Hi
I have been trial fitting the wood surrounds in the windows of my 1948 Jag, there is a large gap between the wood and the window aperture, is there a seal that goes in the window opening between the glass and the wood, it is a large space to fill ! , additional there is a lot of gap between the bottom of the wood frame and the door capping is there something here also ? IE I can place the wood surround where it covers the opening for the window, however to cover the space in the upper opening I have a space between the wood and the window frame below
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding but if there isn’t a large gap between the glass and the centre section of the wooden frame then you would be unable to get your fingers into the grab section for pulling the door closed. You should not be closing the door by pulling on the arm rest or the window winder or interior door handle.
Hi Pete
Yes I see that, however this gap is very large and looks like there should be something to fill it, I will have another look with the glass in place and post again
Originally the gap between the glass and the outside metalwork was filled with a padded strip of “velvet”. I wasn’t very convinced by the ability of this to prevent rainwater entering the door so I cheated and fitted a rubber extrusion that has a windscreen wiper type action against the glass.
There is an inner draught seal under the wood frame that just lightly brushes the glass, and, as Peter states, a fabric covered strip on the outer edge.
I remade the inner draught seals as an excellent replica of the original. It is pinned to the top edge of the door capping with small panel pins before the window frame is fitted. The outer ‘wiper’ strip is screwed to the turned-down flange of the door. Have a look for some screw holes here, and some small pin holes in the top edge of the capping. But there is an interesting feature with this to deal with the curve from the vertical to the horizontal without showing a break in the seal. I’ll post some photos later with further explanatory details.
I agree with Peter that the outer seal is not a satisfactory water seal because it is very old technology but I stayed with it.
On my late 1948 1.5 SE there are two seals on the window glass, filling I think the “gaps” you are experiencing - both originally a felt type material, but I replaced these with “fine bristle” type window strips with a metal backing from Wollies Trims in the UK. These fit to the inner and outer of the glass: the inner one to the top of the lower wood door trim, and the outer to the actual metalwork of the door. The Special Equipment car has additional ash trays on the rear doors.
As Peter mentioned, these felt/bristle trims are not very water tight to the glass (so consider the rubber trim for a better seal if you plan driving in the rain) - I choose the “similar to original looking” bristle edgings, and drilled run-out water holes in the bottoms of each door for any water that dribbled in.
Here is an end view of the window sill draught seals. The original is a flat strip of very thin steel with one edge rolled to create a circular bead. It is then covered in a black velvety fabric. The other views are of the rubber section I adopted and a strip of 1/2 mm galvanised I cut to give it stiffness. It is glued together along with a covering of black velour.
This is a view of the fitting method for the outer glass wiper at the radiused corners. Maintaining continuity helps to prevent water running behind the corner and gives a nice finishing line. When I dismantled it I found that the channel is just a fabric-covered Bailey-type channel but the outer edge is cut at the corner to allow the edge to be continuous along the horizontal. The remaining one and three quarter channel carried on down the remainder of the window guide.
