Once again, I need a little help from RP de luxe saloon owners, if I may!
The wooden section at the top of the door, on the inside is missing, I’ve made replacements, but I’m not sure there should be a channel or a rebate for the window to slide up into, would one of you excellent fellas be able to have a look or take a snap for me so I can see what I need to do and how far the vinyl trim goes in?
Ivor - these are an inverted "L" shape in cross section. They're more complicated than they look, with various small rebates and a slight curve on the lower edge. These are just about visible in the attached photo. We can of course supply these parts.
Thanks Martin, that's great thank you, if my effort looks rubbish, I'll come to you for a professional job as I did for my sunroof timbers, which were absolutely superb... there was no way I was going to attempt making those!
I rebuilt the door frame completely on my '32 van and it looks very similar to your framework. I attach a couple of pictures and confirm my old and new frames had felt channels on the sides and top of the window. Unfortunately I do not have a picture looking upwards at the top channel but it is there! Note the wiggly piping run trapped by the inner top piece of ash; that makes the fitting of that piece tricky to allow for that. On the first picture it is ready to attach the flat trimmed board.
Thanks Nick that is very helpful, the wiggly piping to fill the gap at the top is interesting, I’ve gone for good old furflex on the inside...I’ll see if that works.
The wooden piece at the top of the door is an inverted 'L' section as Martin has pointed out. When the window is fully closed the glass nestles in the angle of the section. On my RL saloon I glued a length of 1/4" diameter rubber tube of the type used in science labs along the inside angle of the top rail, before covering it with the trim material. If you do this, when the glass rises to its utmost point it pushes against the trim covered rubber tube and this forces the glass onto the window channel, making it more weathertight and stopping any sloppiness and rattles. I don't know if this is an original detail but it is certainly worth doing.
This is all great stuff, between all these recommendations, I’ll probably end up with weatherproof, rattle free front windows....unlike any Seven I’ve ever owned!
It should be weatherproof between the top of the door and the glass BUT stopping the rain coming in over the top of the door is another issue as I found when I tried to wash the car with a hose! I tried to get the wiggly piping, as I described above, to sit as close to the bodywork as possible but it has to 'clear' for the door to shut. I am thinking about the very yielding rubber section one can get that could go inside the frame but not pursued that yet.
