Tips For Gluing Weatherstripping

[69hurstolds]

Steele Rubber Products has a brief, quick 6 pic tutorial about some weatherstripping gluing tips for those replacing rubber bits on their car. I agree with 95% of their assessment, especially about not globbing it on, but I can tell you from experience that G-bodies' factory-installed weatherstripping usually did not have their weatherstripping glue spread out with a popsicle stick. A very thin bead of adhesive is what the majority got and trust me, that was usually enough. That stuff is a motherbear to get out of weatherstrip channeling and the less the better. Will never say never, but I got a feeling things weren't all that automated on the gluing portion of the weatherstripping from what I've experienced and very few places they put "extra" glue. The goal is a water-tight seal and prevention of the weatherstrip from falling out or off it's channel, and you don't need much. Another tip is to use black adhesive to match the weatherstripping color in case a bit gets pushed out of the channel. Won't look as bad.

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[Maverick's_Monte]

Nice! There is a balance here, I tackled the weather stripping project a few years ago and it came out great. The only issue has been lately, the passenger side door, the fat piece that runs vertically that the window grabs, has been separating from the car. I do not think I used enough of the black adhesive on that section and it is a piece that sees a lot of "action" from the window going up and down. Agreed that stuff is nasty and a bit of a pain to work with.

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

Steele Rubber Products has a brief, quick 6 pic tutorial about some weatherstripping gluing tips for those replacing rubber bits on their car. I agree with 95% of their assessment, especially about not globbing it on, but I can tell you from experience that G-bodies' factory-installed weatherstripping usually did not have their weatherstripping glue spread out with a popsicle stick. A very thin bead of adhesive is what the majority got and trust me, that was usually enough. That stuff is a motherbear to get out of weatherstrip channeling and the less the better. Will never say never, but I got a feeling things weren't all that automated on the gluing portion of the weatherstripping from what I've experienced and very few places they put "extra" glue. The goal is a water-tight seal and prevention of the weatherstrip from falling out or off it's channel, and you don't need much. Another tip is to use black adhesive to match the weatherstripping color in case a bit gets pushed out of the channel. Won't look as bad.

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I imagine that the factory workers probably used special power caulk guns, likely sausage style caulk guns that are loaded with commercial size tubes of weather stripping glue. Perhaps even caulk guns with hoses that run to a large central vat of the stuff, I have seen that kind of setup.

 

[69hurstolds]

I imagine that the factory workers probably used special power caulk guns, likely sausage style caulk guns that are loaded with commercial size tubes of weather stripping glue. Perhaps even caulk guns with hoses that run to a large central vat of the stuff, I have seen that kind of setup.

From what I've seen, it had to be manually applied by humans. No computer-guided machine would ever make those sort of haphazard lines. It was probably the same guy they did to tape the paint break lines on the VIN 9 cars.

Probably this guy.