'36 Ford Door Hinge Seal Problem

D

dwinne

Junior Member
I just installed the right door hinge seal on the '36 Ford 5-window Coupe. The door does not close or latch properly. It appears that the seal is either too fat or the incorrect durometer rubber. These seals are from Mac's and are supplied to them by Vintique. Has anyone else experience similar issues? Have you used seals from a different supplier that were satisfactory?
Thanks for your help in advance,
Dave
 
Dave-

I have had the same problem. Doesn't seem to matter who you buy the seal from, they are just too thick. What I did was to use a strip of common black insulating rubber used to seal household doors. Fits perfect, looks factory and does the job. Oh yes, its' cheap! Five bucks will buy you a lifetime supply.

Tom
 
First where are you installing this seal. The only seals on a 35 are down the front hinge edge, over the top of the door and at the lower door panel. There are no gaskets that go down the rear edge of the door. This is a 35 Ford not a 014 Mercedes.
The biggest issue that I have found is when the rocker panels have been replaced and the door gap has been closed up too much. This happens because the door fit was not checked when the rockers were installed or the installer tried to tighten up the gaps and drew the gap in to tight. The only way around this is to trim down the thickness of the hinge seal with a razor blade or use a smaller cross section seal. In reality you do not need the seal anyway if the leading edge of the door is below the cowl panel lip, the interior windlace abuts the door opening to eliminate any airflow.
 
Dick is right, I replaced complete sills on my 37 Tudor doors closed OK before rubber, then when applying the leading edge seal, and top seal the door pinches the rubber. I closed door and hope the seal will form when temp warms if not I will remove one at a time to see which one is doing the binding and find a smaller replacement or leave off entirely. Zeke
 
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Dick,
The rocker panels have not been replaced on this Ford. They were pristine.
As, Tom stated, the seals are too thick, period. When are the suppliers going to own up to the fact that their quality control is sub-standard??? Some of them take absolutely no responsibility for the quality of their parts...
The rep at Mac's told us that we should install the seals, close the doors, and let the seals compress for three days. This is totally unacceptable in my book!
Isn't there anyone out there that makes correct size and durometer rubber seals?
Dave
Dave
 
Dave, I have the same story, no replaced sheet metal, just leave them out, or do what Tom says. I am not driving in the winter anyway. Paul
 
I had the same problem on my '36 sedan. Front of the door, vertically. Doors have to be close really firmly. The hinges are non adjustable, thus the distance between the front of the door and door post stays the same no matter what, so how does replacing the rocker panels have anything to do with it. THE RUBBER IS TOO THICK FROM THE SUPPLIER. PERIOD. When I installed the seal on my '36 coupe I cut the rubber in half with a razor blade, only because it's where it can't readily be seen. Another case of "sorta fit". Rod
 
In the early 70's I bought new seals for a Chevy pick up from Chevrolet. After installing the doors were tight. Took several weeks for them to set.
 
Ok I spent some time on this question this morning. I did not have the mentioned unit I had a competitors brand. Checking out the differences in hinges it appears that there is an issue with the seal but to what extent I dont have enough information, I dont have all the different brands to review. Plus I still think the size of opening of the door jam is important and any modification or repair can cause an issue.

The seal that I had also posed a similar but not severe problem in that it appeared to place additional pressure on the hinge and keep the door from closing easily.
This seal looked like a two part seal at the hinge with a main seal and a 1/4 round filler glued to it to fill the hinge gap. The main seal seamed to work as intended but the quarter seal glued to the main seal portion was of a stiffer sponge composition so it did not compress as easily as the main sponge seal. It worked but appeared pieces to be a little on the stiff side.

After examining the seal I felt that if the sealpad was a hollow core design it would work as intended because the sealpad would compress due to the core hollow and not bind the door, which the solid sponge seal did. My approach is some what back yard mechanic but possible to make this work. Taking a 1/4" brake line tubing about 12" long and sharpening one end to a knife edge taper, you could make a simple core drill and then using a drill carefully bore a hole thru the hinge seal pad vertically to hollow the pad and give the seal a space to compress. This would seem to cure the issue where the sponge seal was pinched to tight in the door.

Some mention was made on using a heat gun to warm the rubber and reform it but I felt that would be scary with new paint or reverting to the old method of just trimming some of the hinge seal pad portion thinner would be safer..

I have gone on to report this condition to one of the MFG's for review so your issues have not gone unnoticed. DS
 
I'll be watching for an update, since I'll be ready to install new weather stripping on my '36 next Fall (I hope) . The vendor probably couldn't respond that quickly, but I'll be watching.

Thanks for your efforts, Dick !
 
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