The 'E' Type Forum

I can't see any previous posts relating specifically to the shape of OTS door glass.

Mine are at least 30 years old, but I suspect that they are non-original as they don't fit very well, and they have no kite-marks anywhere - if that means anything ?

Has anyone any experience of buying new ones please ? I'm happy to get some made but making a template is a lot more fraught than I'd imagined, and I might try a standard one first.

The story regarding these began nearly two years ago :

http://forum.etypeuk.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10352

I really grasped that there was something wrong with them (see above, post #17 onwards) when I realised that there was nothing wrong with my hood, and wrote :

HOWEVER, having had the doors in a million bits until yesterday, I was unable to check the overall shape of the hood assembly with relation to the door-glasses, and this has thrown up a Real Cold Shower - hence the Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back comment.



It's taken me over a year to pluck up the courage to have another go at this, especially as it means stripping down so much stuff that I'd hoped was finished.

By placing a steel rule at regular intervals, whilst inside the car, against the glass, it's possible to construct a profile of what shape the glass would need to be to touch the cantrail rubbers along its whole periphery.

Or an approximation of full contact, as the segments are inevitably a bit irregular.

As you can see, the current door-glass is way off what is required - the thin zinc sheet is my first attempt at a template.



As I had some height adjustment in hand down below, as it were, the actual increase in height required at the highest point is only 9mm, but elsewhere my current glass would need taking lower by 9mm in places, so the sum 18mm disparities give me a hopeless fit overall - with all the noise, draughts, and water ingress that you can imagine.



A further issue is the one of thickness of the glass ; mine are a tad shy of 5mm, and this gives at least a 1.50mm gap in the felt-lined groove of the chrome upright, which makes them floppy and door-shutting sound rather naff. The chromes are original, and the trim is new and from an informed source.

Could someone wiser than me do some measuring and comment on glass-thickness and fit ?



Last of all, my glasses appear to be too short, as there is an apparently consistent absence of depth all along the front edge where the glass goes into the chrome-upright slot



Any advice that anyone who has been down this route can offer would be very welcome, and might help others too, as this kind of detail makes the difference between cars and is - I suspect - something that restorers often only discover when they assemble a multitude of parts that they thought were the final assembly, only to discover ............

Mine are out of the car at the moment Rory awaiting frames back from the chrome platers. Other that the thickness what other measurements do you need? Presumably the height at various distances from the front lower corner taken at 90 degrees up from the lower edge?

Simon

Have sent you PM Simon.

Hi Rory,
I replaced mine two years ago when I installed a new hood. I got them from Pilkington and was sure that it would cure my ill fitting hood- frame- glass story. I found out that they were almost exactly the same as those nameless replacements previously fitted. After endless adjustments everything is ok now. So I assume that the glass from Pilkington is the correct shape.

Rory, the hood can be adjusted to obtain a uniform gap. You have to play with the 3 adjustable seal channels to reach this, then adjust the final height of the glass.

Hi Rory,

As promised pics. All vertical dimensions in mm, taken at 90 degrees from base of GLASS. Although the runner is still on , I scribed a line to represent the edge of the glass. Everything else should be self explanatory. Thickness is just over 5mm. Once I remove the runners I can make a template and post it to you if you still need it. I've also put in the angle of the rake back of the leading edge.
First pic is of the Triplex Mark and I've no reason to believe the glass is not original.











Any advice on getting the runners off? So far I've tried a strip of wood and a rubber mallet with no success.

Simon


.

Hi Rory,

Love your detailed posts as I will be going through what you and others have during my rebuild. Here are links to the photos of the convertible from the factory fit to save you from digging around. These may show a slight difference to yours giving you an idea of what to adjust. My glass is tucked away and I have not found it yet to check the profile.

Thanks for all the input, and especially to Simon who wasted his Sunday for me

Off to measure shortly ..............

The adjustment in this area is seriously limited, and as Jack at BAS in Wales struggled to do his best with the cantrail positions when he fitted a new hood it is improbable to conclude that I'm going to be able to undo a few screws and get the fit I need.

