Work has begun at last and a question about 404 door gaskets.

G

Gilow

Member
Fellow Frogger
Joined
May 21, 2015
Messages
130
Location
Adelaide
Hi all,

Happy to report, after three and half years of patiently waiting in the garage, the 404 is about to go back on the road. My son is just a few weeks away from his P's now, so the time has come to do a quick touch-up of the paintwork and get him going.

Mechanically I am pretty happy with the state of the car. We got it running nicely for the Bay to Birdwood back in 2015, and I've chased down a few brake bits following a white knuckled experience at the end of that rally.

So the plan is to do a basic refresh of the paintwork, deal with the few minor rusty bits, like the boot channels leaking water into the boot.

Progress is good, with my son putting in 7 hour days in hand sanding. I'm doing the minor bog work on the various classic little supermarket car-park dents. All in all, no nasty surprises so far.

But I did hit one job I'd forgotten about. The inner door gaskets on the car are all reasonably good, but the doors appear to have remains of some melted, but no rock hard gooey gasket "stuff" on them. It looks like it might have been some kind of "outer" door gasket?

My questions are:

1. Is it worth chasing down replacements for these gaskets?
2. What was their function? (might be answered by question 1 I guess)
3. Any tricks for removing the horrid melted mess from the doors?

Matt

42711647_10156612011664344_5468154625267859456_n.jpg42845499_10156616271682488_2235915645940137984_n.jpg
 
no wonder that kid is smiling!
all the best of french motoring for him ...

ed
 
Der Franzose had them 4-5 years ago when I did Pugsley properly. Probably still do.

Alternative is what I did on a "restoration" some years previous to this - Scott's Auto Rubber in Melbourne had lengths of the right section and one works slowly around it with adhesive ( some grades of superglue work well and are a bit less 'sudden death' than rubber cement ) until it all fits. Hard to get good seal but can be done.

Mine were the same - car had been shedded for years before I got him in '87 and the rear doors had never been opened and rubber melted and welded it all together. Sealed well until I opened the door.

Great choice of car for your son and wonderful to see another 404 resurrected

Best Wishes

Andrew
 
Matt,

Serie04 can supply you the door seals etc.

Série04 - Carrosserie -porte avant - porte arrière - bas de caisse 404 (2) - Série04 SARL

As for the old rubber sticking to the vinyl (I sssume on your doors), there is a product available and I've seen at Woolies, I think it is called Yuk Off (Not sure). Haven't used it on the car, but it removes all sorts of adhesive residues of furniture etc.

Without the seals, the doors will leak water horrendously and on dirt roads, suck in dust like you'd never believe. But sure you know that.

Here is a tip for you, if you want to protect your padded dash and top of the door trim from cracking. Spray them them with Lanolin, let it sit for a day or so then rube/wipe it in and off. Absolutely amazing results. Fellow Frogger, Bruce Llewellyn put me on to it.

You son looks so proud. Great to see!

Cheers,

Dano
 
Matt,

answers to your question...

1) door seals a must especially to avoid water, dust and noise from getting in.
3) As my car was going to be repainted, the flat scrapper work best with a some sand paper action.

fyi... I bought a set of Pug404 door seals from Argentina, but water still made it way in when it rains. I added another set of door seal which I obtained locally. now I have what you call double protection. Will provide some pictures later.
 
Pic_A.jpg
Picture A above shows the rubber seal on the door which I got from Argentina, They a little big on some parts, if you notice I have shave a little of it in order for the door to shut properly.

The pictures below are the seal fitted onto the car body, Picture D shows the shape of the seal. The aftermarket seals that they sell in rolls do not come with the 90 degrees curve. so the best bet was to buy ready made Honda SV4 front door rubbers. A little short, so I purchased an extra piece just to fill the gaps.
Pic_B.jpg Pic_C.jpg Pic_D.jpg Pic_E.jpg Pic_F.jpg
 
I got the Argentinian ones and it took days to trim them so that the doors would close properly. The boot rubber from the same place was excellent though.
 
Back to the gaskets

First, my apologies to the forum. I am used to forums that tell me when there is a response. This one probably does too, I need to figure out how, because I post questions then forget to follow up the responses.

So I am FINALLY coming back to my post from over a month ago.

And it seems I should have posted pictures because I am not sure we are all on the same page.

The gaskets I am referring to are on the doors themselves, separate to the normal pinchweld style door gaskets that remain attached to the car body.

I've taken some photos, hopefully they will help.

IMG_2300.jpg
 

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I bought a set in 1985 for a sedan I used to have. The car was from California and the seals had turned into little lumps of dry charcoal. With the new ones glued on, it was draft-free! Probably more dustproof for the Outback too ;)
 
When i did a 404 about 10 years ago I think that I got those seals from Scott's Auto rubbers in Sydney. Scraped the old charcoal ones off, cleaned the doors up, hand painted, then glued the new ones on.
 
Thank you guys, "dried charcoal" is such an appropriate description. I'll get onto Scott's today.
 
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