Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

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I came to the conclusion that my handle clips are not correct for the car. The two doors have different clips in them, and neither is flush even though they are in all the way (confirmed by visual inspection and additional hammering for good measure). They can't be pushed forward anymore. So I cut off the parts that were interfering with the weatherstrip and put the weatherstrip on. If I ever need to remove the door handles I would've needed to remove the door panels and drop the glass anyways. So nothing changed for me there.

Each door uses a different clip so maybe they’ve gotten mixed up with rear to front or left to right.

The clips should stick out 1/32" or so, so you can get a flathead screwdriver under them easily, but not more than that.

I removed the door seals from the passenger doors, cleaned off all the old adhesive, and sanded & painted where the new seals will go. (I can't say removing the old adhesive was my favourite project.)





This front seal for the rear door is split some. I think I'll just try to repair it for now. I see Steele has them as part of the rear door set.





What was the reason for the metal support in the bottom seal? Was this a production thing, or did the bottom door seal have a tendency to come loose?





I haven't noticed this before, but I'm guessing the inner door shell has this seam because it was also used for the junior models?

Thats basically where they added the 5" for the senior models.

For the rear door, your observation and Kev’s comment are exactly right. The inner door stamping is the same with an add-on and different skin for the extra length of the senior sedans. This was the same up to and including the 1956 models which used basically the same door. 1954 was the first year of any real change on the rear door when its hump was flattened rather than being a full radius and, of course, the outer skin was changed completely for 1955 and 1956.

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Steele will sell parts from the kits separately too. Just ask.

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I hadn't thought of that, good to know!

Just speculation on why they had the metal strip embedded in the rubber but with the adhesives of the day perhaps they thought vulcanizing the rubber to the metal would prevent the weatherstrip from sagging or dropping down in the middle and getting torn up if the adhesive let go. IIRC, there is also a metal strip on one of the vertical pieces where the door closes against it in a sort of sliding action. That strip might be there to take the added mechanical stress.

My "new" door seals have been wrapped up for I don't know how many years, (they came from a swap meet) so I've got them stretched out on my deck so they can straighten out a bit.

Some of you had noted that after replacing your seals it took a while for your door seals to settle in. I had noticed that some of these ones I picked up are a different colour, but they are also a bit different consistency.

You can see in the picture that the one on the grey one is more porous than the black one, which makes it noticeably softer. I didn't do any scientific compression testing, but the grey one is much closer to the consistency of the factory original door seal which were still on my car.

Unfortunately I have no idea who the supplier was for either of these, but something to be aware if you're replacing your door seals.

I'll report back how the grey seal works.