1953 FORD F100 DOOR RE-ASSEMBLY What follows is an account of the observations made during the rebuilding of the working parts related to the doors of my 1953 Ford F100 pickup. I took the doors completely apart and repainted them. I then re-installed all the working components in these doors. I based the steps I took on an account of door window glass installation that I found on the Ford Truck Enthusiast Forum. But, this account was not a complete discussion using stock components. My doors were off the truck during my re-assembly. I laid them flat on a work table with a soft cloth to protect the paint. I am not sure to what extent this actually effects re-assembly procedures. 1) I installed the vent windows. From all that I observed, this is a necessary first step. It appears to me that installing the vents after all other work has been done will require significant amount of undoing other work. For example, the division bar would have to be moved aside to allow the vent assembly to be inserted into the door frame. The installed anti rattle pieces also appear to be in the way of moving the division bar. Also, if the vent window is secure and snugged up tight in place, then the exact final location of the division bar can be determined, in that it is an integral part of the vent window weather stripping.
On my truck I found that the glass in one of my vents was not inserted completely in its metal frame. Because of this, the vent did not close completely; the glass did not fit into the weather stripping recess as it should have. I had to take the vent assembly out and reset the glass. I only discovered this after I got the division bar in. It is worth making sure that the vent glass is in correctly before you install the entire vent assembly. No part of the vent glass should extend beyond the outside edges of the metal vent frame. Side note: I used butyl rubber windshield setting goop on the vent rubber. It did make a mess. But learned from setting the windshield, this stuff cleans up nicely with a rag dampened with paint thinner. Still, when I took the vent out to reset the glass, it was a mess I had to clean up...
2) The division bar is installed through the door access hole. Note that it does fit. It is just a matter of finding the exact location to put the top end of it during installation.
The photo shows where the top end of the division bar wants to be before the bottom end actually fits completely in the access hole. It takes some wiggling and a little bit of twisting, but it actually fits in pretty smoothly when the top is properly located.
Once it's in, it is dropped down, and the top is moved over and pushed through the glass opening, alongside the vent window. The vent window may have to be opened to get the bar all the way up to the top of the door frame. I put one of the screws in the door top to hold the division bar loosely in place. I observed from my experience with these doors that NOTHING gets tightened down until all the pieces have been inserted or installed. There is a fair amount of hand tightening screws and bolts, and then removing them again while another piece is installed. General Note: Now is the time to make sure that all the "guts" of the doors are cleaned, well lubed, and working correctly.
3) The glass run is installed. I threaded the bottom of it through the window opening, rather than push it upfrom the access hole. I initially used a glass run that I got from Mid Fifty. I did not like the way it looked; the transition bend from the side to the top did not follow the curve at the top of the door. I found that glass runs from other vendors (Dennis Carpenter and LMC) come with a sheet metal clip stapled at the bend which holds the shape of the curve and makes for a much cleaner looking fit. It also happened to install a lot easier. The metal channel that attaches to the glass run at the bottom and secures it to the door is installed later. For the moment, I got the channel in and snapped all the buttons except for the last one by the division bar. Note: the glass runs that I got from Dennis Carpenter were each too long. I had to shorten one by 5/8" and the other by 1" just so they would fit in the glass run channel.
The photo shows the glass run in, except the last button is not yet snapped in. It was my experience that the division bar is jockeyed around so much during the re-assembly that it's easier to pull it out of the way if the glass run is not completely in.
4) Install the operator. I think I had the operator adjusted such that the window would have been in the closed position, had the glass been attached. I had the operator lubed up well enough so that I could turn the operator's knurled post even without a crank handle on. The operator will fit easily... like the division bar, it's just a matter of finding the sweet spot that lets it slip in. The arms of the operator have to be between the division bar and the inside panel of the door, so the division bar will have to be loose enough move and twist enough to do this. Once in, I pushed it over toward the hinge side of the door to make some room for the glass.
5) Install the glass. There is a left and right side window. You will notice that one side of the lift channel has a metal lip that extends away from the glass about 38/" of an inch. This lip acts like a gutter to divert water away from the mechanical workings inside the door. This gutter should face towards the outside of the door. Also, the rollers in the window operator will not fit if the lift channel is not installed correctly. To get the glass in all the way through the access hole, I had to move the division bar and the operator around to make room for the glass. (It seems like there are few, if any, steps that do not require the division bar to moved one way or another.)
