So my '96 Roadmaster did not survive it's 400+ mile Hill Country Road Trip this weekend totally undamaged after all. It seems the driver's-side rear door may have been slammed a little hard, and sure enough, I heard a "crack" sound when putting the window up. It's still on track, and moves, but it's loose, and I know the slider in there cracked. I'd done the front ones with the newer round style years back, so I guess the rears are due. They were FINE last spring when I replaced all the Christmas-tree clips in order to lessen rattles...but now I get to carefully remove the panel again. ale: Never a dull moment. At least, with doing this on the front doors on this Roadmaster and the rear door on my old Custom Cruiser, I'm not scared of the project. Just another thing! -Mike
The more cars we have and the more they are getting older, the more THINGS need done. It's always someTHING.
Oh and for anyone interested the BEST replacement door panel Christmas-Tree clips I've found for our B-body cars are at Napa, part number 665-1107, Belkamp is the brand. They look exactly like the factory clips and are not brittle like the Autozone ones. Package if 12 is $5. -Mike
I'd done the front doors before but never the back ones. A real PAIN, no room! I got it done, installed a new round slider to relaced the crummy original style. Since the door panel was off I also got out some epoxy, and fixed the warped armrest pad, something I should have done last year. My hands are all cut up now, but its all fixed! New Christmas-Tree clips from Napa - Balkamp Part # 665-1107 Updated round slider from Autozone - HELP! Part # 74444 - These are much much MUCH better than the original "long" GM sliders. Epoxy to fix the arm rest pad. I love this stuff, but it at Harbor Freight, and have used it on a lot of the loose plastics that show up in this car. Great fix! Carefully removed the door panel. The plastics on these are really brittle! The white slider toward the rear, the EASY one, is fine, of course. Ha! The orange front slider, the hard one to reach, is broken. Got it out, what a PAIN. These sliders are such garbage! Now to get some Neopsporin for my sliced hands and arms! Arrgh! Just an FYI, these are what's needed for this project. Well...some of them, have to find what fits! This was the only warped armrest pad in my car, so decided to fix it while it was off. I think the Texas sun does this, as folks up north tell me they don't have this issue. My car did not have window tint until 2008, so from 96-08 this car was in the sun. This was my only warped one, but I have seen other door pads warped on different doors in salvage yard cars. Random issue....great 90's part quality...oh well. Fixed for now! Epoxy, a vice and a clamp. Now to wait and hour... New clips are always a good idea Clips installed Window repaired, panel on, armrest fixed! Came out good, no warp anymore! Done! GM should be ashamed of the plastics on these cars, but this is perfect again. Never Never NEVER slam doors on these cars! -Mike
Since folks have asked, due to their thickness it's hard to get the new round rollers to slide past the rivets on the ends of the tracks, so I sand the back down just a bit with my bench grinder in order to make them skinny enough to slide past the rivets. I slide the new roller into the track, and then position the ball/pivot from the lift mechanism against the new roller, and use a C-clamp to force the ball into the roller. I tried squeezing the ball into the roller with pliers and vice-gripes and it's HARD to get good leverage to do that in the confines of the inner door. In most cases the C-clamps make this job easy, but MAN it was hard to get a clamp on this front roller in this rear door. The inner door handle assembly is right in the way. I did finally get a small clamp on this rear door/front roller, but it was a real pain. I can see why some folks remove the assembly, but I hate drilling out rivets!
This is something that needs to be done on my wagon, the rollers and I have 2 door panels with the warped pad. They are not too bad but enough that they need to be done. Thanks for info and part numbers!
I did ONE of those in a Roadmaster sedan; the problem caused by GM was the use of virgin (uncured) nylon, rather than 'Delrin' engineering plastic (think hobby locomotive drive gears), and the problem of having to stretch that nylon piece over the ball to get it to seat inside. I used a C-clamp also, and a big dollop of grease, and I heated the slider in a cup of nuked water to give the nylon some stretch. BTW, did you leave the rear slider undone? I would've taken the time to do it also, just so that it was done. Taking the door panels off is just as bad as slamming the door.
I didn't do the rear slider. I considered it, but am a wuss about cold...it was in the 30's and I was feezing, so I lubed everything really well and buttoned it all back up after doing the front one.
