Door Glass Felt Channel

[FRANTIC FRANC]

Having removed the top frame of the driver's door (had a crack in it that I'm off to get alloy welded) on my spare S3, I noticed the glass channel felt was in really poor condition. Now I now SJ's sell it (but pricey @ £40 each door) but has anyone found somewhere that sell it per metre hopefully at a much cheaper price ??

Cheers, Franc

[peteyg]

Hi Franc,

Depending on how bad the material is, I had great results but cleaning with washing up liquid and then lubricating with silicone window grease. Made the windows work much better but if your missing bits of felt this isn't going to help.

Maybe try Woolies Trim.

Pete

[FRANTIC FRANC]

Yep it is shreaded! There must be another vehicle that uses the same size felt channel!

[Nelly]

I am in the same boat as you and this was my Esprit task of the day! Bought mine into work with me, I am also a felt strip missing (the small section). If I come up with anything today I will post back.

I would hope SJ's price also includes the metal channel for that price.

Edited April 26, 2010 by Nelly9000

[peteyg]

http://www.woolies-trim.co.uk/c-290-single-track.aspx

Have a looky here.

[freshcut]

That sounds about right as far as price for what I paid to get replacement felt on my V8. Think I ended up paying about $60US for the required 3 meters worth. Very simple to do. Not sure if the S3 is the same, but on the V8 it's just the rubber backed felt, nothing else. You do need to have a utility knife and something to punch a little hole on either side of the cut to prevent the felt from bunching up on the bends, but very easy to install, only takes about 15 minutes or so. You'll see what I'm taking about when you remove the old piece.

Edit: Just checked out the link that Peter included. If memory serves, it was very similar to P/N 317 once installed, but the OEM stuff laid perfectly flat almost like a ribbon until pressed into the channel.

Edited April 26, 2010 by freshcut

[Nelly]

Mine is a flat metal strip with the felt applied, which is then in turn clipped to a "V" profile metal angle which is pop rivited to the top of the GRP doorcard. It looks original judging by the condition but as my doorcards were retimmed in the past I wasn't sure if someone had done a bodged job! There is no rubber on them at all.

[FRANTIC FRANC]

Took my door window frame to the welder today, he moaned about the age of the alloy saying the older it gets the harder it is to weld though he would see what he could do. . .

Looking at my felt channel it is almost identical to part no. 319 and the base width is almost spot on! I think 4m should be enough to both doors so that £3.40 x 4 = £13.60 + £3 p&p.

A big saving over the £80 - thanks Pete!

p.s. The door top frames were discontinued about 5 years ago - a new one sold on Ebay recently for around £100 !!

Edited April 26, 2010 by FRANTIC FRANC

[Nelly]

Lotusbits wants £100 for a doorframe top too, one of mine is snapped at the point it goes into the door and I am going to try the re-weld route first.

Franc, are you able to post a picture of your existing felt channel? Mine is nothing like part 319. I am wondering if it was imrpoved from the S2 to S3.

Edited April 26, 2010 by Nelly9000

[FRANTIC FRANC]

No problem, camera is on charge so will add one later this afternoon.

here you go. . .

Oh - I can't upload used almost all my quota!! Any admin now how to reset??

Edited April 27, 2010 by FRANTIC FRANC

[wookiecj]

Franc, get yourself a free account with photobucket.com which will take you about five or ten minutes to set up. You can then create albums based on whatever categories you chose and upload the pictures into any of your albums. One advantage of this method is that the upload automatically reduces the pictures to 800x600 which is the recommended size for posting on the forum. (You can also point people, like your folks/children/friends, to albums of photos which may be of interest to them. Flikr and Picasa do similar sorts of things.

Once your picture(s) is/are uploaded you just hover your mouse over the thumbnail and four boxes appear with the correct html code for placing them in various external facilities. For forum posting you need the bottom one which is the IMG box. Hover over the box and copy the code (Ctrl + c). Swap back to the forum reply box where you want it to appear and then paste it (Ctrl + v) into the text. When you preview your post, you can check that it is the correct picture and that it has appeared where you wanted it to appear.

It should look something like this <!--http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/pp296/sweetesprit/Random/lion1.jpg--> prefaced by an IMG inside square brackets but without the arrowheads, exclamation mark and dashes that I've put in to stop the line appearing as the photograph which this line refers.

Sounds complicated but it's not really.

It also does away with filling up your Lotus Forums space AND it means that you don't have to 'delete' stuff to make room for new photos which has the knock on effect of the photos not dissappearing from older threads as they are deleted from your allocated photo space. Additionally it does not take up space on Bib's server and cost him extra bandwidth usage charges.

Sparky and I have been doing this for a couple of years now and because of this, most of the photos in our old threads are still visible for you to 'enjoy' or refer back to if needed.

Good luck, you know it makes sense..... PM me if you have any problems/queries.

[FRANTIC FRANC]

Okay Let's see if I've got this right . . .

Yippee it worked!!! As you can see it does resemble part no. 319 !!

Oh yeah forgot to say I collected my upper door frame . . .

Success !! The bloke said "it was good metal!" As you can see he's added a small strip to reinforce the stress point.

Is the glass supposed to be just glued in???

Edited April 27, 2010 by FRANTIC FRANC

[Nelly]

Thanks for the photo - I have been a bit of a donut and was thinking of the felt channel that is on the doorcard itself on the inside of the car. Sorry.

That said i had not even thought about the channel in the window frame, so another thing to add to my ever growing list!

Hope my frame welds as well as yours, mine is broken in exactly the same place.

Edited April 28, 2010 by Nelly9000

[FRANTIC FRANC]

LOL - I think that is called the 'external weather strip' which are about £10 for SJ's

I take all my small welding jobs to that guy - he's a pleasant old bloke and bloody good welder too - he only charged me £4 but I gave him a fiver coz I'm soooo generous!

[Nelly]

The external weatherstrip is the actual rubber on the outside of the glass (sandwiched by two metal strips). I already have these, and SJ have a photo of them on their swanky new website.

Its doing my head in trying to work out the proper name for all these bits!!!!!!!

Edited April 29, 2010 by Nelly9000