refitting vent window

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A few notes on reinstalling the rear vent window brackets and mechanism for ’34-’38’s. I had new aluminum brackets made for the fronts but the rears were still in good enough shape to reuse. The brackets were twisted enough from over-torqueing trying to close that it threw off the alignment with the inside door panel.

These mechanisms fail in three basic ways from applying too much torque, the teeth of the sector gear strip out, the splines attaching the sector gear to the window frame strip out, and/or the bracket holding the gears twist and break.

Although the main issue is the vent window frame getting stuck in the weatherstrip trying to crank it in to close (or cranking out to initially open) I found some more things to look for. Basically it is easy  -maybe inevitable – that the nut compressing against the big spring will get overtightened and bind the shaft. On this window if the nut was tightened enough to be able to insert the cotter pin it bound the shaft all by itself. I stripped the splines of the repro gear doing this and had to get another one from Dave Murray. I don’t see any reason to have the spring compressed that much, there seems to be more than enough friction in everything else to keep the window from flopping around or closing on its own from wind forces. I tightened it barely more than finger tight and used Loctite instead of a cotter pin.

Likewise the bottom nut holding the sector gear can easily be overtightened. In this case the nut ended up almost clearing above the cotter pin hole, so I tightened just enough to align past the cotter pin hole, then backed it off and inserted the cotter. I bent the cotter pin into the castellation to keep the nut from turning.

As you can see, I finished cutting and installing the “H” weather strip extrusion put supplied by David Coco. It worked well, thankd again David!

 

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Yes, the vent windows are a pain to get to work correctly.  When everything was new I’m sure they were fine, but a bracket which bears all the force and made out of some mysterious pot metal after 80 years isn’t always a good combination.

How many people need H rubber now?  If I could get 8 or 10 orders could make another run of it. This was specifically made for rear vent windows 34/35, would fit other years, and if I had it to do over again I’d have used it in the front vent windows too.  The Steele rubber just seems too thick.  The H legs need to be cut in appropriate places, it’s a little work but not difficult.

Cost would be $125 per 15 foot length, which includes shipping in Continental US.  I have none now, just asking if there’s more interest. David Coco Winchester Va.

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If it would fit the 1936 rear vent windows, count me in!
Dave Stevens

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