Saturday, March 28, 2026

Been busy in the garage working to rehab my vent window assembly for the driver’s door of my 55 Chevy 2-door wagon.

Everything is looking pretty good. I sanded most of the rust from the vertical track, coated it with Eastwood’s Rust Encapsulator, and shot some rattle can black over all that.

I promised to video this, but today I installed the rubber gasket in the vent window frame. It was a little clunky to do with the 3 foot vertical track still attached, but not too difficult. As I did in the past, I used 3-in-1 oil on the back of the gasket and some oil on the frame. Then in took some vice grips to press the “foot” on the back of the seal into the track. Everything went great — until I realized I had installed the damned seal with the WRONG side facing in! Yikes!

Thanks to the oil, it wasn’t hard to remove it. The only issue was I had already cut the long end of one end of the gasket shorter to fit the frame; flipping it around, that end of the gasket is a little bit short of reaching the vertical channel. Not sure how noticeable it will be though. I plan to cut a slice of what I previously cut off that end of the seal and glue it in place with urethane glass adhesive.

I was a little bummed, but that’s what I got for installing it and cutting the gasket length before I realized it was installed upside down. Ugh!

Now I was going to install the long fuzzy track on the window side of the vertical vent window track with urethane adhesive, but I decided to go to the hardware store and buy some small sheet metal screws to secure the fuzzy track to the vertical track.

All my parts have arrived that I ordered. The new window regulator is sooo damn neat; the idler track arrived yesterday, as did the new vent window frame and the new frame that attaches to the door window. I would love to put it all together, however there’s a hitch in my plans — I can’t find the replacement vent window glass. I KNOW its somewhere in the damn garage, but hell, that was a year ago. Its wrapped up in paper and probably under some other stuff! Damn it, anyway!

I just ordered another wing vent glass; hopefully it will be here by midweek. I’ll keep looking for the glass I have, but at this point I’m not sure where the hell it is. It wasn’t a big deal cost-wise — $25 plus shipping. Just a bummer to have the door rehab delayed a couple of days.

Monday I’ll go to the hardware store and get the screws for the long fuzzy window track. I can also install the window opening fuzzy track, though you really need to have the wing vent installed to complete that. There’s also the fuzzy tracks that mount on the outside of the window opening and on the inside of the window garnish. If all that comes together, I should be able to complete the window rehab. Keyword; should.

The fuzzy track that goes around the door opening will be held in place with urethane windshield cement.

NO REGULATORS FOR REAR SIDE WINDOWS. Last year on a whim, I bought a pair of rear door regulators for a 4-door Tri-Five car in the hopes they might work on my side windows of wagon. The regulators are in decent shape, but they are way different that what I need for my wagon, so I’ll have to send them for sale on eBay.

The weather is turning nice, and I wish I could take the Chevy out tomorrow given the 75 degree forecast! But if I do, it will be without a wing vent or driver’s side.

NEW VIDEO CONTENT. Tomorrow I have a pre-Easter dinner so that may put the kabosh on Sunday cruising. Whenever it is that I can get the car done, I’m going to do a review about the GPS-based speedometer I have.

I have some vehicle maintenance I need to perform on the Chevy, like change the oil and filter, change the spark plugs and install new plug wires.