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I've got a '77 that I'm working on to replace weatherstrip. Based on the date code it is a June build which seems to be late but what I see on the weatherstrip having 19 pins is early. Can early tops be put on a late car? I have no idea if tops were ever replaced.
Yeah the tops are completely interchangeable (even single latch / double latch with some work) and lots of them disappeared over the years and got replaced. Buy the weatherstrip that matches the clip count
M
One of my T tops was replaced with a service replacement part straight from the Chevrolet dealership in the early 80's. And low and behold. It takes the same weatherstrip as the otherside. Early! And in the fibreglass, moulded in from the factory are numbers proclaiming it to fit a number of years. If I remember correctly up until 78.
So yes! Count the pins. Order accordingly.
I've got a '77 that I'm working on to replace weatherstrip. Based on the date code it is a June build which seems to be late but what I see on the weatherstrip having 19 pins is early. Can early tops be put on a late car? I have no idea if tops were ever replaced.
"Early and "late" are terms the hobby has come up with and have absolutely no correlation with when GM actually made a change to a part. Early and late can be very misleading, parts the hobby refers to as early may have been used on only the first 500 cars, or all but the last 500. GM referred to Running Model Changes as "first design", "second design" etc., and never early or late.
To my knowledge very few 77's came with the so called "late" t-top weatherstrip. I my 40 plus years of dealing in Corvette parts I've only ever come across one 77 that had the "late" weatherstrip.
There's no need to pull the weatherstrip to count the pins to determine which weatherstrip you need. The early, or first design has a stainless retainer strip on the top over where the door glass meets the top, that the outside section of the weatherstrip sits in. On the second design the retainer strip was eliminated and replaced by a metal reinforcement that was molded inside the rubber in the section that meets the door glass.