6) Snap the rollers on the operator into their slots on the bottom window channel. I don't know an easy way to describe this. Before I began any re-assembling, I did practice attaching and un-attaching the rollers to the lift channel several times. Once you have a feel for the kind of force needed to snap and unsnap the rollers into the lift channel, you will have a better feel for what you have to do when all this stuff has been pushed into the access hole. I would not want learn how to do this only after the glass and operator had been installed in the door. It's tricky enough, even when one knows how it's supposed to go all fit together. I used a rubber mallet to gently tap on the operator arms to get the rollers to engage in the lift channel. Note that there is only one way that the rollers can fit into the lift channels; they will only fit in one end of the lift channel: the side closest to the hinges.
7) Fit the glass into both the division bar and the glass run. Push the glass and the attached operator up. The goal here is to get the operator crank handle stub to pop through the hole in door. If there is a trick here, it's getting all this done without having the glass fall out of the division bar and glass run. When I got the stub through the hole, I used the crank handle to raise the window about 3/4 of the way up. I pushed the division bar up high enough to insert and hand tighten one of the two bolts at the bottom. I also put in (hand tighten)a couple of the screws that hold the operator to the door.
8) Install the metal channel that holds the side of the glass run. Like the lift channel, there is a left and right. There is no way to see what you doing at this point; you have to feel to make sure that he tab on the glass run is in the top of the channel. What I gleaned from photos and catalogues is this: There are two bolt holes side by side at the bottom end of the channel. One hole lines up approximately with the channel itself. The other is offset. I believe that the correct install is with the offset hole facing the inside of the cab. The effect of such an install positions the bottom of the glass closer to the door skin. It appears to me that with this installation, the glass run and division bar are parallel. I suppose that as long as the glass runs smoothly up and down, that is all that really matters.
9) At this point I installed the door latch assembly and the mechanism that attaches to the inside door handle. I found that I could not install all the window stuff if the door mechanisms were in place at the beginning. But, installing this door operator stuff after the glass is in requires undoing some of the screws that had been hand tightened. Overall, this is a breeze compared to fussing around with the window channels, etc.
10) Install the anti rattle strips on the bottom of the window opening. The strips that I got butt right up to the sides of the division bar. I could not install these strips without dropping the glass a little bit, so that meant lowering the division bar and operator (now unbolted from the door) so that I had the room to install them. This was my least favorite job. I had difficulty getting the buttons to snap into their holes. I used some petroleum jelly, but I don't know how much that really helped. I have noticed that other vendors use the snap types that are different than the Mid Fifty pieces that I used. There may be easier to do this. At any rate, I managed to get all the buttons except one to snap into place. I may try some pieces from LMC or Dennis Carpenter and see if there is any difference. I know that the glass runs that I got from Dennis Carpenter are superior to the glass runs I got from Mid Fifty. This was the job I most disliked. It took a lot of force to push the buttons home. It may be that this step should happen sometime earlier in the whole grand sequence, but it looked to me that there was not a place it could have happened earlier without creating its own bunch of little practical problems.
11) At this point, just about everything that has to be installed through the door access hole has been installed. From this point on, it is a matter of adjusting everything. When the glass looked like it was going to slide nicely in the glass run, I pushed the division bar up to the top of the door and tightened up the screws at the top of the division bar, making sure that the vent window operated properly. I pushed the last button on the glass run into place. All screws that hold all the various pieces in were put in and hand tightened. With the glass cranked up to about 1" from the top of the door, I eye-balled the alignment of the glass. There is quite a bit of adjustment room at the door operator for aligning the glass. When I got an alignment I liked, I verified that the glass fit nicely into the glass run at the top of the door. I tightened up the four screws that hold the operator in place. The channel that holds the glass run has no lateral adjustment, so the division bar is all that can be adjusted to get a reasonably comfortable fit for the glass to slide in. With that done, it is just a matter of tightening up all the screws. Putting the outside handles on is easy. There's plenty of room to work when the windows are rolled up. I have not yet installed the locks or weather-strip.
So, both my doors are pretty much done. I used all the materials that I had purchased and I used everything that I learned from the FTE forum and my own trial and error. I am not 100% satisfied. The glass in one door does not roll down as far as I'd like. It looks like the problem may be in the setting of the glass in the lift channel. At this point, I do not remember where I got this windows. They may not be original to the truck... I may take the glass out and reset it. I feel pretty comfortable at this point with taking all these door guts apart and re-assembling them. Also, I have a vent window that seem to take a lot of force to close. If I could move the division bar over a bit, I think the vent would close better. But the anti rattle pieces limit how much I can move the division bar. I may replace the anti rattle stuff on this door (using the Dennis Carpenter pieces) and see if my vent windows work better.
That's about it. I wish you the best of luck. In all, it took me about two hours to do one door. But, I managed to do it without breaking anything, cutting myself or scratching the new paint.