Furthermore, whilst it's true that the lateral movement of those cheeks does enable one to rely on the triangular shape of the cantrail-rubbers to go looking for contact with the glass, you can then end up with unsightly steps in the cantrail alignments, and the top edge of the glass still doesn't follow the overall shape of the hood, even if it does - perhaps - seal better.

It's probably that a) the cars were never that good when new, which is an observation that has been a constant in all my conversations with professionnals in the UK (be it Hutsons, Mike Wilkinson, Jack at BAS, Angus etc) and b) the price to pay for getting a hood that is such an unusually good fit over the windscreen edge may be a hood-frame profile that differs slightly to the door-glass shape.

It all smells like ££££ and made-to-measure glass, but will reinforce my pleasure at being to leave the car looking standard, whilst hiding a multitude of imperceptible tweaks that address the vagiaries of manufacturing tolerances and 55+ years of wear.

OK, the mills of this man may grind slow, but they grind mighty fine.

(Ed - And wear his teeth out.)

Trying as hard as this may not be to everyone's taste, but FWIIW here are some observations that would have helped me when I got started, and will help anyone else going down the made-to-measure route, or even just making the best of what they've got.

I can't cry victory just yet, but believe I'm on the right track.

Whatever I did to rotate the chromed glass-slider frame via the brackets on the door bottom, or change its height and alignment with the spacers that are fitted (or can be fitted) underneath the horizontal traverse on the door top, my door glasses were way out of shape in comparison with the hood.

Their sealing to the rubbers was quite hopeless irrespective of the lateral alignment of the hood-segments, given that there is essentially no way of changing the alignment of the either the front (hood-pan) segment without some serious metalwork, nor the rear-most semi-vertical chromed section - the best you can hope to do is line them up.



My dummy plywood door-glass shows that after some tweaking of the holes in the hood-segments, the overall alignment isn't bad



- even keener students might have had a go at improving the front segment but it's too late for me as the hood is trimmed and fitted.

This (roofing) zinc is stiff enough, yet thin enough, to make a template that can actually be stuck to the inside of the window glass and have its fit tested against the rubbers, as close as you're going to get to replicating the new glass



so after some careful plotting with a steel rule used by an assistant inside the car, the ideal shape was extrapolated from the original glass and then cut out of the zinc, with tweaks soft-soldered onto the edges as the shape evolved.





There was another 18mm of vertical movement available in the door winder mechanism



that I was unable to use at this point, but by cutting the template 18mm higher than the bottom of the old glass the overall height of the new glass will be almost identical, and the brass slider that carries the rear corner of the glass in the winder mechanism will be at its optimum position, see below.



Removing the glass support rail wasn't easy, as others have found, but once suitably clamped and the rail brought up to too-hot-to-touch with a heat-gun, a hardwood drift and some evenly-distributed blows coaxed it off.



Will order these new ones off Pilkingtons in Redditch, they will not be cheap at £183.60 each, almost 4 times the price of the SNGB standard ones, but if the fit and appearance is anything like I expect then it's a price I'm happy to pay.

Last, a question for the specialists please : the old glass has these markings, invisible when fitted to the car, I'm pretty sure they're not original :



Pilkingtons offer these choices :



- could some kind soul tell me which is correct (it looks like it's TM2 from the picture that Simon put up ?) and where the markings were positioned exactly ?

Thanks for the useful update Rory.

I'm going through the same process myself as you know. Following a conversation wth Barratts, they may or may not sell the Triplex door glasses but their sales staff didn't seem to know. They do have 2 types listed if you delve deep enough, one being branded "Starglass" and the other, no one seems sure but they do know it's triple the price. At that point I gave up and asked Angus who was far more helpful. The "Star glass" fits apparently but the logo is rather large and knowing how I am, Angus suggested I might (would) be better getting Pilkington Triplex.

If no one has posted ref the position of the Triplex logo by the time I get home Rory, I'll post a pic with the position as for the life of me I can't remember.

