Best weatherstrip CRC or latex
 

Who has recently replaced their weatherstripping? Does anyone know how the Corvette Rubber Company (CRC) rubber compares to the OEM or the latex weatherstrip which is advertised to be like OEM?

TIA,
Scott

CRC - Weather stripping
 

I just finished finished up a complete CRC weather strip replacement on a 78 Corvette Pace Car.

I used a 3M Black weather strip adhesive. A lot nicer to use that regular contact cement. The bead does not drip. About $12 a tube. Worth the money.

I am very happy with the CRC. Very soft.

The doors and t-tops do take a little more effort in closing.

You might need to do some window adjustments to adjust the upper window stops. I had to do that on one door. Easy to do.

Thanks, you don't think the front window pillar strips too hard to close the windows then?

Very interesting comment.

I have to power the window up and then close the door to make the car 100% tight. The door motor will not do it by itself. Prior to the weather strip replacement, no problems.

The "B" pillar location of the door weatherstripping is very tight too. This is the bottom wedge that meets up with the b pillar molding.

I spent four hours on getting the glass alignment right with the new weatherstripping.

Installation of the t-tops after the new weather stripping was installed was quite a job. No way could my wife install the t-tops on the car.

All in all, it seems that the weatherstripping was too thick or needs to compress. It too early for me to tell.

I would of spent more than double the money to not deal with the problems.

I am very interested if other people felt the weather stripping was too hard or too thick?

Did the weather stripping compress over time?

"Maybe I am not as satisfied as I thought"

I did the A-pillars and side rear windows with CRC. The fit was perfect. Forget the Metro stuff, it fit terribly. If you can get original GM, that's the best but more expensive. I did a thread showing the steps to replace the ws which you might find helpful.
Glenn :cheers:
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c3-g...uestion-3.html

I bought weatherstripping from Ecklers and Corvette Central and also A-pillar strips from Steele Rubber Products. I think the Ecklers/CC is Metro. You do NOT want any of these weatherstrips. These companies might sell CRC ...and maybe that would be acceptable, but stay away from the cheaper stuff. I never installed them. I've been down that road on a T-Bird I was involved with and the doors had to be slammed to close. Even after 7 years they weren't good. So, for my vette, I bought NOS A-pillar weatherstripping because that is an extremely important gasket, and recently I bought B-pillar weatherstripping from this place called Smart Parts 866-600-vette (Kent). They are almost indestinguishable from the NOS B-pillar piece I have. I saw them at Bloomington last year. He was telling me that they are asian made so that would exclude CRC. But they DO look nice and the dimensions and sponginess is spot-on with the NOS piece I've got. I'm going to use them on my car. I bought door weatherstripping from him and it also looks pretty good. I must have thrown my old door weatherstripping away so I can't compare as well to the original. But it looks very close. I can't sa about CRC. I think you can still get T-top weatherstripping from GM. I was going to do that, but I bought new tops from Melrose and the weatherstripping they use is very, very close to NOS (I compared side by side) and was satisfied with their product. You might contact them and see who they use. He said it was something they had made up for them ...but that seems doubtful. The tooling would be very expensive.

Mark G

Hi Scott,
I used CRC weather strip on my 71 coupe.
It matched the original in appearance quite well. I found the doors a bit difficult to close at first but after a couple of weeks the strip compressed some and now the doors close as I'd expect trem to.
Regards,
Alan

Alan

I am glad to hear that the CRC compressed after a couple of weeks. The CRC was easy to install and looked nice on the car.

I bought a whole " coupe set " from a vendor and the door weather strips were way too short!! Trust me don't get those all in one packages unless you know who makes them. Ended up having to get crc door strips (havent put them on yet) We'll see how the t-top ones go. They others were ok.



Any advice from anyone on installing them? I had a heck of a time with the cheap ones. Couldn't seem to get them to stick. (3m black)

Guys,
I too bought the weatherstrip set from Corvette Central for my 69 coupe. The stuff fit terribly and was even beginning to fail after a few months. I had trouble with the door glass binding as well. I had the car into Willcox for some other work and the owner told me my weatherstrip was junk. He replaced it and the fit and durability is great. Give Willcox a call. Whatever they use is the best in my opinion. Hope this helps...
Brad

:iagree:
I ordered and installed the larger cabin kit from CC. Looked ok, but the windows won't close even after hours of adjustment and rebuilding the power motors with new springs. Have to run them up and then close the doors. After about a month, they also started sticking to the door glass and are now destroyed. I just ordered out a set of CRC rubber from Melrose T Tops for less than I paid CC for the junk. Stay away from the off brands. :iagree:

:iagree:

Willcox website shows CRC is what they sell :cheers:

Thanks Brad!

The weatherstrips installed on Brad's car were the CRC brand weatherstrips. I'm not sure what brand the weatherstrips were that we removed, but the front pillar weatherstrips were a horrible product.

We have the CRC brand kits on the forum special price section of the web site.

http://willcoxcorvette.com/advanced_...=weatherstrips

:thumbs:
Willcox

I had the same issue with the set i got, so i got some from wilcox. started the drivers door tonight and it all fits fine. :-)

I have used weatherstrips from both Metro and Doc Rebuild and both fit fine. Doc Rebuild's seemed a little stiffer. Doors were a little hard to close for a while till they compressed. I used a little silicone grease on the pillars to help the windows slide up an down till they settled themselves in.

Do yourself a BIG favor and save for NOS W/S.

It is always dead-on right in fit and it works!
There are no leaks from the T-Tops, the leading edge of the door w/s fits cleanly/correctly under the A-Piller W/s etc....

The next best thing - hands down - is from CRC.
I am pretty sure they used NOS pieces to make the molds and they really are as soft as can be done without extruding with latex.

My 2 cents.....

Wanted to post an update on this issue. Since we read the comments on this post, we have elected to source our 68-72 and 73-82 latex foam repro weatherstrip from CRC Rubber.

Thanks to everyone for their input.

Good move! :thumbs:

Glad to see a vender paying attention to what the customers want! :thumbs:

:flag:

Bringing this thread way back from the dead. We ad our ‘79 painted last year and of course replaced the original weatherstripping with a kit I purchased from Eckler’s probably 10 years ago when we had a new interior fitted. The shop said it would be better to do the weatherstripping when the car is painted. As you might expect the doors and windows are a c***-sucker to close.

Even though I was told by some local guys that the weatherstripping would compress after “a little while”, it has now been a year and the doors don’t close any easier. As a matter of fact after a year of slamming the driver side door the armrest came loose yesterday. I’m on the verge of buying a new kit from CRC, but wanted to see what recent experience anyone has with their kits. Do they really compress “within a few weeks”?

Chappie