Saturday, April 4, 2026

My mechanical rehab of my 55 Chevy wagon’s driver’s door is just about complete. I’m waiting on a part I thought I ordered but did not — a new horizontal track that connects the window bracket to the window regulator.

I still have the original track and it could be put in place; however, I drilled out one of the four mounting screws when it was so rusted I couldn’t get it broken loose. Anyway, the new one is on its way, end of story.

I have completed the rehab of the wing vent assembly; glued the wing vent into a brand new vent frame with urethane windshield adhesive. The new regulator is ready to install, and a new idler track (the small track that mounts to the inner door panel) is on the bench and ready to go. The new door window is also ready to go.

I suppose the order of reassembly will begin with loosely mounting the door regulator, fitting the idler track; sliding the horizontal track on the rollers. All of this is before inserting the vent assembly. First the window needs to go in the door, but not attached to the horizontal track.

The vent window needs to be placed in the door shell before the door window is fitted. The vent window is one half of the vertical fuzzy track for the window, so it all needs to come together at pretty much the same time.

I paid for priority mail shipping on the track, so it should be here first part of the week.

That reminds me — I need to install the fuzzy track into the door frame, though I won’t be able to finalize the install until the wing vent is mounted.

NEXT VIDEO PLEASE? My next video shoot for the Shade Tree Garage is going to be a report on GPS-based speedometers. I have a very simple speed-only unit, then I have the more deluxe version like I use typically on my 55. I can’t really shoot that video until I have the driver’s door rehab completed.

Well, enough for now, but I’ll be back!