Fun getting the runners off isn't it. I ended up clamping the runners between two pieces of 3x2 in the vice and then gently wriggling the glass from side to side while applying silicone spray.

Just looked at your pic again . Could the logo be an "S" and a " G" for the afore mentioned Star Glass of Spain?


Simon

Rory

Your current glass is after market. Everything you could possibly want to know about Triplex glass can be found here: http://forum.etypeuk.com/viewtopic.php?p=60533#p60533

Heuer wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 24, 2019 1:19 pm

Rory

Everything you could possibly want to know about Triplex glass can be found here: http://forum.etypeuk.com/viewtopic.php?p=60533#p60533

Very detailed indeed David but alas it does not seem to answer Rory's question regarding the position of the Triplex logo on a door glass

Fortunately I have just such a picture...






Simon

Disclaimer. This is where mine is. The photos are in no way a definitive guide to Triplex logo positions and anything I say even if backed up with photographic evidence should be taken as a factual guide at your own risk .

Great Simon thanks.

Can anyone confirm that this is correct for an earlier car too ? The value of my car is NOT dependant on this kind of detail, unfortunately, but as I'm paying an arm and a leg for the glasses anyway I might as well get this right.

I'd be interested to hear others' experiences of sourcing the felt-channel BD10099 that lines the whole front chrome guide at the front of the doors, I was supplied BD28209/3 by a usual suspect but it is too thin in section to adequately guide the sliding glass and results in the sloppy 1.50 - 2.00 mm gap that I've got, which makes the glass a bit flop-flop.

Was this how it was originally ? It doesn't feel right to me.

We use the glass guide with 2 ears. You have to put up with a window being a bit tighter than normal until you wear it in though.

Its flocked on the inside where the glass runs and rubber on the outside. The ears are on the outside. We buy it from Hutsons. Both single eared and double eared are available (and no Rory, I don't want to get involved in selling this stuff! )

Rory, FWIW my S1 door glasses have no visible markings whatsoever, and i believe these to be originals.i did not remove the runners to check if any marks are hidden underneath
On my S2 the door glasses do have the triplex markings same as illustrated by Simon.

Here are the markings on some early OTS cars I can get to. Both have the markings on the upper forward portion of the glass like shown previously. The one with black paper behind the glass is a 1964 SUNDYM and the one with white paper behind the glass is a 1961 plain - not tinted.

I have closely looked again on my S1-62 and indeed there are markings hard to see. Mine are tinted, and scratched all over:

Many thanks to all who've helped me with this, I missed the last posts from Geoff and Ralph and should have acknowledged their posts sooner.

I'm now ready to order the new glasses from Pilkingtons, it seems clear that the markings should be type TM2.



Could either/both Geoff/Ralph/Simon give dimensions of where the markings are, approximately ? Appreciate they're in the top-front corner, but a couple of measurements would be really helpful.



The LH zinc sheet required less correction than the RH.



If anyone else goes down this route, zinc is a good idea as it's surprisingly stiff, but has to be done in two parts or more to get it right, and then joined, as you can't duplicate the complete door glass and do trial fitting, with door-closing etc, in one step.



Once I was able to lay the "pair" of old door glasses onto each other they were indeed quite different, yet visibly from the same manufacturer - one wonders where they came from as they are at least 30 years old ..........

My zincs are far from identical, either - if you look closely you can see the second sheet behind the first, and the subtle differences in shape.





so I guess my hood-frames must be slightly twisted somewhere, but I'll be really interested to look at other cars in future as some of the restorations appear to start with cars which are so bugg-r-d about with that there is no way that the glass-to-hood sealing is ever going to be good with original glass unless someone takes this very seriously quite early (very early) on in the restoration.

It has taken me 17 years of ownership to grasp just how very complex and inter-dependant the doors/hood/windscreen intersections are, and the rarety of OTS with the correct hood-to-windscreen overlap (my car seen here at BAS in Wales)



is perhaps an indication of how often this gets ignored ?

Anyone interested in sorting this out might like to start here -

http://forum.etypeuk.com/viewtopic.php? ... ood#p88197