The Cal-look Lounge

For a car without trim it seems we have two options.
1. One piece windows, I hear they leak, rattle and don;t look that good up close without serious work. Plus the door mods aren't easily reversable.
2. Dechrome the quarterlights and rubbers. Can you get the rubber for the fronts? Is it just a matter of not fitting certain bits of trim?

What do you think?

you can buy the chrome surround(with the seal) in black for the later 65> doors ,not sure about early style.

Interesting, I'll go out in a minute and see what my Standard model doors have got. They had no chrome.

Can you buy plasti-dip in England?
(http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y295/Raven6t9/Plasti-Dip.jpg)

I use it to eliminate all my chrome trim in a reversible-solution should I ever change my mind. We've done wheels, truck grills, all the trim on a VW, etc. and it's long lasting (years without a problem).

(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7038/6829217142_a62aa2c96d_z.jpg)

(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7040/6975341911_0f342bc6a7_z.jpg)

Can be done on the car as well, I'm just assembling the car so did them off the car.

-Dave

That looks pretty god.

So the vent wings are not an issue as VW provided me with the answer
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/545156_10150771299886789_786466788_11387687_1658164484_n.jpg)
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/538037_10150771300156789_690305344_n.jpg)

Paint not chrome from the factory. The doors did still have the chrome surround on the doors though so I'll seek out those black ones dth mentions.

I'm waiting to try this on a couple of my projects.

Look at www.dipyourcar.com for more info and ideas.

I used Rustoleum on mine in 2005 still going strong

If it's a big-window car they are indeed easily reversible. You need only cut one side of the tab inside the window opening and push it down. You don't even have to re-weld it to go back to vent windows; just push it back up. You could even tack them back in place without damaging the exterior paint. But that's beside the point.


On the big-window cars I think you may be able to use inner window scrapers on the outside. I haven't had a big-window car in 15 years, though (and it had one-piece windows anyway) so I don't know.

I DO know, however, that you can make your own. It's for a small-window car so it's not exactly your application but the principles should be similar. Volkswagen punched matching holes in both sides of the window opening. So I drilled the rivets out of the outer scrapers and ditched the trim and tin backer. After some measurements I cut rectangular holes in the naked scraper so its lip rested on the edge of the opening. Then I just used the wire clip from an old inner scraper to hold the outer scraper in place. It works great.

I know that the big-window cars don't use those wire clips on the inner scrapers so you might have to improvise. But you may be able to just use inner scrapers on the outside.

Here's how the small-window cars look without the trim. I cheaped out and didn't dechrome the divider and vent trim.

That's good info thanks, I appreciate it. Yours looks great like that. Also being able to bend the tab out of the way rather than cut it out opens my options again. I don't know why I'm worrying about reversible mods as the trim holes are being welded up.

This is GREAT advise! That looks tidy, thanks for sharing!

Thanks and you're welcome, guys. I wish there was a better solution for converting small-window cars to one-piece door glass without absolutely hacking the doors to pieces. A few years ago I bought a couple really rusty doors and cut the vent-wing channels out in anticipation of the day that I buy a car with one-piece windows and want to go back to vent wings.

Dave, have you had any long-term experience with that Plasti-Dip on aluminum? It'd be great if it held up better than other aerosols. I did something similar in the '90s. I didn't like how fat the popout trim was compared to the trim in the other windows. The anodizing was bad anyway so I used oven cleaner to strip the outer faces then I scuffed them with a red Scotch-Brite pad. I taped off the window and the trim. I cut along the seam between the window and the trim and in the little valley in the trim and removed the innermost strip of tape. Then I sprayed it with black lacquer (I've had better luck with lacquer on bare aluminum than anything else). Once that dried I removed the remainder of the tape from the trim only and blasted that with clear lacquer so the bare aluminum wouldn't oxidize. Once I removed the remainder of the tape and installed the lip seal the window pretty well matched the rest of the windows.

Knowing what I know now I'd lay down some zinc-chromate primer before applying paint on aluminum. You wouldn't be able to do that under the cleared areas (it's greenish) but you'd never really notice a chip there anyway. You would notice chips in the black-painted area, though.

Name the surface, and I've used the plasti-dip on it. Clean, and spray...no scuffing required. We've done chevy trucks that are driven 365 days a year, my bug which slid-sideways on gravel roads and a classic Mercedes which has a BOATLOAD of chrome and aluminum trim.

The only problem I ever have with the plasti-dip is when I tape off areas, like I did the pop-out window. You have to remember to run a sharp exacto blade on the edge of any tape lines to ensure you pull up the tape and not the plasti-dip. Other then that, it's basically permanent.

My next experiment will be this week on my fenders, using plasti-dip clear. I need some gravel protection on the rally car and will put a multiple layers of plastidip on the front of the rear fenders and on the quarter panel. Friends have been using the clear on their motorcycles with great success, hopefully it works for me here. That way if I'm shooting photos I can just peel it off and replace it later.

-Dave