else. When I’ve had more time to get over my disappointment and am ready to revisit it, I’ll have a look at removing the new seal and reinstalling the old one. The biggest contributor to my disappointment isn’t that the seal doesn’t work, it’s because it’s through no fault of my own. I’ve done everything absolutely right and to the best of my ability, and just to be let down by a poorly engineered aftermarket part. If new GM ones had still been available I wouldn’t have hesitated to replace it with one of those, but they’re not and here we are.
Anyways, onto the positive sides of things.
First off, my reupholstery job of the slider board looks really good from inside the car:
With the AstroRoof in the car finally, I had to address the wiring related to the switch and the dome light. I had it just zip tied up out of the way so I could drive the car around last year, it had to come down to put the roof in. Over the last couple nights, I carefully routed the motor, switch and dome light wires, and wrapped them in some nice braided split loom. I think it looks good, certainly cleaner and simpler than what GM did at the factory. The switch for the AstroRoof mounts in the headliner, so it’s just zip tied in place for now.
To make removing and/or servicing the AstroRoof easier in the future, I made a slight modification to the dome light wiring as well. Rather than have to drop the light and leave it dangling every time the roof has to come out, I snaked the dome light wires inside a thin channel in the AstroRoof cartridge, and put quick disconnects at the side above the driver’s side window. This way the light can simply be unplugged and the light and wires come out with the roof assembly:
While I was in there working with the wiring, I added in a nice little feature. The wrecked ‘85 442 that I got the rear end and transmission out of a couple years back was a full load car with the same color interior as mine. While several of the parts had already been removed, I managed to grab a couple of desirable pieces, including the entire dash. But along with that, I grabbed the lighted flip up vanity mirror visor that it had.
After consulting my FSM, I found that this option is fed power from the dome light circuit, so after splicing into it at the “A” pillar, I ran the single hot lead it needed over to the visor.
Looks pretty nice, and should keep the GF happy when she “needs” to check her looks. 😅
In other news, Scott had mentioned that I was off to pick up new stuff when I asked him to upload the videos I had. I was picking up the door handles and the custom stainless inserts that I had made.
I kinda gave my guy the freedom to come up with something interesting, he wasn’t confident in being able to machine the faces of the handles, so he decided to make inserts instead. These are the main two options he came up with:
Now before y’all jump down my throat, yes, it has been brought to my attention that it looks like it says “Olds Coal”. There’s been some debate locally here whether this is how you’d actually write “Cool” in cursive, but now I’m not sure about it.
What do you guys think, should I have him modify his file and remake these? I’d almost hate to ask that of him as he’s a super nice guy and didn’t charge me a thing for these. Please weigh in with your input here.
The idea was one that I came up with, make the name of the car look like the older original style cursive “Oldsmobile” script. I had quickly thrown something together on the computer using “Olds” from “Oldsmobile”, and the capital “C” in “Cool” from the same script “Cutlass”. Then just modified everything else to kinda fit in.
This is what I designed, and what I gave him to work from:
Whether I have him remake the inserts or not, I’m leaning towards using the plain script ones. I think they’ll look pretty classy once they’re attached:
Let me know your thoughts.
That’s all I’ve got for now gents, the rest of this week I’ll be working on getting the handles done in the brushed finish so that I can matte clear them and the passenger side door belt moulding.
Thanks as always for all the likes, comments and feedback.
D.
