[Healeys] Sidescreen felt

[simon.lachlan at alexarevel.plus.com]

Hi,

I’m trying to sort out the sidescreens in my MkII BT7. Nothing too drastic,
just the rubber seals and the felts. I gather that there are quite a few
different sidescreens so see attached.

 

Now. I bought the rubber surrounds and the so-called felt. Actually, the
surrounds aren’t rubber anymore. They’re some sort of synthetic siliconish
rubber lookalike. Problem being that stuff doesn’t stretch so it’s a pretty
tricky install. I half recall doing the same job about 25 years ago
.the
mists of time. I could push and pull them down the slots in the frames and
get them in. Not easy, but doable. I tried that this time
.it would go in
just so far – about 80% - and then the friction would overcome my best
efforts and all my WD40. I spoke to Keith Bates at Ahead4Healeys, whence
they came. He said that the trick with these things is to lay them into the
slots so that one side is in place, then force the other side in with a
suitably rounded-off implement ie not to cut the material. That worked OK
and I’ll leave a note for my heirs as to how to do it in another 25 years
time.

That was just for info and interest
..So, the felt
It arrived as a length
about 70” (1780mm) long by  ¾” (19.05mm). (Sufficient for both sides). Black
felt, nice stuff. It bears little resemblance to what’s survived in my car
which, I’d guess, started off at ¼” (9.5mm) wide and is/was stuck to one
side of the groove through which the Perspex(?) slides.

I am tempted to try to lightly glue this stuff into the groove in a U-shape
and let the to and fro of the Perspex fashion it into shape. But I can see
that’s likely to be easier in theory than in practise! I have visions of
stuck windows and mess everywhere. 

Any ideas? What’s the accepted wisdom? Trouble being that it’s not something
that we do very often, if ever at all.

 

Interestingly, Keith said that there’s only one supplier worldwide for the
rubber seals. And that’s in the States, Moss. He kind of admitted that the
items are pretty shoddy but said that they might only sell 10 in a year, if
they’re lucky,  and that making their own was out of the question. Tooling
alone would kill it.

Simon

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