www.jec.org.uk

Hello all,

My car has some of the worst window seals along the tops of the doors that I've ever seen. Such a shame that the aluminium corrodes so badly and also that replacements are so difficult and expensive to come by.

I know that there are options available to replace them with non-OEM seals, however, I wanted to see if I could find my own solution. The original Jaguar seals have three characteristics that are difficult to match: firstly, the seal extends upwards from the aluminium beading, secondly the beading itself is an unusual shape, and thirdly they're reasonably long.

By chance, after I'd helped my next door neighbour replace a door on hie Vauxhall Insignia, I had a passenger side seal spare from the old door. This fitted the XK8 door in terms of length, however the seal was the wrong shape and the beading didn't match either. It did give me a starting point though. I spent a happy couple of hours in the scrap yard yesterday, and came up with this as my next solution - it's also from a Vauxhall, and after a little adjustment and cutting, it fits reasonably well, although it does need to be moved back by a few mm. I've got some dark grey exterior grade vinyl on its way and hope that it will be a good match with the original Dorchester Grey.

The door seal was free and a roll of vinyl, enough to do about 100 seals, was about £17 so this could end up being a very cost effective solution to this problem!

A quick update on this (in case anyone's still reading) - I ordered some vinyl in dark grey and applied it to the strip - it's not quite dark enough sadly, but gives an idea of what it looks like with vinyl applied - and it's not as good as I'd hoped.







Having looked at my initial attempt for a couple of days, I'm resolved to better it. My next plan is to stick with the Vauxhall seals, but to mask off the correct width so that the grey beading appears to continue along the door top and then spray the plastic with some Dorchester grey paint. I'll post up my next effort for appraisal.

Either way - I think the pics above look better than what's currently on offer as a non-OEM replacement (for £50 per side):

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175621696442

Certainly I'll not be buying this original NOS item for £500!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225343254407

Cheers for now

Useful as I think most of mine are going the same way!

I've been doing a little more work on this and have another idea to share. I had an enjoyable afternoon in the local scrapper (apart from the bit where I fell off a car into a bramble patch, whilst removing window seals from the car that was stacked on top of it) and came away with another option for replacing the window seals.

You can buy new rubber seals on eBay for £50:



However, they look a bit agricultural and cost a lot for what they are.

The car that I found with better seals on it was a Vauxhall Corsa B (1993 - 2000), and the Corsa C (2000 - 2007) seems to have the same type. They do require cutting to length, but that means you can trim the back end to the correct angle. Doing so leaves the end of the gripper-channel open so you can either just paint a bit of black paint onto the exposed metal and leave it, or make an end=cap out of Epoxy. If I had a 3-D printer I reckon it would be very easy to make a bespoke end cap, but that's a job for another day.

Here's the end result:







Not bad for £10 in parts, and 10 minutes of work!

Sadly the whole thing is rubberised and therefore it would be very difficult to paint, however, I'm working on another option which will be paintable - I've invested in a can of Dorchester Gray in preparation!

More info soon....