Best Weatherstripping Company?

[crashtech]

Hey guys, quite a few people come to me vehicles that have been redone by themselves or another shop. The vehicles, mostly '67-72 Chevy pickups, have new weatherstrips installed, and they ask me to align the doors because they are VERY hard to shut. I mean you have to practically bodyslam the !@#$ things. The customers tend not to like it when I tell them the problem is usually because the weatherstrips are not the same as factory. I do the best I can for them, usually ending up lubing the latch, aligning the door (moving the whole thing outward a bit, usually) then telling them to give it some time in the summer sun and we'll see if the doors can be made more flush at a later date. They are happy at that point to put up with slight panel misalignment than the embarrassment of a door that just won't shut.

What I'd really like to do is be able to suggest a replacement door weatherstrip set that will be more conformable. The LMC ones are what everybody (except me) seems to use, I'm convinced now they are part of the problem. I have used SoffSeal on 60's musclecars, and Steele on really old cars. I haven't had severe problems with these, though new door weatherstips ALWAYS make the door hard to shut for at least a little while. I've not actually bought weatherstrips for a 67-72 Chev P/U. Is there a brand that is nice and soft and won't make the stupid doors too hard to shut?

 

[Bob Hollinshead]

Metro gets my vote for most of the GM stuff. Nothing worse than getting a car perfectly straight with perfectly aligned panels and strikers then have to bodyslam the doors and decklid to get them to close. I've seen first gen camaro decklids distort from a shitty weatherstrip. I've heated some up to the point of smoking trying to get them to conform to the correct shape. Metro I have not had much problem with. Door and trunk bumpers are another thing that have really pissed me off lately, years ago the aftermarket stuff was just fine but now almost all of them have hollow pins that rarely hold them in place long. I often have to search ebay for NOS stuff as it seems all the repro companies have gone to the same shitty supplier.

 

[crashtech]

I can see you feel as strongly about it as I do! Aftermarket pieces like rubber are the Achilles heel of restoration. It's possible to modify a metal aftermarket piece to fit, but you can't really fix a bad weatherstrip, can you! I'd forgotten about Metro, thanks for the tip.

 

[Arrowhead]

I test fit the weatherstrip during the bodywork process because this is such a big issue. The door seals on the '55 TBird I did needed major shaving (don;t remember the brand). I just test fit all the seals on a '65 Malibu I'm working on and the Soft Seal fit great. There was slight resistance to closing the doors, but not to the point of changing the alignment. I have a piece of no name cowl seal that pushed the hood up 1/8" over the top of the cowl panel. Had to trim that one to make it fit.

Does soft seal not have any for the '67-'72 chevy trucks?

 

[crashtech]

I think they do, but I didn't want to start recommending switching out someone's brand new weatherstrips if I was not reasonably sure it would solve the problem.